2. Burnet, John, Essays and Addresses (London, 1929), 36Google Scholar, publishing a lecture delivered in 1908. A similar view was, characteristically, more tartly expressed by Houseman, A.E., “The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism,” Papers of the Classical Association, 18 (1921), 67–70.Google Scholar

3. As my footnotes no doubt imply, I have found Thorpe, Principles, to be a good orientation to this vast and varied field. Other works that seem to be well regarded by textual critics include McGann, Jerome J., A Critique of Modern Textual Criticism (Chicago, 1983)Google Scholar, a treatment that fully justifies its title; West, Martin L., Textual Criticism and Editorial Technique (Stuttgart, 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which is largely concerned with classical texts; and Williams, William P. and Abbott, Craig S., Introduction to Bibliographical and Textual Studies (New York, 1985), esp. 52–94Google Scholar, a work designed to serve as a handbook and published by the Modern Language Association.

4. Thompson, E.A., Who Was St. Patrick? (Woodbridge, UK, 1985), 158–62Google Scholaret passim

5. In a later paper I would like to take up several other aspects of textual criticism in its modern embodiment, particularly with respect to the differences of opinion that prevail between literary scholars and historians as to the nature and purpose of “editing” itself. In that regard it is probably fair to say that the views discussed in the present paper more nearly--perhaps much more nearly--are those of the literary scholars, whose ends tend to resemble historians' means.

6. Letter, CVII, “A Girl's Education,” in Selected Letters of St. Jerome, trans. Wright, F.A. (Cambridge, MA, 1980), 265Google Scholar, with the comma after “silk” added by me.

7. McClelland, John, “Critical Editing in Modern Languages,” Text, 1 (1981), 201Google Scholar

8. Tanselle, G. Thomas, “Classical, Biblical, and Modern Textual Criticism and Modern Editing,” Studies in Bibliography, 36 (1983), 21–68Google Scholar, is a useful introduction to the course of the growth of textual criticism in medieval and early modern times. Other, more restricted, studies include: Lee, Kevin, “Transmission in Ancient Texts: the Case of Euripides” in Editing Texts, ed. Eade, J.C. (Canberra, 1985), 16–26Google Scholar; Luck, George, “Textual Criticism Today,” American Journal of Philology, 102 (1981), 164–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pade, Marianne, “Valla's Thucydides: Theory and Practice in a Renaissance Translation,” Classica et Medievalia, 36 (1985), 275–301Google Scholar; Prete, Sesto, Observations on the History of Textual Criticism in the Medieval and Renaissance Periods (Collegeville, MN, [1969])Google Scholar; Reynolds, L.D. and Wilson, N.G., Scribes and Scholars. A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature (London, 1968)Google Scholar, a good overview; and Grafton, Anthony, “Renaissance Readers and Ancient Texts: Comments on Some Commentaries,” Renaissance Quarterly, 38 (1985), 615–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar One salient point of much of this literature is that many ancient texts have survived in, or can be traced to, only a single manuscript, depriving textual critics of some of the opportunities for comparison so central to the method. See the appendix for data on monitoring activities in the field of ancient and medieval textual criticism.

9. (Madison, 1987)

10. It would hardly be possible in this brief ambit even to try to be representative of the work that has been done, and continues much apace, in the field. A useful., if by now slightly outdated, bibliography appears in “The Center for Scholarly Editions: An Introductory Statement,” Publications of the Modern Language Association, 92 (1977), 583–97Google Scholar; and the various writings of Tanselle, as cited in notes 8, 13, and 14, are replete with citations. As well, it might be useful to consult the appendix to this paper.

11. Bowers, Fredson, Textual and Literary Criticism (Cambridge, 1959), 34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; cf. McGann, , Critique, 55-94, 125–28.Google Scholar

