Textual Criticism

This chapter provides an overview of the main tasks to be performed by an editor of Byzantine literary works, highlighting some of the recent developments in methodology and technology and focusing on technical aspects. The editor’s tasks are the following: (1) heuristics of texts and manuscripts, (2) collation (namely, comparison of the text preserved in different manuscripts), (3) classification of the manuscript witnesses of a text according to various principles, (4) edition (or constitutio textus, in the common Latin terminology of critical editions), and, finally, (5) publication. Different types of textual transmission, shaped by several elements (language, genre, topic, authority, etc.), require, it is argued here, different editorial treatments. An Appendix to the chapter lists the main book series in which editions of Byzantine literature are published.