New philology (medieval studies) explained

New philology is, in medieval studies, an intellectual movement which seeks to move beyond the text-critical method associated with Karl Lachmann, which sought to gather manuscripts of a given text and use them reconstruct a version of that text as close as possible to the earliest written version (or "archetype"). In contrast, New Philology seeks to edit and study texts in the form in which they are attested. Some of the key Anglophone proponents of the movement have also referred to it as New Medievalism.[1] [2]

History

A key moment for the start of the movement was the 1989 publication of Bernard Cerquiglini's Éloge de la variante (In Praise of the Variant), which was critical of modernist positivist editorial practices for medieval texts.[3] In the Anglophone world, the movement is particularly associated with a special issue of the Medieval Studies journal Speculum in 1990 edited by Stephen G. Nichols[4] (who continued to promote the idea of New Philology thereafter).[5] [6] A prominent step for the movement in the German-speaking world came in 1994 with the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft symposium entitled "Der unfeste Text" ("the variable text"), where, for example, Joachim Bumke considered the history of transmission and textual criticism of courtly epics in the thirteenth century,[7] [8] while an influential statement of the movement's principles was offered in the context of Old Norse literature by Matthew Driscoll in 2010.[9]

The movement has been read as characteristic of postmodern approaches to history and authorship, and as part of a postmodern reaction to nineteenth-century nationalist thought. Despite the continued popularity of this philological approach, it has received important criticisms that stress the movement's sweeping rejections of emendations.[10] [11]

Further reading

Notes

  1. The New Medievalism, ed. by Kevin Brownlee, Marina S. Brownlee, and Stephen G. Nichols (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), .
  2. Rethinking the New Medievalism, ed. by ed. by Alison Calhoun, Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet, Jeanette Patterson, Joachim Küpper, R. Howard Bloch (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014), .
  3. Richard Utz, "Them Philologists: Philological Practices and Their Discontents from Nietzsche to Cerquiglini." The Year’s Work in Medievalism (2011): 4–12.
  4. Cf. Stephen Nichols, 'Introduction: Philology in a Manuscript Culture'. In: Speculum 65 (1990) 1–10.
  5. Stephen G. Nichols, 'Why Material Philology? Some Thoughts', Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie, 116 (1997), 10–30.
  6. Klaus Johan Myrvoll, 'The Ideo-Political Background of "New Philology"', Studia Neophilologica (2023), .
  7. Joachim Bumke, 'Der unfeste Text. Überlegungen zur Überlieferungsgeschichte und Textkritik der höfischen Epik im 13. Jahrhundert'. In: „Aufführung“ und „Schrift“ in Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit, ed. by Jan-Dirk Müller. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung und Carl Ernst Poeschel Verlag 1996, 118–129.
  8. Cf. Florian Kragl, 'Normalmittelhochdeutsch. Theorieentwurf einer gelebten Praxis'. In: Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 144 (2015), 1–27.
  9. M. J. Driscoll, "The words on the page: Thoughts on philology, old and new", in: Creating the medieval saga: Versions, variability, and editorial interpretations of Old Norse saga literature, edited by Judy Quinn & Emily Lethbridge. Syddansk Universitetsforlag, Odense 2010, pp. 85–102.
  10. Males . Mikael . Textual criticism and Old Norse philology . Studia Neophilologica . 2023 .
  11. Haukur Þorgeirsson . "In Defence of Emendation. The Editing of Vǫluspá" . Saga-Book . 2020 . 31–56 .

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