12. Of course, this view of things is directly opposed to the currently fashionable “reader response theory,” whose advocates (e.g., Ricoeur, Paul, Time and Narrative, trans. McLaughlin, Kathleen and Pellauer, David [Chicago, 1985]Google Scholar, and Barthes, Roland, “From Work to Text” in Textual Strategies, ed. Harari, Josué [Ithaca, 1979], 73–81)Google Scholar prefer to ignore comments by authors concerning their intentions, as well as possibly useful personal data about authors, in favor of a treatment that elevates (or arrogates) readers to paramount status by presuming that each and every one of them must (and will) “refigure” a text to their own taste. Happily for all concerned, under this scheme of things, a text can never be “corrupt” since its only meaning is whatever each Everyman Reader chooses to give it, and so necessarily varies each time it is consulted. One can discern in this approach some good ideas let loose to beachcomb the wilder shores of common sense, but the indifference of reader response theory to the text qua text can only be anathema to historians. So too might the rather captious but vaporous view of one of them on “the raff of text-annotators who clog [sic] departments of literature and whose efforts to rationalize textual anomalies, rather than to analyse them semiotically, ignore the text's own luminous way of producing meaning.” Patrick, Julian, “Deconstruction and Ideology in Current Literary Theory,” University of Toronto Quarterly, 56 (1986/1987), 342.Google Scholar

13. For the, by now largely obsolete if not yet completely quiescent, view that textual criticism is, or at least can be, a “science” see Davison, Peter, “Science, Method, and the Textual Critic,” Studies in Bibliography, 25 (1972), 1–28Google Scholar; Tanselle, , “Bibliography and Science,” Studies in Bibliography, 27 (1974), 55–89Google Scholar; idem., “Textual Study and Literary Judgment,” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 65 (1971), 109–22; Thorpe, , Principles, 59–68Google Scholar

14. Thorpe, , Principles, 21-26; 141–51Google Scholar; Tanselle, , “The Editorial Problem of Final Authorial Intention,” Studies in Bibliography, 29 (1976), 167–211Google Scholar; Parker, Hershel, “Melville and the Concept of ẍ‘Author's Final Intentions’,” Proof, 1 (1971), 156–68Google Scholar; Peckham, Morse, “Reflections on the Foundations of Modern Textual Editing,” Proof, 1 (1971), 140–46.Google ScholarSimpson, Percy, Proof-Reading in the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Centuries (London, 1935)Google Scholar inevitably discusses in rich detail the issue of the problematical relationship between proofreading practices and authorial intent.

15. E.g. Parker, “Melville;” Tanselle, , “Editorial Problem,” 193–203Google Scholar; Pizer, Donald, “Self-Censorship and Textual Editing” in Textual Criticism and Literary Interpretation, ed. McGann, Jerome J. (Chicago, 1985), 144-61, 227Google Scholar

16. By McKerrow, Ronald B. in his edition of the Works of Thomas Nashe (5 vols.: London, 1904-1910), 1: [vii].Google Scholar The locus alassicus of the concept, however, remains Greg, W.W., “The Rationale of the Copy-Text,” Studies in Bibliography, 3 (1950/1951), 19–36Google Scholar, which has since given rise to numerous commentaries.

17. McGann, , Critique, 41.Google Scholar

18. E.g., Bentley, G.E. jr., “William Blake's Protean Text” in Editing Eighteenth-Century Texts, ed. Smith, D.I.B. (Toronto, [1968]), 44–58Google Scholar; McClelland, “Critical Editing;” Liberman, Michael, “Major Textual Changes in William Morris' News From Nowhere,” Nineteenth-Century Literature, 41 (1986/1987), 349–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar In fact Blake's inscrutable textual practices have led one literary critic in despair to suggest a new category, “indeterminate text.” See McGann, , “The Idea of an Indeterminate Text: Blake's Bible of Hell and Dr. Alexander Geddes,” Studies in Romanticism, 25 (1986), 303–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Then, astonishingly, it has only recently been realized that there are significant, even dramatic, differences among the three editions of the Grimms' fairy tales that appeared between 1810 and 1857. It seems that Wilhelm Grimm tinkered incessantly with the tales as originally collected, making them ever more literary from one edition to the next. For this see Ellis, John M., One Fairy Tale Too Many (Chicago, 1983), 37–93Google Scholar; Dollerup, Cay, Reventlow, Ivan, and Hansen, Carsten R., “A Case Study of Editorial Filters in Folktales: A Discussion of the Allerleirauh Tales in Grimm,” Fabula 27 (1986), 12–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19. On the role of printers and publishers (although the distinction between the two is largely a modern one) in the corruptive process see Baender, Paul, “The Meaning of Copy-Text,” Studies in Bibliography, 22 (1969), 314–17Google Scholar; Birrell, T.A., “The Influence of Seventeenth-Century Publishers on the Presentation of English Literature” in Historical and Editorial Studies in Medieval and Early Modern English, for Johan Gerritsen, ed. Arn, Mary-Jo and Wirtjes, Hanneke (Groningen, 1985), 163–73Google Scholar; Dearing, Vinton A.,”Concepts of Copy-Text Old and New,” The Library, 28 (1973), 281–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McKenzie, D.F., “Stretching a Point; Or, the Case of the Spaced-Out Comps,” Studies in Bibliography, 37 (1984), 106–21Google Scholar; idem., “Printers of the Mind: Some Notes on Bibliographical Theories and Printing-House Practices,” Studies in Bibliography, 22 (1969), 3–75Google Scholar

