University of Virginia Library

II

The history of editing has moved according to its own logic, marked,
on the positive side, both with methodological advances and with compelling
demonstrations of the importance of informed judgment. The
two elements, method and judgment, tend to appear on the intellectual
stage as opponents, and are sometimes identified, respectively, with the
ideas that the past is best recovered by either objective or subjective
means. The tension in this opposition has generated its share of pointless
negativity, but like all dynamic relationships the struggle has its
creative potential. In the cycle referred to by Tanselle on the first page
of "Editing without a Copy-Text," in which editorial discussions are
alternately dominated by objective or subjective orientations, come
points where deeper, synthetic breakthroughs seem possible. Not that
such breakthroughs necessarily emerge from the discussions to guide
editorial activity, but that the potential for holistic understanding exists
for editors to exploit, in the best work of those identified with both
sides. Ultimately, an editor can draw the two sides into a unitary approach,
as A. E. Housman did. Housman the scholar may be most widely
remembered for the sharp arguments he advanced in the prefaces to his
editions, and in his lectures, favoring informed judgment over the mechanical
application of methods. He is also recognized for his great talent
for conjectural emendation—the ability to detect and correct corrupt
passages without the direct support of documentary witnesses.[12] Less
known is that Housman did not edit by his emendatory power alone.
He recognized the importance of all pertinent knowledge and understood

the significance of Lachmann's method of the genealogical classification
of manuscripts better than those who believed in its oracular
powers. On his many-sided considerations, including his careful recensions
and careful handling of the recensions of others, did Housman's
insights flourish.

So dazzling were some of these insights that even canny admirers
failed to notice the full range of scholarship which supported them. In
La genesi del metodo del Lachmann (The Origin of the Lachmann
Method), Sebastiano Timpanaro cited the testimony of another that his
own teacher, Giorgio Pasquali, once declared excitedly, "C'è uno solo
che può far emendazioni, è il Housman" (There is only one who can
make emendations: he is Housman).[13] Timpanaro adds that in a lecture
he attended, Pasquali admired the genius of Housman's famous interpretation
of Catullus 64. For all his admiration of Housman, however,
Pasquali did not, Timpanaro notes, hold him in as high esteem as he
might have. Pasquali appreciated Housman's great gift for emendation,
his ear for language, and deep understanding of poetry, but believed
these were humanistic talents, which came at the expense of a more
developed scientific orientation to his subject matter. Pasquali's misconception
was partly due to Housman's reputation as a critic of the
routinized application of editorial methods, and to Pasquali's inability
to obtain Housman's edition of Manilius,[14] "where," said Timpanaro,
"the genealogy of the codices are delineated with a sure hand" (p. 103).
To his teacher's view that Housman's genius was "unmethodical," and

even "antimethodical," Timpanaro countered by referring to his "profound
`methodicity,' " according to which

What Timpanaro would have us understand is not so much that
Housman struck some adequate balance between method and judgment,
but more that Housman allowed his own intelligence to guide his approach
to textual problems, selecting and applying the relevant criteria
in accordance with the material and his purposes. The example of
Housman illustrates the fairness of the view that the opposition of
method against judgment is only apparent: method is rather a creation
of judgment, a development of it, a particular judgment, concentrated
and abstracted. A method, an analysis, or a rule is often independently
developed numerous times, and may therefore have more than one
author. La genesi del metodo del Lachmann contains the incontrovertible
demonstration that the method to which Lachmann gave his
name was not really his. Lachmann formally divided the process of
editing a text with multiple surviving sources into sequential halves. In
recensio (recension), the relationships between the sources are established
through collation and the analysis of errors held in common, to
determine, ultimately, whether one of the sources is the common ancestor
of the others, or whether the common ancestor is lost and must be reconstructed
of its independent surviving witnesses. In emendatio
(emendation) the common ancestor that has emerged from recensio—
whether a surviving exemplar or a conjecturally reconstructed one—is
corrected. Emendatio, Timpanaro pointed out, was an art as old as late
antiquity, revived by the humanists, and practiced with moments of
brilliancy in subsequent centuries by figures such as Giuseppe Giusto
Scaligero (1540-1609)[15] and Richard Bentley (1662-1742). Timpanaro
then demonstrated that recensio was the outcome of the collective work

of several nineteenth-century predecessors and contemporaries of Lachmann,
and its principles were already in place by the time Lachmann
summoned them into service for his Greek New Testament (first published
in 1831) and his famous edition of Lucretius (1850). Greg's rationale
is more rightly named, since it is mainly his alone—though, like
all good insights, it rests on the earlier, partial advances of others.
Whether a method or a type of analysis was created by a single individual
or was the outcome of an entire intellectual tradition, however,
it can never be anything more than the distilled thoughts of human
beings. Methodological and analytical approaches to editing emerge
from the thinking of their creators possessed of some objectivity, for
they likely were developed over time, as responses to a variety of experience.
Yet they are not natural laws; they can only suggest ways in
which judgment might be profitably focused in order to re-create the
past. They may be continually tested against new evidence, and adjusted
or abandoned, according to the limitations that are revealed by
this. They are, in other words, within our control. To regard them as
independent of human thought, as existing above and beyond judgment,
is a conceptual error that is bound to impede the understanding
and resolution of editorial problems.

