Paolo Divizia


Textual Units of Transmission vs. Texts. Towards a Normalisation of Apparent Anomalies and
Particular Cases in Textual Transmission[1]


My approach to multiple-text manuscripts is not a codicological one, since I first started to pay
attention to miscellanies as structures in order to solve textual problems concerning the
relationships between manuscripts sharing exactly the same content or a series of works in the same
order (what one could label a ‘cluster’). Or more precisely, at the beginning I merely wanted to
see whether, in regard to a single text, the structure of multiple-text manuscripts could provide
any evidence about the genealogical relationship between witnesses to that single text when they
share two or more works in the same order.[2] It was only later that I realised that the structure
itself could provide genealogical information, since it grows and changes from copy to copy (or may
do so) following certain patterns: therefore, the coherence of a multiple-text manuscript must not
be investigated in a purely synchronic way (i.e. why someone has copied more works together in a
multiple-text manuscript) but also in a diachronic way (i.e. which works were already side by side
in the model/s of a multiple-text manuscript and to which extent the copy is faithful or
innovative).[3] Such a diachronic approach could also be useful to codicologists, who often tend to
forget that behind a single manuscript, unless it is an authograph, there are one or more models
which the copy does not reproduce in all the material aspects. Thus, if in the model a change of
hand or quire occurs, or there is a marginal note written with a different ink (elements which, on
the other hand, textual scholars tend not always to take into account), such material features are
usually flattened in the copy.

Both textual scholars and codicologists would benefit from an interdisciplinary dialogue on
methodology: the former by taking into account the material features of their “witnesses”,[4] the
latter by taking into account the transmission of the texts preserved by their “codices”.

Indeed, the content of a multiple-text manuscript is not necessarily the result of an individual,
deliberate choice. This might be the case, but more often a multiple-text manuscript is the result
of sedimentation and erosion, which means that it is a diasystem (in the sense given to the
expression by Segre 1978 and 1979, not Weinreich 1954), that is, a mixture of innovation and
conservation.[5]


Concerning the transmission of texts, on one hand, more texts can be copied together from the model
as if they were a single unit; on the other hand, scribes can change their model while copying a
single text. I am not talking about contamination of readings, but contamination by the
juxtaposition of exemplars, which can, in turn, be horizontal (when connected with a ‘before and
after’) or vertical (when connected with hierarchical distinctions such as text and rubrics or text
and glosses).[6]

How can the two phenomena, that is, texts transmitted together and texts depending on two or more
exemplars, be dealt with at the same time? Manuals of textual criticism usually claim that one
monogenetic/conjunctive error/innovation shared by two or more witnesses is enough to prove their
mutual relationship. Sometimes they suggest that more than one shared innovation is needed, or, at
least, preferred. Nevertheless, one seldom, if ever, encounters manuals of textual criticism
explaining what sort of evidence a shared innovation provides, and to which extent.

In my opinion, a shared innovation provides evidence of a relationship only at the precise point in
which it occurs. Whether it does, or does not, anywhere else, is a matter of probability: the
further one goes from the shared innovation, the smaller the chances that the relationship
persists. Shared innovations work more or less like buttons on clothing: each of them buttons only
where placed. The question therefore is to which extent proof provided by a shared innovation
persists as proof.

One should never take for granted that a textual unit of transmission corresponds with a text:
sometimes it is does, sometimes it is longer than a single text, sometimes it is shorter. Thus, the
extension of a textual unit of transmission has to be proved by a regular series of shared
innovations: when the latter are quite close to each other, one can assume that the portion of text
in-between also reflects the same relationship among witnesses; on the other hand, concerning the
portions of text before the first shared innovation and after the last, or when the gap between two
shared innovations is quite large, one should take into account the chance that a change of
exemplar has occurred; in such case a coherent series of weaker proofs is stronger than a distant
strong proof. The extent of textual units of transmission always has to be defined and proved
before one can infer genealogical relationships among witnesses to “a” text.





References


Avalle, d’Arco Silvio (1985), “I canzonieri: definizione di genere e problemi di edizione”, in: La
critica del testo. Problemi di metodo ed esperienze di lavoro, atti del Convegno di Lecce (22-26
ottobre 1984). Roma: Salerno Editrice, 363–82. Now in: Avalle, d’Arco Silvio, La doppia verità.
Fenomenologia ecdotica e lingua letteraria del Medioevo romanzo. Firenze: Edizioni del Galluzzo,
2002, 155–73.