20. The observation that: “No two copies of the first edition of Don Quixote, Part II, are identical” can serve to encapsulate the nature of the problem: Flores, R.M., “A Tale of Two Printings: Don Quixote, Part II,” Studies in Bibliography, 39 (1986), 281.Google Scholar Cf. Eisenberg, Daniel, “On Editing Don Quixote,” Cervantes, 3 (1983), 3–34Google Scholar; Knowles, Edwin B. jr., “Notes on the Madrid, 1605, Editions of Don Quijote,” Hispanic Review, 14 (1946), 47–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Another example, only slightly less foreboding, is discussed in Conor Fahy, “Some Observations on the 1532 Edition of Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso,” Studies in Bibliography, 40 (1987), 72–85.Google Scholar Fahy concludes (77) that, although prepared under Ariosto's direct supervision,” only seven of the sixty-two sheets which comprise the volume have no press variants.” (Hmm.)

21. On the issue of “copy-text” see (for only a tiny fraction) Baender, “Meaning;” Bowers, , “Greg's ‘Rationale of the Copy-Text’ Revisited,” Studies in Bibliography, 31 (1977), 90–161Google Scholar; idem., Textual and Literary Criticism; Dearing, “Concepts;” Thorpe, , Principles, 186–99 et passimGoogle Scholar; Williams, /Abbott, , Introduction, 67–74Google Scholar; Bowers, , “Notes on Editorial Approaches” in Historical and Editorial Studies, 147–62Google Scholar; Shillingsburg, Peter L., “Key Issues in Editorial Theory,” Analytical and Evaluative Bibliography, 6 (1982), 3–16Google Scholar; Reynolds, /Wilson, , Scribes and Scholars, 58–69Google Scholar

22. Some textual critics, particularly those who refer to this ‘final’ text as an “eclectic text”, consider it to be somewhat of a mongrel, representing as much of the editor/critic as of the author. Such views are discussed by, among others, Blain, Virginia, “Copy-Text and Compromise: Wilkie Collins in the Nineteenth Century and Now” in Editing Texts, 54–67Google Scholar; Zeller, Hans, “A New Approach to the Critical Constitution of Literary Texts,” Studies in Bibliography, 28 (1975), 231–64Google Scholar; Thorpe, , Principles, 192–95Google Scholar

23. This has led some (e.g., Thorpe, , Principles, 38–41Google Scholar; McLaverty, James, “The Concept of Authorial Intention in Textual Criticism,” The Library, 6/6 [1984], 121–38)CrossRefGoogle Scholar to argue that any text can serve as the copy-text, depending only on particular circumstances. McGann, , Critique, 55–94Google Scholar, argues for the first printed edition agains the manuscript on the grounds that (125) “it can be expected to contain what author and publishing institution together worked to put before the public.” By this argument final authorial intent is actually a shared concept, ultimately the fruit of negotiation and compromise between the wishes of the author and those of his agents(s).

24. While literary critics may have a fondness for the final lifetime edition on the grounds that it represents the author's most mature thoughts, historians may well feel that such an edition is often too far removed from the events it describes and subject to too many afterthoughts.

25. See the appendix for other trails.

26. While this may affect the examples noticed here, it remains the case that textual critics are unanimous in recognizing the problem and appreciating both its extent and importance, even if they are less so with regard to the solutions.