"Editing without a Copy-Text" shifts the editorial point of view
from Greg's methodological design to the immediate evaluation of the
work being edited. This is as it should be. As every experienced editor
knows, textual situations vary, so it may seem axiomatic to say that it is
best to approach each new project without the preconceived intent to
apply a particular method. Editorial history, however, mainly runs in
the other direction, and the shift that Tanselle makes in "Editing
without a Copy-Text" is also away from older and more restrictive (and
more enduring) points of view than Greg's. That Tanselle carefully
prepared the way for this shift is known to the readers of his many
essays, in which, over the years, he has investigated a great many of the
editorial and bibliographic questions that literary scholars face. The
essays are rich in interesting, relevant details, and the discussions are
clearly presented, if sometimes driven by an intense logic, which can
seem inescapable when a particular point is being made. After all,
however, most readers will agree that the true object of Tanselle's discussions
has never been to make points but to stimulate serious thinking
about texts, and countless passages are given over to fair assessments—
and sometimes optimally judicious restatements—of alternative viewpoints.

The idea that editors might pursue different goals has been understood
by Tanselle's readers as far back as 1976, when his essay "The

Editorial Problem of Final Authorial Intention" appeared in Studies
in Bibliography. [16] Here it was suggested that critical texts may be prepared
of earlier, unrevised versions of works, or of later, revised versions.
The recognition that literary works are defined by a series of historical
moments has emerged as an essential principle of critical editing,
as the texts of works from more recent periods have come in for scholarly
treatment. The chronology includes the moment of first publication, but
also earlier and possibly later moments, whether or not these are also
adequately represented in existing documents. The failure to grasp this
principle has led both to editorial blunders and to the mistaken charge
that critical editing is a platonic striving toward a single ideal text, by
means of unprincipled or aesthetics-based eclecticism. Over the years,
however, Tanselle has clarified and emphasized the centrally historical
nature of literary works to such an extent that by now this may be overlooked
only through prejudice.

Of course in 1976 it was assumed that readers of critical editions
were most interested in the text the author wanted, no matter what
point in the history of a work the editor was seeking to re-create. This
Tanselle noted in "Textual Criticism and Literary Sociology" (Studies
in Bibliography, 1991), at the beginning of a consideration of the ideas of
Donald F. McKenzie, Jerome McGann, and others, which move editorial
attention away from the author's text, toward the text as published and
received. "Editing without a Copy-Text" appeared at a time when the
ideas of McKenzie and McGann had already become popular, if not yet
with many practicing editors, then with many who write about editing. In
these writings, the emphasis on the social nature of texts is often accompanied
by a rejection of the author-centered editorial past and Tanselle's
role in shaping that past. The time at which "Editing without a
Copy-Text" appeared, then, was not the most opportune for a widespread
positive reception. Inevitable is the comparison with the essay
it is meant to replace, "The Rationale of Copy-Text," which Bowers
used to signal the dawn of a new age in American literary scholarship.
Every age has its moods, and presently most editors in this field have
the sense of a setting rather than a rising sun. But if an "age" of editions
of American authors has entered into a decline, valuable knowledge and
experience of the editorial problems of modern literature has accrued.
Greg's essay presented the wisdom of a half-century of thinking about
English Renaissance texts, which Bowers energetically applied to his
astonishing array of editions, including works from each of five centuries.
"Editing without a Copy-Text" comprehends both the wisdom

of Greg's considerations and another forty-five years of editorial practice
and thought. While Greg was tentative about the reach of his recommendations,
Tanselle—relying on further history and experience—
can confidently advance an "overarching framework" (p. 21) for approaching
all editorial goals, in all literary periods. He helpfully calls
what takes place within this framework "constructive critical editing,"
emphasizing that editing is a form of "historical reconstruction," wherein
each word, each mark of punctuation, is critically determined by the
editor, according to his or her knowledge of the author and the author's
associates, the physical evidence, and the purpose of the editorial project
(p. 22). Constructive critical editing is therefore not an editorial method,
but rather a highly informed state of mind, which, according to the
design of each project, draws to its attention all the relevant evidence
and applicable supporting methodologies. Greg's rationale, Tanselle
points out, may be one of those methodologies, but used to its original,
restricted purpose—as an aid, that is, to judge the authority of the accidentals,
and not as a base text for relieving the editor of the responsibility
for making editorial decisions.