Editing Textual criticism (section)

== Copy-text editing ==

[[File:Codex Vaticanus B, 2Thess. 3,11-18, Hebr. 1,1-2,2.jpg|thumb|200px|A page from [[Codex Vaticanus Graecus 1209]] shows a medieval scribe (the [[Marginalia|marginal note]] between columns one and two) criticizing a predecessor for changing the text: "Fool and knave, leave the old reading, don't change it!"{{sfn|Ehrman|2005|pp=44, 56}}]]
When copy-text editing, the scholar fixes errors in a base text, often with the help of other witnesses. Often, the base text is selected from the oldest manuscript of the text, but in the early days of printing, the copy text was often a manuscript that was at hand.{{citation needed|date=May 2023}}

Using the copy-text method, the critic examines the base text and makes corrections (called emendations) in places where the base text appears wrong to the critic. This can be done by looking for places in the base text that do not make sense or by looking at the text of other witnesses for a superior reading. Close-call decisions are usually resolved in favor of the copy-text.{{citation needed|date=May 2023}}

The first published, printed edition of the Greek [[New Testament]] was produced by this method. [[Erasmus]], the editor, selected a manuscript from the local Dominican monastery in Basle and corrected its obvious errors by consulting other local manuscripts. The [[Brooke Foss Westcott|Westcott]] and [[Fenton John Anthony Hort|Hort]] text, which was the basis for the [[Revised Version]] of the English bible, also used the copy-text method, using the [[Codex Vaticanus]] as the base manuscript.<ref>{{cite book
  | last = Aland
  | first = Kurt
  | author-link = Kurt Aland
  | author2 = Barbara Aland
  | title = The Text of the New Testament: An Introduction to the Critical Editions and to the Theory and Practice of Modern Textual Criticism
  | publisher = [[William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company]]
  | year = 1995
  | location = Grand Rapids
  | page = [https://archive.org/details/textnewtestament00kurt/page/n258 236]
  | url =https://archive.org/details/textnewtestament00kurt
  | url-access = limited
  | isbn = 0-8028-4098-1}}</ref>

=== McKerrow's concept of copy-text ===

The bibliographer [[Ronald B. McKerrow]] introduced the term ''copy-text'' in his 1904 edition of the works of [[Thomas Nashe]], defining it as "the text used in each particular case as the basis of mine". McKerrow was aware of the limitations of the stemmatic method, and believed it was more prudent to choose one particular text that was thought to be particularly reliable, and then to emend it only where the text was obviously corrupt. The French critic [[Joseph Bédier]] likewise became disenchanted with the stemmatic method, and concluded that the editor should choose the best available text, and emend it as little as possible.{{citation needed|date=May 2023}}

In McKerrow's method as originally introduced, the copy-text was not necessarily the earliest text. In some cases, McKerrow would choose a later witness, noting that "if an editor has reason to suppose that a certain text embodies later corrections than any other, and at the same time has no ground for disbelieving that these corrections, or some of them at least, are the work of the author, he has no choice but to make that text the basis of his reprint".<ref>Quoted in Greg 1950, pp.  23–24</ref>

By 1939, in his ''Prolegomena for the Oxford Shakespeare'', McKerrow had changed his mind about this approach, as he feared that a later edition{{mdash}}even if it contained authorial corrections{{mdash}}would "deviate more widely than the earliest print from the author's original manuscript". He therefore concluded that the correct procedure would be "produced by using the earliest 'good' print as copy-text and inserting into it, from the first edition which contains them, such corrections as appear to us to be derived from the author". But, fearing the arbitrary exercise of editorial judgment, McKerrow stated that, having concluded that a later edition had substantive revisions attributable to the author, "we must accept all the alterations of that edition, saving any which seem obvious blunders or misprints".<ref>McKerrow 1939. pp. 17–18, quoted in Greg 1950, p. 25</ref>

=== W. W. Greg's rationale of copy-text ===

Anglo-American textual criticism in the last half of the 20th century came to be dominated by a landmark 1950 essay by [[Walter Wilson Greg|Sir Walter W. Greg]], "The Rationale of Copy-Text". Greg proposed:

{{blockquote|[A] distinction between the significant, or as I shall call them 'substantive', readings of the text, those namely that affect the author's meaning or the essence of his expression, and others, such in general as spelling, punctuation, word-division, and the like, affecting mainly its formal presentation, which may be regarded as the accidents, or as I shall call them 'accidentals', of the text.{{sfn|Greg|1950|p=21}}}}