27. Desiderius Erasmus to Maarten van Dorp, [May?] 1515, in The Correspondence of Erasmus, trans. Mynors, R.A.B. and Thompson, D.F.S. and ed. McConica, James K. (3 vols.: Toronto, 1976), 3:135Google Scholar

28. Thorpe, , Principles 35Google Scholar, followed by a list of over fifty examples. For other inventories see Ray, Gordon N., “The Importance of Original Editions” in Nineteenth Century English Books, ed. Ray, G.N., Weber, Carl J., and Carter, John (Urbana, 1952), 8–12Google Scholar; Zeller, “New Approach;” Bowers, , Textual and Literary Criticism, 14–17et passimGoogle Scholar; Stuber, Florian, “On Original and Final Intentions, Or Can There Be an Authoritative Clarissa?” Text, 2 (1985), 229–44Google Scholar; McClelland, , “Critical Editing,” 205Google Scholar; Bowman, Frank P., “Montaigne, Du repentir, essais, Book III, chapter 2” in The Art of Criticism. Essays in French Literary Analysis, ed. Nurse, Peter H. (Edinburgh, 1969), 41–56Google Scholar; Gaskell, Philip, From Writer to Reader. Studies in Editorial Method (Oxford, 1978)Google Scholar; Liberman, “Textual Changes”

29. As with Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy, which underwent an expansion of some 60%, from 300,000 words in the first edition of 1621 to no fewer than 480,000 words in the sixth edition of 1651. See Lawrence Babb, Sanity in Bedlam. A Study of Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy (East Lansing, 1959), 15–29; Smith, Paul Jordan, Bibliography of Burtoniana (London, 1931), 80–92Google Scholar; Bensly, Edward, “Some Alterations and Errors in Successive Editions of The Anatomy of Melancholy,” Proceedings and Papers of the Oxford Bibliographical Society,1 (1922/1926), 198–216.Google Scholar As well, Laufer, Roger, “From Publishing to Editing Gil Bias de Santillane: An Evaluation of Rival Claims of Practical and Ideal Editing” in Editing Eighteenth Century Novels, ed. Bentley, G.E. jr. (Toronto, 1975), 31–48.Google Scholar While such topsy-like growths prevent confusion between one edition and another in purely textual terms, they present a host of other dilemmas for an editor hoping to encompass the totality of authorial intent in some kind of integral edition.

30. But may this be too sanguine a view? In 1894 it was discovered that all existing editions of Edward Gibbon's memoirs were no more than a pastiche stitched together by his literary executor from six differing and much overlapping manuscripts left by Gibbon. In 1896 these versions were finally published, each integrally, but since that time no editor of the memoirs has chosen to publish the texts as Gibbon himself painstakingly prepared them simply because they have been deemed too duplicative from one to the next! Suppose an early redactor of the New Testament has chosen to treat the Synoptic Gospels the same way (or did one?). It is probably fair to say that in this regard historians and most textual critics are of one mind in condemning such a procedure. For the story see Gibbon, Edward, Memoirs of My Life, ed. Bonnard, Georges A. (London, 1966), vii–xxxiiiGoogle Scholar, Brownley, Martine W., “Gibbon's Memoirs: the Legacy of a Historian,” Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 201 (1982), 209–20Google Scholar; Mandel, Barrett J., “The Problems of Narration in Gibbon's Autobiography,” Modern Philology, 67 (1970), 550–64Google Scholar

31. Touched on in Bowers, , Textual and Literary Criticism, 152–56Google Scholar; Kristeller, Paul O., “The Lachmann Method: Merits and Limitations,” Text, 1 (1981), 18–19.Google Scholar A similar case is discussed in Wright, H. Bunker, “Ideal Copy and Authoritative Text: The Problem of Prior's Poems on Several Occasions (1718),” Modern Philology, 48 (1951/1952), 234–41Google Scholar

32. Tanselle, , “Textual Scholarship” in Introduction to Scholarship in Modern Languages and Literatures, ed. Gibaldi, Joseph (New York, 1981), 45Google Scholar; Dearing, “Methods of Textual Editing” in Bibliographical and Textual Criticism, ed. Brack, O.M. and Barnes, Warner (Chicago, 1969), 78–79Google Scholar

