Emendation and Modernization

Abstract Though it has been subject to few recent studies, textual emendation is common to critical editions of all kinds of text, and indeed can scarcely be avoided in any practice that aims to go further than reproduce a source text exactly as it stands. According to Greg’s formulation, in one of the few discussions that attempt to rise above the particulars of individual readings, ‘criticism must always proceed in relation to what we know, or what we surmise, respecting the history of the text’. In other words, it will proceed by taking into account what is known in classical and biblical textual criticism as recensio or recension, the analysis of texts to establish how they relate to each other. Identification of error and proposals to emendation cannot, then, be based on critical judgement alone. Editing brings together a form of criticism and a form of more empirical scholarship. How one applies the correlation of criticism and textual study has always been subject to contention and debate, as is the breadth of scope that emendation can legitimately claim for itself, and as too is the weight of Greg’s phrase ‘what we surmise’.