Error <i>vs </i>Variant: The “New Philology”, Latin Studies, and the “Bad Language”
The theoretical discourses on method in the fields of medieval text studies and textual criticism of Greek and Latin classics are to a great extent mutually isolated. The widespread explanation that the nature of classical and medieval texts is fundamentally different is hardly convincing. The article attempts to help disrupt this isolation by discussing the approach of the medievalist “new philology” from the perspective of primarily classicist Latin studies, which is essentially a stemmatist perspective. The advantages and disadvantages of viewing manuscript readings as completely equal variants (the perspective of the “new philology”) and as the original reading vs errors (the perspective of stemmatic textual criticism) are also discussed. The first section summarizes the criticism addressed by stemmatists to the “new philology” and to other “anti-recensionist” approaches to the text. I conclude that the weak side of the “new philology” is its“anti-recensionist” rhetoric, which is based on poor familiarity with the nature of contemporary stemmatic and “recensionist” approaches. While pretending to pay attention to the individuality of a particular manuscript, the “anti-recensionist” forms of the “new philology” actually distort its individual nature and act disrespectfully towards it.In the second section I discuss what stemmatic approaches to the text can gain from the ideas of the “new philology”. I suggest that abandoning an utilitarist approach to manuscripts discouraged by the “new philology” can actually be seen as a logical consequence of the internal developments of contemporary stemmatism. In the third section I argue that it might be fruitful to apply the perspective discussed so far to the problem of editorial approach to instances of “incorrect” Latin in the manuscript tradition of several sixth-century Latin texts (first of all, Gregory of Tours' History and the Rule of Saint Benedict). Despite objections to this approach that have recently become popular, the “anomalist” approach is recommended, which implies reflecting the language of the manuscripts in the edition.