33. Besterman, Theodore, “Twenty Thousand Voltaire Letters” in Editing Eighteenth-Century Texts, 13Google Scholar

34. The James Phipps' papers, which were quite serendipitously preserved in the Public Record Office, exemplify the problem. Phipps' handwriting was (or appears to have been to this modern eye) execrable; he frequently wrote on both sides of the sheets of very porous paper common to the time, as well as along every conceivable margin, and even interlineally re-used previous letters as palimpsests; and much bleeding has inevitably resulted, as has considerable water damage. I have not been able to locate in the T70 series of Royal African Company materials any transcribed copies of these particular documents (partly because the originals of many of them--familial correspondence--would never have been sent to RAC's headquarters, partly because some of what was sent never reached there, and partly because my own search was far from complete), but only brief précis of a few of them. Still, I have to ask myself just how much care the amanuenses in London (or for that matter at Cape Coast Castle) would have been inclined to take to attain perfectly faithful renditions of originals such as these. To what extent, for instance, were these employees obliged to reconcile (financial) accounts, or was this done elsewhere, leaving them to make casual, after-the-fact, transcriptions of the numbers? I only know that I was unable to make complete (to me) sense of some of these documents and was unable to press into service other materials at all for want of the ability to decipher them. No doubt the Royal African Company's scribes were in a better position to improve on my efforts. But did they? Studies of the RAC such as Jenkinson, Hilary, “The Records of the English African Companies,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 3/6 (1912), 185–220.CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Davies, K.G., The Royal African Company (London, 1957)Google Scholar, have little or nothing to say about the recordkeepers or recordkeeping practices of the RAC and its successors. Given how little we know about other day-to-day operations of these bodies, any specific and detailed information about these matters is almost certainly unobtainable now.

35. Several papers presented at the Symposium on European Sources for Sub-Saharan Africa Before 1900; Use and Abuse, held at Bad Homburg in July of 1986 treated this issue. These, along with the rest of the papers presented at the Symposium, are to be published in Paideuma, 33 (1987)Google Scholar

36. Dawson, Marc H., “The Many Minds of Sir J. Halford Mackinder: Some Dilemmas of Historical Editing,” HA 14 (1987), 27–42Google Scholar discusses briefly the problems in attempting to fathom “final authorial intent” in such a text, and one that did not even reach publication.

37. A great advantage of Fage's Guide is that it much enhances our ability first to realize the need for data on such multiple editions of early printed works and then to gather them

38. For an example in which the figure “7,000” in a sixteenth-century source managed to become precisely ten times as great in several twentieth-century publications see Henige, David, “Primary Source by Primary Source? On the Role of Epidemics in New World Depopulation,” Ethnohistory, 33 (1986), 296–97.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed This problem with numbers is a technical one and distinct from, but additional to, various other interpretative issues involving numbers, including faulty guesswork, hyperbole, and other extra-textual errors sometimes calculated, sometimes not.

39. [Twain, Mark], “Contributor's Club,” Atlantic Monthly, 45 (June 1880), 850Google Scholar

40. Views on the nomenclature of accidentals (or whatever…) are expressed by, among others, Peckham, , “Reflections,” 122–27Google Scholar, and Thorpe, , Principles, 131–70Google Scholarpassim. Cf. Burkhardt, Frederick, “Editing Darwin,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 130 (1986), 371–72Google ScholarPubMed

41. E.g., Parker, , “Regularizing Accidentals: the Latest Form of Infidelity,” Proof, 3 (1973), 1–20Google Scholar; Thorpe, , Principles, 192-93, 198Google Scholar

42. E.g., Thorpe, , Principles, 131–33Google Scholar; Gobinet, D., “L'épaule découverte,” Revue du Moyen Age Latin, 41 (1985), 263–64Google Scholar; Clemens, Jacques, “La Gasconie est née à Auch au XII siàcle,” Annales du Midi, 98 (1986), 168–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cunningham, Valentine, A Comma 'Tween Their Amities? Hermetic Versus Pleromatic Readings,” Revue Belge de Philologie et d'Histoire 62 (1984), 449–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Boe, John, “Mr. W.H.: A New Candidate,” Shakespeare Quarterly, 37 (1986), 95–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Foster, Donald W., “W.H., R.I.P.,” Publications of the Modern Language Association, 102 (1987), 42–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43. For the sake of simplicity I assume English-language texts in these arguments, although both similar and different conventions--and problems--naturally arise with respect to other European languages. And I am concerned only with the more ‘routine’ aspects of textual criticism--mechanical maybe, but far from unproblematic.

