Interpolation
Some later changes or revisions to the original of a
classical text. This can include omissions and exclusions. Examples can include interpolation by actors of their scripts and speeches. The
scholar who detects an interpolation should list his/her reasons why they
think it has occurred and when, by whom, and whether the original text can be corrected for or recovered.
Lines of text may find themselves transposed, and their text uncertain and rejected by a scholar as an interpolation.
Interpolations
can be words inserted in order to give a false impression of the date
for a document [see Forgery] or the document has been enlarged from its
original length. Or something of a completely different nature or provenance has been
inserted into the body of the original text.
Transmission of Text
The
provenance of a piece of text. The history and pathway by which the
text before us has come down to us from and through antiquity to the
present day. The scholar should state in what collections the text was found, in what libraries, and was it an archaeological find? If possible the scholar should give an opinion as to the motive why the text was preserved and what changes it may have gone through and why? Are there
different versions? In the different versions are there families of
texts? Who collected it? Who might have copied it? and details of any copying errors. Where was it
discovered and the quality and nature of its preservation?
Recension
Essentially any revision of a classical piece of text
Recension -Wikipedia
This can describe the alteration of a text by someone who was perhaps less worthy than the original
author or creator. This might include alteration by someone with a different skill [a
grammarian perhaps] or alteration by someone who speaks a different
language or dialect.
Anachronism
A chronological inconsistency. The act of attributing something to a period to which it does not truly belong. Any inconsistent rearrangement of the order of a series of chronological or historical events, including falsifications.
Anachronism may manifest itself in the language that has been used. The scholar should look out for asynchronism and archaisms. Anachronism is seen as an error if a true history is meant to be presented.
Rigorous commitment to the integrity of the past has never been characteristic of literary discourse in any period.
Literary texts or their copies often project themselves into the relative modernity of their own time and adapted to be more contemporary with the period in which they were produced.
Anachronism is often a very superficial marker of historicity: a sense of the historical process is sometime more significant than a strict sense of history. To charge a text with having anachronisms can often be irrelevant with the texts since the intention of their authors may be to show the age and body of the period in general.
Medieval commentators on Greek and classical texts, for example, may be written to illustrate their own time in which the fiercely competitive, aristocratic power blocks that were found in Ancient Greek society were similar in character to those of the times of their intended later readership of the medieval period. Political power in Ancient Greece, for example, was decentralised to City states, the polis. There was no central authority only a sense of Greekness. Barons during the medieval period might favourably compare themselves to the potentates of these City states, having a large measure of independence from the central power of their monarchs. During the medieval period christian values sometimes creep into such texts.
Later, however, translators, commentators and interpreters of classical texts, including the Bible, such as those of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were written by people whose views were extremely vulnerable to the evolving centralised power and censorship of monarchs, and the latter ever growing Divine Right to Rule above all other claims. Tyrannical regimes were common in Europe in this period. Classical texts which reinforced autocracy were favoured above those which did not. Democracy was unheard of to any extent at this time and period in European history, and if there was any such as it was was very limited.
Anachronisn - Wikipedia
Anachronism and Antiquity by Tim Rood, Carol Atack, Tom Phillips
Google Search: Anachronism, Antiquity Archive.org
Purism
Purism
wants to conceive clearly, execute loyally and exactly without deceits;
it abandons troubled conceptions, summary, or bristling executions. A
purist believes that serious art must banish all techniques which are
not faithful to the real value of the original conception.
Purism is
the belief that interpolations must be deleted or expunged from a text,
that a text must be returned to the original intended by its author.
Scholars believe it is their academic duty to attempt to recover the
original text.
Purism encourages the Scholar with a sense that something is not quite right.
Substitutions
Damaged
texts. Papyrus or manuscript is damaged with text missing. Scholars
believe it is their duty to interpolate the missing parts. The parts
they add are substitutions.
