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Textual criticism

Textual criticism[a] is a branch of textual scholarship, philology, and literary criticism that is concerned with the identification of textual variants, or different versions, of either manuscripts (mss) or of printed books. Such texts may range in dates from the earliest writing in cuneiform, impressed on clay, for example, to multiple unpublished versions of a 21st-century author's work. Historically, scribes who were paid to copy documents may have been literate, but many were simply copyists, mimicking the shapes of letters without necessarily understanding what they meant. This means that unintentional alterations were common when copying manuscripts by hand.[1] Intentional alterations may have been made as well, for example, the censoring of printed work for political, religious or cultural reasons.

"Critical edition" redirects here. For critical editions of operatic scores, see Critical edition (opera).

The objective of the textual critic's work is to provide a better understanding of the creation and historical transmission of the text and its variants. This understanding may lead to the production of a critical edition containing a scholarly curated text. If a scholar has several versions of a manuscript but no known original, then established methods of textual criticism can be used to seek to reconstruct the original text as closely as possible. The same methods can be used to reconstruct intermediate versions, or recensions, of a document's transcription history, depending on the number and quality of the text available.[b]


On the other hand, the one original text that a scholar theorizes to exist is referred to as the urtext (in the context of Biblical studies), archetype or autograph; however, there is not necessarily a single original text for every group of texts. For example, if a story was spread by oral tradition, and then later written down by different people in different locations, the versions can vary greatly.


There are many approaches or methods to the practice of textual criticism, notably eclecticism, stemmatics, and copy-text editing. Quantitative techniques are also used to determine the relationships between witnesses to a text, called textual witnesses, with methods from evolutionary biology (phylogenetics) appearing to be effective on a range of traditions.[3]


In some domains, such as religious and classical text editing, the phrase "lower criticism" refers to textual criticism and "higher criticism" to the endeavor to establish the authorship, date, and place of composition of the original text.

History[edit]

Textual criticism has been practiced for over two thousand years, as one of the philological arts.[4] Early textual critics, especially the librarians of Hellenistic Alexandria in the last two centuries BC, were concerned with preserving the works of antiquity, and this continued through the Middle Ages into the early modern period and the invention of the printing press. Textual criticism was an important aspect of the work of many Renaissance humanists, such as Desiderius Erasmus, who edited the Greek New Testament, creating what developed as the Textus Receptus. In Italy, scholars such as Petrarch and Poggio Bracciolini collected and edited many Latin manuscripts, while a new spirit of critical enquiry was boosted by the attention to textual states, for example in the work of Lorenzo Valla on the purported Donation of Constantine.


Many ancient works, such as the Bible and the Greek tragedies, survive in hundreds of copies, and the relationship of each copy to the original may be unclear. Textual scholars have debated for centuries which sources are most closely derived from the original, hence which readings in those sources are correct. Although texts such as Greek plays presumably had one original, the question of whether some biblical books, like the Gospels, ever had just one original has been discussed.[5] Interest in applying textual criticism to the Quran has also developed after the discovery of the Sana'a manuscripts in 1972, which possibly date back to the seventh to eighth centuries.


In the English language, the works of William Shakespeare have been a particularly fertile ground for textual criticism—both because the texts, as transmitted, contain a considerable amount of variation, and because the effort and expense of producing superior editions of his works have always been widely viewed as worthwhile.[6] The principles of textual criticism, although originally developed and refined for works of antiquity and the Bible, and, for Anglo-American Copy-Text editing, Shakespeare,[7] have been applied to many works, from (near-)contemporary texts to the earliest known written documents. Ranging from ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt to the twentieth century, textual criticism covers a period of about five millennia.

Best-text editing[edit]

The critic Joseph Bédier (1864–1938), who had worked with stemmatics, launched an attack on that method in 1928. He surveyed editions of medieval French texts that were produced with the stemmatic method, and found that textual critics tended overwhelmingly to produce bifid trees, divided into just two branches. He concluded that this outcome was unlikely to have occurred by chance, and that therefore, the method was tending to produce bipartite stemmas regardless of the actual history of the witnesses. He suspected that editors tended to favor trees with two branches, as this would maximize the opportunities for editorial judgment (as there would be no third branch to "break the tie" whenever the witnesses disagreed). He also noted that, for many works, more than one reasonable stemma could be postulated, suggesting that the method was not as rigorous or as scientific as its proponents had claimed.