44. For example, what do the following passages in Barley's, NigelA Plague of Caterpillars (New York, 1986)Google Scholarreally mean: “Zuuldibo confirmed that several men in the village knew the paths to the Ninga which involved dangerous climbing” (76). Or: “He had despaired of treating villagers who promptly became re-infected when they returned to their homes” (89–90). Are the missing commas the result of the author's idiosyncratic preferences? Or are they the fault of the publisher(s)? Or neither of the above? Are they missing at all? Is Barley really saying that the Dowayo guides knew only the most difficult paths, even though there were others that were less so (unlikely) and that only some villagers became re-infected (probably more likely)? If not the latter, then the lack of punctuation clearly militates against “authorial intent” if these particular standards of punctuation are still held to have some kind of universal force. If such doubts intervene between contemporary reader and author, the difficulties for the modern reader in interpreting punctuational matters in, say, a seventeenth-century source can only be the greater

45. Suppose a historian encountered (as they do constantly) statements like the following: “X was the first ruler, of Y family” or “A said B established the…” Each of these would mean something very different if the author had actually ‘meant’ them to read (or be read) as: “X was the first ruler of the Y family” and “A, said B, established the…” If the statements were crucial to some particular argument, it would be important to determine whether they occured in the copy-text (or better yet the manuscript) as first cited here. This might be accomplished by some sort of random sampling, itself no simple task for incunabula. Beyond the mechanical operations of searching and checking, it behooves the historian to know to the extent feasible something about the author's (or his editor's or his printer's…) punctuational habits, for, as noted elsewhere, authors often had no punctuational sense or interest themselves and left it to others to surmise their intended sense and punctuate accordingly. In short, the historian may face many quandaries in dealing with such seemingly transparent passages

46. Thorpe, , Principles, 141–51Google Scholar, and sources cited there

47. Or even something else; for an instance where an editor substituted ellipses for an author's dashes (!) see Libermann, , “Major Textual Changes,” 349Google Scholar

48. Frequently, of course, especially in early modern historical works, authors used ellipses in order to mask (however opaquely) the identity of some person or place.

49. Numerous works originally written in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were not published until much later, forcing the modern editor to determine authorial intent only through a neighborhood medium.

50. An author's reasons, beyond the need to decide which punctuation to adopt, is a matter best left to the next paper, where the thorny issue of editorial apparatus will be discussed.

51. The very difference in the spelling of “Mas(s)oretic” derives from the contradictory vocalization in early manuscripts, a matter still not beyond dispute. See Roberts, Bleddyn J., The Old Testament Text and Versions (Cardiff, 1951), 40–42.Google Scholar

52. Including Roberts, Old Testament Text; Crown, Alan D., “Samaritan Majuscule Palaeography: Eleventh to Twelfth Century,” Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library, 60 (1977), 434-61; 61 (1978), 15–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Driver, G.R., “L'interprétation du texte masorétique à la lumiàre de la lexicographie hébraique,” Ephemerides Theologicae Lovaniensis, 26 (1950), 337–53Google Scholar; Gordis, Robert, The Biblioal Text in the Making: A Study of the Kethib Qere (rev. ed.: Jerusalem, , 1971)Google Scholar; Kristianpoller, Alexander, “Masorah and Masorites” in Universal Jewish Encyclopedia (10 vols.: New York, 1939–1943), 7: 399–401Google Scholar; Orlinsky, H.M., “The Masoretic Text: A Critical Evaluation” in the re-issue of Ginsburg, Christian D., Introduction to the Massoretico-Critical Edition of the Hebrew Bible (New York, 1966), esp. 137-57Google Scholar; Roberts, , “The Old Testament: Manuscripts, Text and Versions” in The Cambridge History of the Bible (Cambridge, 1969), 1: 1–26Google Scholar; Weingreen, Jacob, Introduction to the Critical Study of the Text of the Hebrew Bible (Oxford, 1982)Google Scholar; Revell, E.J., Biblical Texts With Palestinian Pointing and Their Accents (Missoula, 1977).Google Scholar Consulting section D2.1 of the annually-published Elenchus Bibliographicus Biblicus will help maintain current knowledge of publication in this field.

