Textual Criticism
Code
722091138
Academic unit
Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas
Department
Estudos Portugueses
Credits
10
Teacher in charge
Fernando Cabral Martins
Weekly hours
3 letivas + 1 tutorial
Teaching language
Portuguese
Objectives
a) To collect the knowledge acquired during the 1st cycle and to direct it towards an awareness of the editorial dimension of texts, as well as towards the critical confrontation they imply.
b) To present and practice editorial models consecrated by the textual theories of traditional and modern philology.
c) To analyze the different modes of editing a text in relation with reading modes, according to the characteristics of the text itself and its precise editorial context.
d) To establish close connections between critical theory and concrete editorial activity.
Prerequisites
None.
Subject matter
1- Initial definitions: text, author, editor, reader, literary relationship. Edition as a communication device.
2- A brief history of Textual Criticism. Before Gutenberg: the lost first copy; copies and writing materials. After Gutenberg: the multiple first copy.
3- Critical concepts: variant, version, copy-text and final intentions, author´s revisions, manuscript, transcript, avant-texte. Complementary knowledge: paleography, codicology, material bibliography and manuscriptology.
4- Methodology of critical edition: text history, recension, collating, stemmatics, creation of an authoritative text, transcription, correction, annotation. The importance of commentary.
5- Different types of editions, from facsimile edition to critical edition. The editor as an interpreter: typical modes of authorial writing and author-editor collaboration.
6- Hypertext and virtual data bases: examples of electronic edition. Digitextuality.
Bibliography
FURTADO, José Afonso, O Papel e o Pixel, Lisboa, Ariadne, 2007.
GREETHAM, D. C., Textual Scholarship. An Introduction, Nova Iorque, Garland, 1994.
LOISEAUX, Elisabeth Bergmann e FRAISTAT, Neil, Reimagining Textuality, Madison, The University of Wisconsin Press, 2002.
MCGANN, Jerome J., A Critique of Modern Textual Criticism, 1983, 2.ª ed., Charlottesville, University Press of Virginia, 1992.
SHILLINGSBURG, Peter L., From Gutenberg to Google, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Teaching method
From the initial lecture, theoretical lectures will be systematically followed by practical examples, which will lead to an awareness of the material factors connected with an edition, as well as with the pertinence of possible criteria.
Evaluation method
Presentation of small papers, among which an editorial analysis of a book, and an editorial commentary as a final paper.