The increasing weakness of romance philology in the area of the humanities is in part due to its focus on the single manuscript, understood as a guarantee of historical ‘reality’. Philology has thus often lost sight of the diachronic dimension of medieval textuality and has thereby distanced itself from contemporary historiography, itself based on the interpretation of facts rather than on their description. Examples of the Mort Artu demonstrate how such a synchronic approach impedes one from taking into account even the singularity of the manuscript in question. The diachronic vision afforded by a stemma, however, allows for the reconstruction of the textual tradition’s history and for a critical edition that takes it into consideration (limit-case, the Lai de l’Ombre). Anachronism—inevitable in any philological act—is therefore a value to be made the best of rather than a peril to be avoided.

Romance Philology between Anachronism and Historical Truth. On Editing Medieval Vernacular Texts

Leonardi Lino
2017

Abstract

The increasing weakness of romance philology in the area of the humanities is in part due to its focus on the single manuscript, understood as a guarantee of historical ‘reality’. Philology has thus often lost sight of the diachronic dimension of medieval textuality and has thereby distanced itself from contemporary historiography, itself based on the interpretation of facts rather than on their description. Examples of the Mort Artu demonstrate how such a synchronic approach impedes one from taking into account even the singularity of the manuscript in question. The diachronic vision afforded by a stemma, however, allows for the reconstruction of the textual tradition’s history and for a critical edition that takes it into consideration (limit-case, the Lai de l’Ombre). Anachronism—inevitable in any philological act—is therefore a value to be made the best of rather than a peril to be avoided.
2017
Philology Matters! Essays on the Art of Reading Slowly
Brill
Textual criticism; stemmatic method; anachronism; old french texts; La Mort le roi Artu; Le lai de l'Ombre
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11384/82188
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