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I have only now found Godfried Croenen's query of 17 September on my 
computer -- I was on holiday at the time.

I am puzzled, because I do not readily see a link between stemmatic 
reasoning and authors' originals -- or rather, only exceptionally so 
if one by way of analyzing derivative witnesses begins to suspect 
that the archetype (i.e., the logical point of confluence-in-reverse 
of surviving witnesses) might actually coincide with an assumed real 
author's original. The idea, however, of perhaps even being able to 
distinguish more than one author's original by hypothesis from 
surviving variation seems to me exceedingly daring. Hypotheses do not 
win, as we know, by proliferation; only by reduction: for they do not 
(in conceptual terms, at least) mirror realities -- they are logical 
constructs. Moreover, I believe it is important to realise that the 
whole stemmatic method was never out after author's texts -- it was 
devised, rather, in pursuit of the 'purest' text, i.e., the text 
least overlaid by contaminations of transmission. The concern with 
the author and the author's authentic (authorized, or whatever) text 
came in at a later stage in the history of ideas, as well as in the 
history of textual criticism.

What would be intriguing to learn is which specific case of 
transmission, if any, sparked Godfried Croenen's query.

Hans Walter Gabler.


At 16:55 17.09.2009, you wrote:
>Dear all,
>
>I am trying to get some relevant methodological literature on a 
>situation which I am dealing with and which must occur quite 
>regularly in textual studies, although in the few handbooks I have 
>looked at I found no discussion of this specific case.
>
>A lot of criticism of the Lachmannian method has focused on the 
>problematic status of the "common error", i.e. how do scholars know 
>that a variant is indeed an error, why do scholars think the 
>author's text did not contain errors, how can we be certain that a 
>correct reading has not been corrected by the scribe and is 
>therefore younger then the 'error', why should we not use variants 
>that are not errors, etc.
>
>In a tradition where we have two or more authorial versions of an 
>author's text, there may to an extent be a methodological way out of 
>this impasse, which would allow scholars to use variants without 
>worrying whether or not the variants are proper 'errors' and even 
>whether or not they are 'significant' (i.e. whether or not they are 
>of such a nature that it would be difficult for scribes to make the 
>same error independently, or change the error back to the original 
>reading without having access to a witness of the original reading).
>
>The argument goes as follows. If at a point in a section of the text 
>which is contained in both redactions/versions of the text, the 
>textual tradition has more than one reading, then the variant shared 
>by witnesses of the two redactions is likely to be the one that is 
>original. Indeed, each of these witnesses goes back to an archetype 
>which in turn is derived from the author's (two or more) originals. 
>Since it is likely that the author's second (third) original, or the 
>later stages of his original manuscript were based on his first 
>original or on the earlier stages of his original, then the variant 
>transmitted to the witnesses of both (or more than one) version of 
>the text is likely to go back to the author's original(s). 
>Therefore, the fact that the variant appears in witnesses of both 
>redactions is in itself significant and in many cases enough to 
>accept that this is the original reading (and therefore 'correct', 
>although not in the Lachmannian sense). This means that, as long as 
>one can find variants which occur in witnesses of both versions, one 
>does not need to (and maybe should not) worry about which is the 
>correct and which is the faulty reading because one can with a fair 
>amount of certainty establish which reading is original and which is 
>a variation on the original.
>
>The argument is of course not entirely unproblematic (what with the 
>changes in the author's successive versions, what the tendency of 
>scribes to simplify readings, etc.), but I hope you get the gist. I 
>would be grateful for any pointers towards either theoretical 
>discussions of this issue, or to examples of where 
>editors/stemmatologists have (successfully) used this sort of 
>argument in their reconstruction of textual filiations.
>
>Thanks,
>
>Godfried Croenen