Bédier's doubts about the stemmatic method led him to consider whether it could be dropped altogether. As an alternative to stemmatics, Bédier proposed a Best-text editing method, in which a single textual witness, judged to be of a 'good' textual state by the editor, is emended as lightly as possible for manifest transmission mistakes, but left otherwise unchanged. This makes a Best-text edition essentially a documentary edition. For an example one may refer to Eugene Vinaver's edition of the Winchester Manuscript of Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur.

Application to other texts[edit]

Classical texts[edit]

Textual criticism originated in the classical era and its development in modern times began with classics scholars, in an effort to determine the original content of texts like Plato's Republic.[96] There are far fewer witnesses to classical texts than to the Bible, so scholars can use stemmatics and, in some cases, copy text editing. However, unlike the New Testament where the earliest witnesses are within 200 years of the original, the earliest existing manuscripts of most classical texts were written about a millennium after their composition. All things being equal, textual scholars expect that a larger time gap between an original and a manuscript means more changes in the text.

Legal protection[edit]

Scientific and critical editions can be protected by copyright as works of authorship if enough creativity/originality is provided. The mere addition of a word, or substitution of a term with another one believed to be more correct, usually does not achieve such level of originality/creativity. All the notes accounting for the analysis and why and how such changes have been made represent a different work autonomously copyrightable if the other requirements are satisfied. In the European Union critical and scientific editions may be protected also by the relevant neighboring right that protects critical and scientific publications of public domain works as made possible by art. 5 of the Copyright Term Directive. Not all EU member States have transposed art. 5 into national law.[103]

The . The Guidelines of the TEI provide much detailed analysis of the procedures of critical editing, including recommendations about how to mark up a computer file containing a text with critical apparatus. See especially the following chapters of the Guidelines: 10. Manuscript Description, 11. Representation of Primary Sources, and 12. Critical Apparatus.

Text Encoding Initiative

Archived 2018-05-11 at the Wayback Machine is an open-source tool for comparing and collating multiple witnesses to a single textual work. It was designed to aid scholars and editors examine the history of a text from manuscript to print versions. Juxta provides collation for multiple versions of texts that are marked up in plain text or TEI/XML format.

Juxta

The macro package for Plain TeX is a set of macros originally developed by John Lavagnino and Dominik Wujastyk for typesetting critical editions. "EDMAC" stands for "EDition" "MACros." EDMAC is in maintenance mode.

EDMAC

The package is a development of EDMAC by Peter R. Wilson for typesetting critical editions with LaTeX. ledmac is in maintenance mode.[106]

ledmac

The package is a further development of ledmac by Maïeul Rouquette that adds more sophisticated features and solves more advanced problems. eledmac was forked from ledmac when it became clear that it needed to develop in ways that would compromise backward-compatibility. eledmac is maintenance mode.

eledmac

The package is a further development of eledmac by Maïeul Rouquette that rewrittes many part of the code in order to allow more robust developments in the future. In 2015, it is in active development.

reledmac

written by Christian Tapp and Uwe Lück is another package for typesetting critical editions using LaTeX.

ednotes

is a word-processor for critical editions, commentaries and parallel texts written by Stefan Hagel. CTE is designed for use on the Windows operating system, but has been successfully run on Linux and OS/X using Wine. CTE can export files in TEI format. CTE is currently (2014) in active development.

Classical Text Editor

by Bernt Karasch is a system for typesetting critical editions starting from input into a word-processor, and ending up with typesetting with TeX and EDMAC. Development of CET seems to have stopped in 2004.

Critical Edition Typesetter

ekdosis is a LuaLaTeX package developed by Robert Alessi. It is designed for multilingual critical editions. It can be used to typeset texts and different layers of critical notes in any direction accepted by LuaTeX. Texts can be arranged in running paragraphs or on facing pages, in any number of columns which in turn can be synchronized or not. In addition to printed texts, ekdosis can convert .tex source files so as to produce TEI xml-compliant critical editions. See also on CTAN.

ekdosis

Book of Mormon Critical Text – FARMS 2nd edition

Authority (textual criticism)

Close reading

Diplomatics

Hermeneutics

Kaozheng (Chinese textual criticism)

List of manuscripts

Palaeography

Source criticism

Aland, Kurt, Aland, Barbara (1987). The Text of the New Testament. Brill.  90-04-08367-7.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

ISBN

Aland, Barbara (1994). New Testament Textual Criticism, Exegesis and Church History. Peeters Publishers.  90-390-0105-7.