Greg observed that compositors at printing shops tended to follow the "substantive" readings of their copy faithfully, except when they deviated unintentionally; but that "as regards accidentals they will normally follow their own habits or inclination, though they may, for various reasons and to varying degrees, be influenced by their copy".{{sfn|Greg|1950|p=22}}

He concluded:

{{blockquote|The true theory is, I contend, that the copy-text should govern (generally) in the matter of accidentals, but that the choice between substantive readings belongs to the general theory of textual criticism and lies altogether beyond the narrow principle of the copy-text. Thus it may happen that in a critical edition the text rightly chosen as copy may not by any means be the one that supplies most substantive readings in cases of variation. The failure to make this distinction and to apply this principle has naturally led to too close and too general a reliance upon the text chosen as basis for an edition, and there has arisen what may be called the tyranny of the copy-text, a tyranny that has, in my opinion, vitiated much of the best editorial work of the past generation.{{sfn|Greg|1950|p=26}}}}

Greg's view, in short, was that the "copy-text can be allowed no over-riding or even preponderant [[Authority (textual criticism)|authority]] so far as substantive readings are concerned". The choice between reasonable competing readings, he said:

{{blockquote|[W]ill be determined partly by the opinion the editor may form respecting the nature of the copy from which each substantive edition was printed, which is a matter of external authority; partly by the intrinsic authority of the several texts as judged by the relative frequency of manifest errors therein; and partly by the editor's judgment of the intrinsic claims of individual readings to originality—in other words their intrinsic merit, so long as by 'merit' we mean the likelihood of their being what the author wrote rather than their appeal to the individual taste of the editor.{{sfn|Greg|1950|p=29}}}}

Although Greg argued that editors should be free to use their judgment to choose between competing substantive readings, he suggested that an editor should defer to the copy-text when "the claims of two readings&nbsp;...&nbsp;appear to be exactly balanced.&nbsp;... In such a case, while there can be no logical reason for giving preference to the copy-text, in practice, if there is no reason for altering its reading, the obvious thing seems to be to let it stand."{{sfn|Greg|1950|p=31}} The "exactly balanced" variants are said to be ''indifferent''.{{citation needed|date=May 2023}}

Editors who follow Greg's rationale produce ''eclectic'' editions, in that the authority for the "accidentals" is derived from one particular source (usually the earliest one) that the editor considers to be authoritative, but the authority for the "substantives" is determined in each individual case according to the editor's judgment. The resulting text, except for the accidentals, is constructed without relying predominantly on any one witness.{{citation needed|date=May 2023}}

=== Greg–Bowers–Tanselle ===

W. W. Greg did not live long enough to apply his rationale of copy-text to any actual editions of works. His rationale was adopted and significantly expanded by [[Fredson Bowers]] (1905–1991). Starting in the 1970s, [[G. Thomas Tanselle]] vigorously took up the method's defense and added significant contributions of his own. Greg's rationale as practiced by Bowers and Tanselle has come to be known as the "Greg–Bowers" or the "Greg–Bowers–Tanselle" method.{{citation needed|date=May 2023}}

==== Application to works of all periods ====
[[Image:A Midsummer Night's Dream.jpg|thumb|200px|William Shakespeare, ''[[A Midsummer Night's Dream]]'' ([[First Folio]])]]
In his 1964 essay, "Some Principles for Scholarly Editions of Nineteenth-Century American Authors", Bowers said that "the theory of copy-text proposed by Sir Walter Greg rules supreme".{{sfn|Bowers|1964|p=224}} Bowers's assertion of "supremacy" was in contrast to Greg's more modest claim that "My desire is rather to provoke discussion than to lay down the law".{{sfn|Greg|1950|p=36}}

Whereas Greg had limited his illustrative examples to English Renaissance drama, where his expertise lay, Bowers argued that the rationale was "the most workable editorial principle yet contrived to produce a critical text that is authoritative in the maximum of its details whether the author be Shakespeare, [[John Dryden|Dryden]], [[Henry Fielding|Fielding]], [[Nathaniel Hawthorne]], or [[Stephen Crane]]. The principle is sound without regard for the literary period."{{sfn|Bowers|1972|p=86}} For works where an author's manuscript survived—a case Greg had not considered—Bowers concluded that the manuscript should generally serve as copy-text. Citing the example of Nathaniel Hawthorne, he noted:

{{blockquote|When an author's manuscript is preserved, this has paramount authority, of course. Yet the fallacy is still maintained that since the first edition was proofread by the author, it must represent his final intentions and hence should be chosen as copy-text. Practical experience shows the contrary. When one collates the manuscript of ''[[The House of the Seven Gables]]'' against the first printed edition, one finds an average of ten to fifteen differences per page between the manuscript and the print, many of them consistent alterations from the manuscript system of punctuation, capitalization, spelling, and word-division. It would be ridiculous to argue that Hawthorne made approximately three to four thousand small changes in proof, and then wrote the manuscript of ''[[The Blithedale Romance]]'' according to the same system as the manuscript of the ''Seven Gables'', a system that he had rejected in proof.{{sfn|Bowers|1964|p=226}}}}

Following Greg, the editor would then replace any of the manuscript readings with substantives from printed editions that could be reliably attributed to the author: "Obviously, an editor cannot simply reprint the manuscript, and he must substitute for its readings any words that he believes Hawthorne changed in proof."{{sfn|Bowers|1964|p=226}}

==== Uninfluenced final authorial intention ====

McKerrow had articulated textual criticism's goal in terms of "our ideal of an author's fair copy of his work in its final state".<ref>McKerrow 1939, pp. 17–8, quoted in Bowers 1974, p. 82, n. 4</ref> Bowers asserted that editions founded on Greg's method would "represent the nearest approximation in every respect of the author's final intentions."{{sfn|Bowers|1964|p=227}} Bowers stated similarly that the editor's task is to "approximate as nearly as possible an inferential authorial fair copy."<ref>quoted in Tanselle 1976, p.  168</ref> Tanselle notes that, "Textual criticism&nbsp;...&nbsp;has generally been undertaken with a view to reconstructing, as accurately as possible, the text finally intended by the author".{{sfn|Tanselle|1995|p=16}}

Bowers and Tanselle argue for rejecting textual variants that an author inserted at the suggestion of others. Bowers said that his edition of [[Stephen Crane]]'s first novel, ''Maggie'', presented "the author's final and uninfluenced artistic intentions."<ref>quoted in Zeller 1975, p.  247</ref> In his writings, Tanselle refers to "unconstrained authorial intention" or "an author's uninfluenced intentions."{{sfn|Tanselle|1986|p=19}} This marks a departure from Greg, who had merely suggested that the editor inquire whether a later reading "is one that the author can reasonably be supposed to have substituted for the former",{{sfn|Greg|1950|p=32}} not implying any further inquiry as to ''why'' the author had made the change.{{citation needed|date=May 2023}}

Tanselle discusses the example of [[Herman Melville]]'s ''[[Typee]]''. After the novel's initial publication, Melville's publisher asked him to soften the novel's criticisms of missionaries in the South Seas. Although Melville pronounced the changes an improvement, Tanselle rejected them in his edition, concluding that "there is no evidence, internal or external, to suggest that they are the kinds of changes Melville would have made without pressure from someone else."{{sfn|Tanselle|1976|p=194}}

Bowers confronted a similar problem in his edition of ''Maggie''. Crane originally printed the novel privately in 1893. To secure commercial publication in 1896, Crane agreed to remove profanity, but he also made stylistic revisions. Bowers's approach was to preserve the stylistic and literary changes of 1896, but to revert to the 1893 readings where he believed that Crane was fulfilling the publisher's intention rather than his own. There were, however, intermediate cases that could reasonably have been attributed to either intention, and some of Bowers's choices came under fire—both as to his judgment, and as to the wisdom of conflating readings from the two different versions of ''Maggie''.{{sfn|Davis|1977|pp=2–3}}

Hans Zeller argued that it is impossible to tease apart the changes Crane made for literary reasons and those made at the publisher's insistence:

{{blockquote|Firstly, in anticipation of the character of the expected censorship, Crane could be led to undertake alterations which also had literary value in the context of the new version. Secondly, because of the systematic character of the work, purely censorial alterations sparked off further alterations, determined at this stage by literary considerations. Again in consequence of the systemic character of the work, the contamination of the two historical versions in the edited text gives rise to a third version. Though the editor may indeed give a rational account of his decision at each point on the basis of the documents, nevertheless to aim to produce the ideal text which Crane would have produced in 1896 if the publisher had left him complete freedom is to my mind just as unhistorical as the question of how the first World War or the history of the United States would have developed if Germany had not caused the USA to enter the war in 1917 by unlimited submarine combat. The nonspecific form of censorship described above is one of the historical conditions under which Crane wrote the second version of ''Maggie'' and made it function. From the text which arose in this way it is not possible to subtract these forces and influences, in order to obtain a text of the author's own. Indeed I regard the "uninfluenced artistic intentions" of the author as something which exists only in terms of aesthetic abstraction. Between influences on the author and influences on the text are all manner of transitions.<ref>Zeller 1975, pp.  247–248</ref>  }}

