What Kinds of choices might an editor need to make? How might those choices shape future knowledge in a field?
Texts for publishing involve many aspects of critical editing in their preparation. Some of the choices an editor might make are: Which texts are considered authoritative; which texts to include for comparison to create an ideal text, and how to deal with all of them; how many texts should be collated, which kinds of collation to employ-sight or machine, and whether to employ digitized methods or not (the more mechanical collation that is performed the less the editor has contact with the physical objects, transferring text from one computer to another creates more risks for incidental variables to occur, and inputting itself leaves room for human error-these methods are not foolproof yet and there is no substitution for human handling and comparison, despite its tediousness); searching for variants and using critical judgment in a myriad of ways through typesetting and proofing, variants by the proofreader, and variants created by the author during proofreading or revising and determining of which sort they are (1, 2, or 3) and deciding how to resolve these issues with importance given to textual authority; use of the tools of analytical and historical bibliography in order to guarantee a thorough understanding of the printing process employed with all variants/copies and in regard to future processing, emendation, and publication of a critical edition; the collation of the ideal versions, manuscripts, and corrected proofs, etc. that will be used to create the ideal text; constructing the stemma based on the analysis of the materials compiled or collated; what documents served as the scribe’s copy; determining compositorial practices and setters; investigating the proofreading of the chosen editions and determining chronological order, history, and authority; constructing the critical text. Other considerations concern: the author’s authority with respect to accidentals and substantives, choosing an earlier or later edition, or compiling a practically new one with reference to its authoritativeness no matter how the other editions were produced; emendations of the text, copy, and how the text will appear, as well as its apparatus.
So numerous are the choices and critical judgment decisions involved in this process, it would be too time consuming to treat them all here, but one that particularly concerned me was construction of the critical text and how to choose a copy-text and emending it. The editor needs to decide this in advance of creating the text ideally. What kind of spelling to use, how much to modernize the text’s punctuation, paragraphing, and grammar is something a reader always notices, whether scholarly or not-it can change meaning. As many classical authors have been completely modernized, how this impacts future editions is of great concern, as it has been expressed by critics that so much changing of some classical texts had occurred that their original meaning and intent had been altered. Whether to present old style spelling, grammar, and as faithfully as possible, to regularize the text, meaning make some very critical emendations, or fully modernize a text, completely altering the document of record in scope and meaning, which requires zero to extensively critical emendation and, if so, to what purpose, are all critical questions and decisions, an editor faces. Most individual readers will wade through critical editions which are in the original language, and newer volumes simply do not require that much emendation for understanding. In each altered version less and less of the original, or intended text, remains and this is a primary consideration for future texts.
Citations
Williams, William Proctor, and Craig S. Abbott. An Introduction to Bibliographical and Textual Studies. 4th Ed., Modern Language Association of America, 2009, New York.
