Stemmatics, copy-text or eclecticism?
To sum up, in 1913 Joseph Bediér noticed how the stemmata codicum of medieval texts were in the overwhelming majority bipartitic, which means that all the conjectured archetypes were copied twice into apographs, or that only the discendents of two apographs are extant. Bediér also added (inspired by M. Roques) that there is a psychological twist in this predicament: the philologist is driven to seek more and more connections between groups of codices and build up more and more comprehensive groups, until the fundamental groups are two and two only. There is a restlessness in the philologist, an anxiety that the investigation is not complete, until the bifurcation (and as such the impossibility to proceed further) puts this anxiety at rest.
Bediér went to extent to propose that every attempt of "recensio" should be abandonment, and that using “a good manuscript” is instead a lesser evil. But what is the “best manuscript”? The oldest? The most correct? Writes Bediér: “Scholars of lore, scholiasts, humanists in Renaissance or modern age chose as they could, with more or less ability, out of intuition”. And he adds that the stemma cannot be used to reconstruct a composite text, which amounts to eclecticism, but is legitimate only if a single manuscript is reproduced faithfully. The Lachman method is legitimate to help the individuation of the best manuscript.
Sebastiano Timpanaro (La genesi del metodo del Lachman, 1981, second edition) thinks this to be an absurd proposal and that the recensio is fully useful and justified even if the critism to stemmatology stands valid:
“... non è affatto vero che, là dove non si può ricostruire alcuno stemma il minor male è di seguire un codice solo. Il minor male, in questi casi, è di scegliere le varianti secondo criteri interni, senza rinunciare a dare una valutazione complessiva di ciascun codice... Respingere tale procedimento come eclettico è insensato. Ogni volta che più copisti trascrivono un modello, si crea oggettivamente un eclettismo, in quanto, tranne rari casi, essi commettono errori diversi in punti diversi del testo. A questo eclettismo casuale e irrazionale dobbiamo contrapporre la nostra scelta, che, proprio perché ragionata, non è eclettica in senso deteriore.”
So Timpanaro advocates internal criteria, using the evidences of more codices, to reconstruct the text, instead of relying on a single codex.
Bediér went to extent to propose that every attempt of "recensio" should be abandonment, and that using “a good manuscript” is instead a lesser evil. But what is the “best manuscript”? The oldest? The most correct? Writes Bediér: “Scholars of lore, scholiasts, humanists in Renaissance or modern age chose as they could, with more or less ability, out of intuition”. And he adds that the stemma cannot be used to reconstruct a composite text, which amounts to eclecticism, but is legitimate only if a single manuscript is reproduced faithfully. The Lachman method is legitimate to help the individuation of the best manuscript.
Sebastiano Timpanaro (La genesi del metodo del Lachman, 1981, second edition) thinks this to be an absurd proposal and that the recensio is fully useful and justified even if the critism to stemmatology stands valid:
“... non è affatto vero che, là dove non si può ricostruire alcuno stemma il minor male è di seguire un codice solo. Il minor male, in questi casi, è di scegliere le varianti secondo criteri interni, senza rinunciare a dare una valutazione complessiva di ciascun codice... Respingere tale procedimento come eclettico è insensato. Ogni volta che più copisti trascrivono un modello, si crea oggettivamente un eclettismo, in quanto, tranne rari casi, essi commettono errori diversi in punti diversi del testo. A questo eclettismo casuale e irrazionale dobbiamo contrapporre la nostra scelta, che, proprio perché ragionata, non è eclettica in senso deteriore.”
So Timpanaro advocates internal criteria, using the evidences of more codices, to reconstruct the text, instead of relying on a single codex.
posted by Alessandro at
12:16 AM
8 Comments:
I'm not sure I understand what you mean by
"And he adds that the stemma cannot be used to reconstruct a composite text, which amounts to eclecticism, but is legitimate only if a single manuscript is reproduced faithfully. The Lachman method is legitimate to help the individuation of the best manuscript."
How could the stemma be used in case of a single manuscript? Are you talking about editions based on a codex unicus? Or do you mean that the stemma would only make sense in case manuscripts were reproduced faithfully (which, in fact, is never the case: scribes do add their 'own' readings).
(there is a small typo in Timpanaro's quotation: read modello instead of modelll)
As I understand it,the stemmatics phase precedes the critical one. In copy-texting a single ms, temmatics could thus be used to help identify the "best ms". Thanks of the correction, fixed.
I'm really sorry insist, but I still miss your point. What does it mean to identify the "best ms" in case of a single ms? Do you mean the "best [archetypal] ms"?
Welcome back on the blogsphere!
No, when there is a single ms there is no best ms, obviously devadattasya eka eva putraḥ sa eva jyeṣṭhaḥ sa eva kaniṣṭhaḥ
Going back to the original post, ...is legitimate only if a single manuscript [the best one chosen among the available ones] is reproduced faithfully [by the critical editor].
many thanks. So, the stemma is used to individuate which manuscript is the best (that is, the closest to the original text), then it is so to say thrown away and one goes on reproducing that single manuscript. Correct? Even in case of obvious mistakes or lacunae? Can one consistently avoid eclecticism?
What is the definition of "best manuscript", if one chooses to avoid either eclecticism or reliance on the stemma to choose variants, remains the vexata questio. Intuition? Better internal consistency of meaning? More correct? Antiquity?
All the the options you mention have advantages and are legitimate (if only one declares what one is doing). The real problems starts when one uses a certain manuscript just because it is more legible, or is written in a scripts one is more familiar with, or conforms with one's background assumptions about the text (see the Mokṣopāya case).
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home