Divizia, Paolo (2007), Novità per il volgarizzamento della «Disciplina clericalis». Milano:
Unicopli.

Divizia, Paolo (2009), “Appunti di stemmatica comparata”, in: Studi e Problemi di Critica Testuale
78: 29–48.

Divizia, Paolo (2011), “Fenomenologia degli ‘errori guida’”, in: Filologia e critica 36/1: 49–74.

Divizia, Paolo (2017a), “Texts and Transmission in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Italian
Multi-text Codices”, in: Karen Pratt, Bart Besamusca, Ad Putter, Matthias Meyer (eds), The Dynamics
of the Medieval Manuscript: Text Collections from a European Perspective, proceedings of the
international conference (Utrecht, 25-29 April 2013). Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 101–110.

Divizia, Paolo (2017b), “Testo, microtesto, macrotesto e supertesto: per una filologia dei
manoscritti miscellanei”, in: Frédéric Duval, Lino Leonardi, Richard Trachsler (eds), Actes du
XXVII^e Congrès international de linguistique et de philologie romanes (Nancy, 15-20 juillet 2013),
Section 13. Philologie textuelle et éditoriale, Nancy, ATILF, 2016,
http://www.atilf.fr/cilpr2013/actes/section-13.html, 109–18.

Leonardi, Lino (2002), “La tradizione italiana”, in: Boitani, Piero / Mancini, Mario / Varvaro,
Alberto (eds), Lo spazio letterario del medioevo, 2. Il medioevo volgare, II. La circolazione del
testo. Roma: Salerno Editrice, 555–94.

Leonardi, Lino (2006), “Creazione e fortuna di un genere: la filologia dei canzonieri dopo Avalle”,
in: Lo Monaco, Francesco / Rossi, Luca Carlo / Scaffai, Niccolò (eds), Liber, fragmenta, libellus
prima e dopo Petrarca: in ricordo di D’Arco Silvio Avalle, seminario internazionale di studi
(Bergamo, 23-25 ottobre 2003). Tavarnuzze (Firenze): SISMEL - Edizioni del Galluzzo, 3–21.

Leonardi, Lino (2011), “Filologia dei canzonieri e filologia testuale. Questioni di metodo e prassi
ecdotica per la tradizione della lirica nel Medioevo romanzo”, in: Leonardi, Lino (ed), La
tradizione della lirica nel Medioevo romanzo. Problemi di filologia formale, Atti del convegno
internazionale (Firenze-Siena, 12-14 novembre 2009), Firenze: Edizioni del Galluzzo, 3–22.

Segre, Cesare (1978), “La Critica Testuale”, in: Varvaro, Alberto (ed), XIV Congresso
Internazionale di Linguistica e Filologia Romanza, Atti del Congresso (Napoli, 15-20 Aprile 1974),
5 vols, Napoli-Amsterdam: Macchiaroli-Benjamins, vol. 1, 493–99.

Segre, Cesare (1979), “Critica testuale, teoria degli insiemi e diasistema”, in: Cesare Segre,
Semiotica filologica. Torino: Einaudi, 53–70.

Weinreich, Uriel (1954), “Is a structural dialectology possible?”, in: Word 10: 388–400.

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[1] A first version of this paper was read at the conference “The Emergence of Multiple-Text
Manuscripts” (Hamburg, 9-12 November 2016). It represents further development of the concepts and
theory presented in Divizia 2017a and Divizia 2017b.

[2] Divizia 2007; Divizia 2009.

[3] Divizia 2017a.

[4] Avalle 2005: 166 defines this attitude of textual scholars as  «‘rimozione’ del codice in
quanto tale» [i.e. ‘repression’ – in psychoanalityc terms – of the codex as such]. See also
Leonardi 2002: 575 who points out that the single-text approach, termed anachronistic, may raise
doubts when applied to medieval texts.

[5] The risk of a material philology flattened on synchrony – which is different from the
always-diachronically-aware synchronic approach of Avalle – has already been pointed out by
Leonardi 2006: 17–18.

[6] Divizia 2017b.