1. Stemmatic analysis and its aims.
1.1. The stemmatic method involves the following assumptions:
- (i) the author nowhere left variant readings;
- (ii) every manuscript (except the original) was copied from a
single
source;
- (iii) no two copyists originated the same error
independently;
- (iv) errors were not removed by conjecture;
- (v) every relevant manuscript (i.e. a manuscript that survives or
leaves extant progeny) except the original introduced at least one new error,
at a point where no relevant manuscript had yet erred;
- (vi) of the errors introduced by a given relevant manuscript, at
least
one can be identified by critics as an error.
These assumptions concern the original (i), the genealogy (ii), scribal
behaviour (iii-v), the length of the text analysed (v) and the investigator's
judgment (vi). Assumptions (v) and (vi) can usually be relaxed but never
wholly dropped.[1]
In any passage where the manuscripts are divided between the truth
and
one false reading, the set of manuscripts presenting the false reading may
be
termed the "error set". On the above assumptions, the error is due to an
ancestor[2] common and exclusive to
the
error set. In two passages that exhibit different error sets, consider the
relationship between the two ancestors responsible. Either one derives from
the other, or they are collateral. In the former case, the error set due to the
earlier ancestor
includes the whole error set due to the later ancestor. In the latter case, the
two error sets have no manuscript in common. Two error sets are therefore
called "consistent" either if one includes the other or if they share no
manuscript.
[3]
From a series of mutually consistent error sets, the stemma is
reconstructed thus. We list all the manuscripts across the page, and arrange
the error sets underneath, so that any error set(s) contained in a larger error
set appear(s) below it. Every error set is joined to that immediately above.
Of each manuscript we then delete every occurrence except the lowest. This
procedure is applied in fig. 1b to the error sets generated by fig. 1a, namely
AB, CD, A, B, D.[4]
The text of ω, the latest common ancestor of the extant
manuscripts, is reconstructed on the principle that two manuscripts which
agree reproduce the reading of their latest common ancestor. In fig. 1, the
agreement of AC or BC suffices.
So far, P. Maas's approach[5]
has
largely been followed, but an alternative method was developed by J.
Froger.
We may regard any stemma as suspended from its topmost point, which
represents the latest common ancestor of the extant manuscripts. Were it
suspended from any other point, Froger observes (pp. 80, 118), the new
stemma would generate the same patterns of agreement and disagreement,
as
long as the notion of error is left aside. These patterns thus admit a range
of
possible stemmata, which present the same enchainment[6] (i.e. network of lines connecting
extant
manuscripts and lost branch-points) but differ in orientation (i.e. choice of
topmost point).[7] Froger therefore
first
seeks the enchainment,
on the basis of agreement patterns in two-way splits alone (p. 119). One
extant manuscript is arbitrarily chosen as a fictitious original (p. 83). The
"error" set in any passage now comprises all manuscripts disagreeing with
that manuscript. Over different passages, these sets too are consistent,
[8] and so Froger can proceed (pp.
84, 95) as in
fig. 1, obtaining an enchainment suspended from the fictitious original.
With
the tradition of fig. 1, and with C as "original", the "error" sets become
AB,
A, B, D, whence the enchainment of fig. 2ab, arbitrarily orientated
with C on top. He now re-orientates, on the principle (p. 88) that if a group
of manuscripts (or one manuscript) is caught in error, the topmost point
cannot lie on their (its) side of the line that separates them (it) from the
remaining manuscripts. An identifiable error in AB, and another in CD,
would suffice to locate the topmost point; in fig. 2c dotted curves surround
the areas eliminated. Fewer identifiable errors are thus required under (vi).
This is an advance, because passages (which we may call determinate)
where
intrinsic criteria identify the original reading may be rare.