ISBN

Bentham, George, Gosse, Edmund. The Variorum and Definitive Edition of the Poetical and Prose Writings of Edward Fitzgerald, (1902), Doubleday, Page and Co.

Bowers, Fredson (1964). . Studies in Bibliography. 17: 223–228. Retrieved 2006-06-04.

"Some Principles for Scholarly Editions of Nineteenth-Century American Authors"

Bowers, Fredson (1972). "Multiple Authority: New Problems and Concepts of Copy-Text". Library. Fifth Series. XXVII (2): 81–115. :10.1093/library/s5-XXVII.2.81.

doi

Bradley, Sculley, Leaves of Grass: A Textual Variorum of the Printed Poems, (1980), NYU Press,  0-8147-9444-0

ISBN

Comfort, Philip Wesley (2005). Encountering the Manuscripts: An Introduction to New Testament Paleography & Textual Criticism. B&H Publishing Group.  0-8054-3145-4.

ISBN

Davis, Tom (1977). "The CEAA and Modern Textual Editing". Library. Fifth Series. XXXII (32): 61–74. :10.1093/library/s5-XXXII.1.61.

doi

Ehrman, Bart D. (2006). Whose Word Is It?. Continuum International Publishing Group.  0-8264-9129-4.

ISBN

(1978). From Writer to Reader: Studies in Editorial Method. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-818171-X.

Gaskell, Philip

Greetham, D. C. (1999). Theories of the text. Oxford [Oxfordshire]: Oxford University Press.  0-19-811993-3.

ISBN

(1950). "The Rationale of Copy-Text". Studies in Bibliography. 3: 19–36. Retrieved 2006-06-04.

Greg, W. W.

Habib, Rafey (2005). . Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Pub. ISBN 0-631-23200-1.

A history of literary criticism: from Plato to the present

Hartin, Patrick J., Petzer J. H., Manning, Bruce. Text and Interpretation: New Approaches in the Criticism of the New Testament. (1991), BRILL,  90-04-09401-6

ISBN

Jarvis, Simon, Scholars and Gentlemen: Shakespearian Textual Criticism and Representations of Scholarly Labour, 1725–1765, Oxford University Press, 1995,  0-19-818295-3

ISBN

Klijn, Albertus Frederik Johannes, An Introduction to the New Testament (1980), p. 14, BRILL,  90-04-06263-7

ISBN

Maas, Paul (1958). Textual Criticism. Oxford University Press.  0-19-814318-4.

ISBN

McCarter, Peter Kyle Jr (1986). . Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press. ISBN 0-8006-0471-7.

Textual criticism: recovering the text of the Hebrew Bible

McGann, Jerome J. (1992). . Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. ISBN 0-8139-1418-3.

A critique of modern textual criticism

(1939). Prolegomena for the Oxford Shakespeare. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

McKerrow, R. B.

Montgomery, William Rhadamanthus; Wells, Stanley W.; Taylor, Gary; Jowett, John (1997). William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.  0-393-31667-X.

ISBN

Parker, D.C. (2008). An Introduction to the New Testament Manuscripts and Their Texts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  978-0-521-71989-6.

ISBN

von Reenen, Pieter; Margot van Mulken, eds. (1996). Studies in Stemmatology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Roelli, Philipp (2020). . Berlin: De Gruyter. p. 694. ISBN 9783110684391.

Handbook of Stemmatology. History, Methodology, Digital Approaches

Rosemann, Philipp (1999). Understanding scholastic thought with Foucault. New York: St. Martin's Press. p. 73.  0-312-21713-7.

ISBN

Schuh, Randall T. (2000). Biological systematics: principles and applications. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press.  0-8014-3675-3.

ISBN

Shillingsburg, Peter (1989). . Studies in Bibliography. 42: 55–78. Archived from the original on 2013-09-12. Retrieved 2006-06-07.

