Greetham 1994

Greetham, D. C. Textual Scholarship: An Introduction. New York: Garland Publishing, 1994.

two basic principles in book: 1) textual studies has a historical bias; 2) textual criticism and subject fields (like literature) are related (2)

"Editing depends upon textual scholarship, but textual scholarship is not merely method or technique; it is judgment and criticism, evaluation and discrimination, encompassing historical and cultural learning as well." (5)

enumerative or systematic bibliography: listing of books; refers to manuscript and printed materials

codicology: the study of manuscripts as artifacts (6)

papyrology: the study of papyrus materials

diplomatics: examination of the writing on legal documents

paleography: the examination of handwriting; some overlap with codicology when study of the manuscript itself is included

epigraphy: inscribed writing on monuments

numismatics: writing on a coin

ostraka: scraps and shards of pots

analytical bibliographhy or new bibliography: study of the process for printing texts; considered a "scientific" reaction to the older enumerative book-colletor's bibliography

historical bibliography (sometimes the "biology of books"): studying books as part of a Darwinian evolution of a manufactring process

descriptive bibliography: using info gained in analytical and historical bibliography to prepare an account of the bibiographical nature of the book -- addressing the "ideal copy", listing contents, format, collation

ideal copy: that version intended for release by the printer, after all determined corrections have been made

textual bibliography: employment of technical info derived from analytical or descriptive bibliography in charting and evalutating the effect of the technical history on the text itself

paleography, codicology, analytical and descriptive bibliography as a prelud to the "real" business of textual scholarship: "the reconstruction of an author's intended text and/or the production of a critical edition displaying this intention or some other version of the text" (8); sometimes called "textual criticism" in classics, biblical studies, medieval studies -- sometimes also called "Lower Criticism", as opposed to "Higher Criticism"

recension: arranging manuscripts according to relative authority, using the genealogical system of stemmatics

textual analysis: similar process of determining textual descent among printed texts, hcharting error and variance

next step is emendation, through textual or scholarly editing

differentiated sometimes from documentary editing: editing involving single rather than multiple documents; associated with historical rather than literary editions

New Scholarship: practitioners claim that eclectic or critical editing's concentration on "final intention" is a chimera; better to describe process rather than product of literary composition; often in debate with social textual criticism, denies priority given to author's intentions and sees textual creation as a collaborative, social act, but both New Scholarship and social textual criticism is part of the general movement of revisionism

textual scholarship part of larger field of philology, defined under 19c German auspices (Altertumswissenschaft, "the science of ancient times") as the study of historical perspective, seeing a past culture and trying to re-create its ethos; morphed into historical linguistics (diachronic methods, as opposed to structuralist linguistics, synchronic methods)

even more generally, part of historical criticism as opposed to close critical analysis