From Books to Collections

This chapter explores the critical edition of hybrid materials: heterogeneous documents, facsimiles, pictures, sounds, and videos. Through concise examples, it illustrates how and why different collections, although “critical,” do not attain the usual ambitions of critical editions (Greek authors, the Bible, canonical authors) but address another conception of “critical” and “edition.” The chapter examines the implications of critical projects when reconstructions of the given texts' original states are of lesser or peripheral interest. The term “critical” is used mainly to connote the construction of a context amplified through comments, intersecting links, and thematic indexation.