Scholarship
The art of detecting
recensions and interpolations. and amendments of and to the original of a
piece of text. Scholars tend to be purists wanting to purge the text
before them of anything they do not consider or conceive to have existed in the
original copy by the author/creator of that text. They also see it to be
their duty to try to recover the original by using common sense and
plausibility as "tests" by comparison of different sources of the
material before them, which include using newly discovered versions of manuscripts, and
carbon dating.
Editing and Copying errors
Censorship, Bias, Fashion, and Interpretation
Politically tendentious text. Omissions and Interpolations. Later bodged attempts to restore the original.
Forgery
Is the text a forgery? Evidence and proof of the forgery, who produced it, and their motive.
Authenticity
Lyrical and Metrical Analysis and Lyrical Structure (being out of place, does not fit)
Intentional and Unintentional (Wilfull Amendment).
Co-production of a work
Families of Text.
Scholia
Lost in Translation
The
job of a Rhapsodist was perhaps to bring a fresh approach to a tired
old myth or epic, altering its plot to gain audience approval and
attention rather than give a verbatim delivery of the original: call
this the freedom to interpret the material.
An author might also wish to bring out a new edition of his work.
Incomplete works completed by someone else.
Attribution
Who wrote the work?
Palimpsest
A manuscript or piece of writing material on which later writing has been superimposed on effaced earlier writing.
References
Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature: Reynolds, L. D. (Leighton Durham) - Internet Archive
NIKOLAIDOU-ARABATZI,
SMARO. “CHORAL PROJECTIONS AND ‘EMBOLIMA’ IN EURIPIDES’ TRAGEDIES.”
Greece & Rome, vol. 62, no. 1, [The Classical Association, Cambridge
University Press], 2015, pp. 25–47, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43297510.
Davidson,
J. F. “The Circle and the Tragic Chorus.” Greece & Rome, vol. 33,
no. 1, [Classical Association, Cambridge University Press], 1986, pp.
38–46, http://www.jstor.org/stable/643023.
a history of classical scholarship Volume I : john edwin sandys litt - Internet Archive
Transmission of Text
The Oxford Guide to Literature in English translation [greek]: Peter France - Internet Archive
The Oxford handbook of translation studies - Internet Archive
Scribes and Scholars : a guide to the transmission of Greek and Latin literature: Reynolds, L. D. (Leighton Durham) - Internet Archive
Notes on the transmission of Aeschylus – Roger Pearse
Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature - Classics - Oxford Bibliographies
The collation and investigation of manuscripts of Aeschylus : Dawe, R. D.- Internet Archive
The textual transmission of Euripides’ dramas by P.J. Finglass - CORE
Text and Transmission by Browning Brousquet - CORE
The Greek and Latin literary texts from Greco-Roman Egypt: Pack, Roger A. - Internet Archive
The Textual Transmission of Sophocles' Dramas by P.J. Finglass
Amazon.com: A Companion to Sophocles (Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World): 9781119025535: Ormand, Kirk: Libros
Text and Transmission by Donald J. Mastronarde
Aristophanes
Alan Sommerstein discusses the Transmission of Aristophanes' plays from ancient times to the present day in §IV of his Introduction in the volume of his translation of the Aristophanes' play, Acharnians:- Acharnians pp.16-20: Aristophanes - Internet Archive.
The Cambridge Companion to Greek Comedy - Google Books
Chapter 22 The Transmission of Comic Texts by Nigel Wilson pp.424-
Henderson discusses the History of the Text in
Acharnians; Knights Vol pp. 32- : Aristophanes - Internet Archive
The history of the text of Aristophanes by A.H. Sommerstein - Nottingham University
Aristophanea: Studies on the Text of Aristophanes - N. G. Wilson - Google Books
Reperforming Greek Tragedy: Theater, Politics, and Cultural Mobility in the ... - Anna A. Lamari - Google Books
Wiles, D. (2007). Translating Greek Theatre.
Theatre Journal,
59(3), 363–366.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/25070057 Translating Classical Plays: Collected Papers - J. Michael Walton - Google Books
