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Literary and Linguistic Computing 2000 15(1):5-14; doi:10.1093/llc/15.1.5
© 2000 by Association for Literary & Linguistic Computing
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The one text and the many texts

P Robinson

Centre for Technology and the Arts, De Montfort University, The Gateway, Leicester LE1 5XY, UK E-mail: peter.robinson@dmu.ac.uk

The capacity of electronic editions to present all versions of a text, and the movement in post-modern thinking against all forms of authority, suggest that electronic editions should not present any reconstructed or eclectic text, or privilege any one text over all other texts. However, examination of three actual editions dealing with very large numbers of variant texts (Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Dante's Commedia, and the Greek New Testament) argues the reverse. In these cases, editors might choose to present a single reconstructed text, and to privilege this text about all other texts. It is not necessary to see this reconstructed text as a precise representation of a lost original: rather, it should be seen as the text that best explains all the extant documents. Its value then lies in its efficiency as a route by which the reader may find his or her own way into the variants themselves. Such editions may then help their users to become better readers, and editions should be measured by their ability to do this rather than by their conformity to any theoretical model.


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Converting Saint Paul: A new TEI P5 edition of The Conversion of Saint Paul using stand-off methodology
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[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]


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