Bowers and Tanselle recognize that texts often exist in more than one authoritative version. Tanselle argues that:

{{blockquote|[T]wo types of revision must be distinguished: that which aims at altering the purpose, direction, or character of a work, thus attempting to make a different sort of work out of it; and that which aims at intensifying, refining, or improving the work as then conceived (whether or not it succeeds in doing so), thus altering the work in degree but not in kind. If one may think of a work in terms of a spatial metaphor, the first might be labeled "vertical revision," because it moves the work to a different plane, and the second "horizontal revision," because it involves alterations within the same plane. Both produce local changes in active intention; but revisions of the first type appear to be in fulfillment of an altered programmatic intention or to reflect an altered active intention in the work as a whole, whereas those of the second do not.{{sfn|Tanselle|1976|p=193}}}}

He suggests that where a revision is "horizontal" (''i.e.'', aimed at improving the work as originally conceived), then the editor should adopt the author's later version. But where a revision is "vertical" (''i.e.'', fundamentally altering the work's intention as a whole), then the revision should be treated as a new work, and edited separately on its own terms.{{citation needed|date=May 2023}}

==== Format for apparatus ====

Bowers was also influential in defining the form of [[critical apparatus]] that should accompany a scholarly edition. In addition to the ''content'' of the apparatus, Bowers led a movement to relegate editorial matter to appendices, leaving the critically established text "in the clear", that is, free of any signs of editorial intervention. Tanselle explained the rationale for this approach:

{{blockquote|In the first place, an editor's primary responsibility is to establish a text; whether his goal is to reconstruct that form of the text which represents the author's final intention or some other form of the text, his essential task is to produce a reliable text according to some set of principles. Relegating all editorial matter to an appendix and allowing the text to stand by itself serves to emphasize the primacy of the text and permits the reader to confront the literary work without the distraction of editorial comment and to read the work with ease. A second advantage of a clear text is that it is easier to quote from or to reprint. Although no device can insure accuracy of quotation, the insertion of symbols (or even footnote numbers) into a text places additional difficulties in the way of the quoter. Furthermore, most quotations appear in contexts where symbols are inappropriate; thus when it is necessary to quote from a text which has not been kept clear of apparatus, the burden of producing a clear text of the passage is placed on the quoter. Even footnotes at the bottom of the text pages are open to the same objection, when the question of a photographic reprint arises.{{sfn|Tanselle|1972|pp=45–46}}}}

Some critics{{who|date=March 2022}} believe that a clear-text edition gives the edited text too great a prominence, relegating textual variants to appendices that are difficult to use, and suggesting a greater sense of certainty about the established text than it deserves. As Shillingsburg notes, "English scholarly editions have tended to use notes at the foot of the text page, indicating, tacitly, a greater modesty about the "established" text and drawing attention more forcibly to at least some of the alternative forms of the text".<ref>Shillingsburg 1989, p. 56, n. 8</ref>

==== The MLA's CEAA and CSE ====

In 1963, the [[Modern Language Association|Modern Language Association of America]] (MLA) established the Center for Editions of American Authors (CEAA). The CEAA's ''Statement of Editorial Principles and Procedures'', first published in 1967, adopted the Greg–Bowers rationale in full. A CEAA examiner would inspect each edition, and only those meeting the requirements would receive a seal denoting "An Approved Text."{{citation needed|date=May 2023}}

Between 1966 and 1975, the Center allocated more than $1.5&nbsp;million in funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities to various scholarly editing projects, which were required to follow the guidelines (including the structure of editorial apparatus) as Bowers had defined them.{{sfn|Tanselle|1975|pp=167–168}} According to Davis, the funds coordinated by the CEAA over the same period were more than $6&nbsp;million, counting funding from universities, university presses, and other bodies.{{sfn|Davis|1977|p=61}}

The Center for Scholarly Editions (CSE) replaced the CEAA in 1976. The change of name indicated the shift to a broader agenda than just American authors. The center also ceased its role in the allocation of funds. The center's latest guidelines (2003) no longer prescribe a particular editorial procedure.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.iupui.edu/~peirce/writings/cse.htm|title=Aims and Services of the Committee on Scholarly Editions|publisher=The Committee on Scholarly Editions, Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis|access-date=2008-05-24|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080523101341/http://www.iupui.edu/~peirce/writings/cse.htm|archive-date=2008-05-23}} <br />"The editorial standards that form the criteria for the award of the CSE "Approved Edition" emblem can be stated here in only the most general terms, since the range of editorial work that comes within the committee's purview makes it impossible to set forth a detailed, step-by-step editorial procedure."</ref>