The remaining assumptions are no less necessary. Without (v)
different
manuscripts would appear identical. As for (i), if certain variants stood as
alternatives in the original, unrelated manuscripts could agree in their
choice
between them. The basic principle that an error set has an exclusive
common
ancestor is ensured by (ii)—(iv), which imply that any error set
comprises
all the descendants of the manuscript responsible for the error and them
alone. If (iii) fails, however, the error set may be augmented; if (iv) fails
it
may be diminished (Froger, pp. 108 ff.). The failure of (ii) has the same
effect as that of (iv) or (iii), according as good readings or bad are
transferred from the secondary source. Two or more such shifts may occur
in a single passage. In different passages the error sets may be distorted in
different ways, and cease to be mutually consistent. If few consistent
variants
remain, the above construction methods break down. The largest error sets
are
the likeliest to be distorted. In all
too many traditions, therefore, some small groups remain recognisable, but
the passages where the manuscripts are more evenly divided exhibit a
bewildering variety of inconsistent patterns of agreement, each occurring
just
once or twice.
In most traditions, authorial variation, coincidence in error and
successful conjecture are exceptional, and instances can often be suspected
on intrinsic grounds and excluded. It is therefore primarily the level of
contamination that determines whether a stemma can be constructed. In the
total absence of contamination there are but a few possible error sets, all
mutually consistent. At the opposite extreme we could imagine a totally
contaminated tradition, where the truth may survive in any one of the
manuscripts uniquely and a fortiori in any combination, and
the
possible error sets are correspondingly numerous and in the main mutually
inconsistent. (Such a tradition, comprising just three manuscripts, is
considered in §4.1.) Real-life traditions fall between these extremes.
Contaminated traditions were less pejoratively termed "open" by G.
Pasquali.[9] Here an open tradition
will be
defined empirically as one for which no stemma can be
constructed.
1.2. Before devising an alternative to the stemma, one must ask what
the
stemma ideally achieves. The answer seems obvious: the stemma sketches
the history of the extant manuscripts, and that history establishes priority
between rival readings. In other words the stemma has two functions,
historical and evaluative; and the latter would seem to depend on the
former.
Yet once the possibility of contamination is accepted, the history
sketched by the stemma becomes just one of many possibilities. In 1928 J.
Bédier complained that the same distribution of agreements and
errors in
manuscripts of the Lai de l'Ombre admitted either of the
pedigrees in
fig. 3.[10] Indeed for any stemma,
however
well it fits the patterns of agreement and error, any number of alternative
pedigrees can be devised. The stemma may present a simpler history,
argued
Bédier, but not necessarily the true one, and therefore formed no
sure
basis for evaluation of rival readings (pp. 354 f). This objection to the
stemma is weightier than Bédier's well-known argument that among
the
stemmata constructed by editors the proportion having just two branches is
impossibly high; in
fact a heavy preponderance of two-branched stemmata is entirely to be
expected.
[11]
Here the answer to Bédier is that the evaluative policy stands
even if
the history falls. Consider how a stemma evaluates variants. In any variant
passage, each rival reading is attested in a group of one or more
manuscripts,
and traced back to the latest common ancestor of that group. Suppose that
one of these ancestors derives from another; we may call the manuscripts
whose reading is traced to the earlier ancestor the superior group, and those
manuscripts bearing the reading traced to the later ancestor the inferior
group. Then the superior group prevails, the divergence between the groups
being attributed to error in the later ancestor. This is the essence of
stemmatic evaluation. In fig. 3a, for example, let ABDE agree against CG.
The latest common ancestor of CG (=y) derives from that of ABDE (=v);
hence ABDE's reading is older, and CG's may be put down to error in y.
Now the reason that an exclusive common ancestor was posited for the
inferior group at the construction
stage is that that group were somewhere caught in an exclusive common
error. Bédier's objection is that such an error is not conclusive
proof of
an exclusive common ancestor.[12]
True; but
the fact remains that the superior group has been known elsewhere to
preserve the truth against the inferior group,[13] through whatever historical
process, while the
converse has never been observed. Hence, in passages (called
indeterminate)
where intrinsic considerations fail, readings exclusive to the inferior
group deserve no priority. This conclusion bypasses historical
reconstruction
and Bédier's objections thereto, and rests on direct induction from
determinate to indeterminate passages.
[14]
The history and the evaluative policy must be derived from the determinate
passages independently, and not, as commonly thought, in
succession.