53. By “modern knowledge” I mean the temptation of the modern critic/editor silently to emend or interpolate information that apparently was not known to the author, but is to the editor--a natural but corrupting activity. If nothing else, it prevents modern entreé to the state of the author's knowledge (or at least to his disposition of it) and replaces it with access to that of the editor.

54. See Thorpe, , Principles 134–40Google Scholar, for remarks on this issue.

55. In accidentals more than words, too, it is necessary for the modern editor to understand the role of punctuation in early modern times. For instance, Simpson, Percy, Shakespearian Punctuation (Oxford, 1911)Google Scholar, argues that much punctuation of that time was intended for rhetorical rather than logical effect because many texts were intended to be spoken rather than read, which is no argument for banishing it from a text, but a very strong argument for explaining its presence. Beyond this, of course, as the textual critics have demonstrated, the quirks of compositors affect punctuation to a much greater degree than the wording.

56. On the other hand, Thorpe, , Principles, 144–50Google Scholar, discusses a dismayingly large number of authors (but presumably still only a sample) who were quite content to leave these bagatelles to friends, copyists, editors, printers, and publishers--even to posterity--leaving us to conclude that in this regard at least the only “authorial intent” was to evade this chore. One early nineteenth-century author (and humorist) Timothy Dexter, thoughtfully provided readers with thirteen lines of assorted punctuation marks in hopes that they would use them to make up for his own deficiencies in that respect! Marquand, J.P., Lord Timothy Dexter of Newburyport, Masses (New York, 1925), 360–61Google Scholar; cf. Thorpe, , Principles, 147.Google Scholar Perhaps this is to be regarded as the earliest known example of “reader response theory”…?

57. Parker, , “The ‘New Scholarship’: Textual Evidence and Its Implications for Criticism, Literary Theory, and Aesthetics,” Studies in American Fiction, 9 (1981), 193.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For several views on che rift between textual studies on the one hand and literary criticism on the other see the papers in Textual Criticism and Literary Interpretation, ed. McGann, Jerome J. (Madison, 1985)Google Scholar

58. Ham, Edward B., “Textual Criticism and Common Sense,” Romance Philology, 12 (1958/1959), 198–215Google Scholar

59. Henige, , “The Context, Content, and Credibility of La Florida del Ynca,” The Americas 43 (1986/1987), 2n6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Worse yet, textual critics are unanimous in rejecting the use of reprints, even photographic reprints, as copy-texts.

60. It is even possible to undermine authorial intent without changing a word or an accidental, by re-arranging them, either in the narrative of the text or (a modern contingency) in the notational structure. For instance, grouping footnotes together at the end of paragraphs can subvert an author's intention to present clearly the specific justification for specific assertions.

61. It should not be hard to think of examples in recent African historiography where fairly broad-ranging (if not downright apocalyptic) statements have been advanced and defended on the basis of this or that passage in such problematic sources as the Periplus Maris Erythraei or Pacheco Pereira or Cavazzi or Ibn Battuta or…

62. A circumscribed but extraordinarily apt example of the application of textual critical arguments to a particular problem is Foster, “W.H., R.I.P.” There Foster recapitulates the arguments regarding the identity of the elusive “W.H.” and concludes, convincingly, that “W.H.” was itself the result of a printing error, in which the “S” was inadvertently omitted from “W. SH.”, that is, William Shakespeare.

63. Bédier, Joseph, “De l'édition princeps de la Chanson de de Roland aux éditions les plus réceates: nouvelles remarques sur l'art d'établir les textes anciens,” Romania 64 (1938), 520.Google Scholar An interesting analysis of Bédier's working philosophy is Aarsleff, Hans, “Scholarship and Ideology: Joseph Bédier's Critique of Romantic Medievalism” in Historical Studies and Literary Criticism, 94–113.Google Scholar A work that came to my attention after this paper was completed is Shillingsburg, Peter L., Scholarly Editing in the Computer Age (Athens, Ga., 1986), esp. 31–43Google Scholar, where he offers many sensible comments on “intention” and on the parlousness of the concept as a transcending approach to texts.