First drafts

Book: Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature

October 31, 2008 · 1 Comment

Reynolds and Wilson. A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature. Oxford: OUP, 1968.

Referenced by Peacock when talking about horizontal and vertical transmission (though he references the 1991 edition).

pp.143 “Readers in ancient and medieval times did not necessarily copy a text from a single exemplar; as their texts were often corrupt, they compared different copies, entering in their (144) own manuscripts good readings or interesting variants as they found them.  In some traditions – an example is Xenophon’s Cyropaedia – the process was undertaken so often that the tradition has been hopelessly contaminated by the date of the earliest extant manuscripts.”

p.144 Mentions the problems caused by manuscript traditions, and the appearance of what appear to be interpolations but could be accurate in mediocre manuscripts.

Categories: Core · Manuscript traditions
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