"An Inquiry into the Social Status of Texts and Modes of Textual Criticism"

Tanselle, G. Thomas (1972). . Studies in Bibliography. 25: 41–88. Retrieved 2006-06-04.

"Some Principles for Editorial Apparatus"

Tanselle, G. Thomas (1975). . Studies in Bibliography. 28: 167–230. Retrieved 2006-06-04.

"Greg's Theory of Copy-Text and the Editing of American Literature"

Tanselle, G. Thomas (1976). . Studies in Bibliography. 29: 167–211. Retrieved 2006-06-04.

"The Editorial Problem of Final Authorial Intention"

Tanselle, G. Thomas (1981). . Studies in Bibliography. 34: 23–65. Retrieved 2007-09-07.

"Recent Editorial Discussion and the Central Questions of Editing"

Tanselle, G. Thomas (1986). . Studies in Bibliography. 39: 1–46. Retrieved 2006-06-04.

"Historicism and Critical Editing"

Tanselle, G. Thomas (1992). . University of Pennsylvania Press. p. 104. ISBN 9780812214093. (originally published 1989; first paperback printing 1992)

A Rationale of Textual Criticism

Tanselle, G. Thomas (1995). "The Varieties of Scholarly Editing". In D. C. Greetham (ed.). Scholarly Editing: A Guide to Research. New York: The Modern Language Association of America.

(1985). Dunnett, Walter M. (ed.). New Testament survey. Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co. ISBN 0-8028-3611-9.

Tenney, Merrill C.

Tov, Emanuel (2001). Textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible. Minneapolis: Fortress.  90-232-3715-3.

ISBN

Van Mulken, Margot; Van Reenen, Pieter Th van. (1996). Studies in Stemmatology. John Benjamins Publishing Co.  90-272-2153-7.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

ISBN

Vincent, Marvin Richardson (1899). . Macmillan. Original from Harvard University. ISBN 0-8370-5641-1.

A History of the Textual Criticism of the New Testament

Wegner, Paul (2006). A Student's Guide to Textual Criticism of the Bible. InterVarsity Press.  0-8308-2731-5.

ISBN

Wilson, N. R. p.; Reynolds, L. (1974). Scribes and scholars: a guide to the transmission of Greek and Latin literature. Oxford: Clarendon Press. p. 186.  0-19-814371-0.

ISBN

Zeller, Hans (1975). . Studies in Bibliography. 28: 231–264. Archived from the original on 2013-09-12. Retrieved 2006-06-07.

"A New Approach to the Critical Constitution of Literary Texts"

Epp, Eldon J., The Eclectic Method in New Testament Textual Criticism: Solution or Symptom?, The Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 69, No. 3/4 (July–October 1976), pp. 211–257

(1922). "The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism". Proceedings of the Classical Association. 18: 67–84. Retrieved 2008-03-08.

Housman, A. E.

Love, Harold (1993). "section III". Scribal Publication in Seventeenth-Century England. Oxford: Clarendon Press.  0-19-811219-X.

ISBN

Ostrowski, Donald (March 1981). . Harvard Ukrainian Studies. 5 (1). Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute: 11–31. JSTOR 41035890.

"Textual Criticism and the Povest' vremennykh let: Some Theoretical Considerations"

Robinson, Peter M. W. (1989). . Literary and Linguistic Computing. 4 (3). Oxford University Press: 174–181. doi:10.1093/llc/4.3.174. Retrieved 19 May 2023.

"The Collation and Textual Criticism of Icelandic Manuscripts (2): Textual Criticism"

Soulen, Richard N. and Soulen, R. Kendall, Handbook of Biblical Criticism; Westminster John Knox Press; 3 edition (October 2001),  0-664-22314-1

ISBN

An example of cladistics applied to textual criticism

Stemma and Stemmatics

Stemmatics and Information Theory

Computer-assisted stemmatology challenge & benchmark data-sets

Archived 2012-03-14 at the Wayback Machine Biblical Archaeology Review

Searching for the Better Text: How errors crept into the Bible and what can be done to correct them

The European Society for Textual Scholarship.

Society for Textual Scholarship.

by Mario Tonelotto : an example of critical edition from 4 different manuscripts (transcription from medieval paleography).

Walter Burley, Commentarium in Aristotelis De Anima L.III Critical Edition