Richard Tarrant's new book on textual criticism.

[Hylander]

I just finished Richard Tarrant’s short new book, Texts, editors, and readers: Methods and problems in Latin textual criticism (Cambridge 2016), and I would like to recommend it to anyone who is interested in textual criticism of ancient Latin–as well as Greek–texts. I would say that everyone who reads, and tries not just to read passively but to engage with, these texts should be interested in how they have been constructed by editors from often very doubtful and unreliable evidence.

The focus of this book is Latin texts–Tarrant is the editor of Ovid’s Metamorphoses in the OCT series and apparently is at work on a new OCT Horace–but his discussion is equally relevant to most Greek texts, and the book should be accessible even to those who don’t know Latin. All the Latin is translated, so that anyone should be able to follow most if not all of the discussions of specific passages.

Tarrant leads the reader through each stage of the process of constructing a text and apparatus with very illuminating discussions of the details, inherent problems, differences in editorial technique and other aspects. He lays out his own preferences and approach (a moderately skeptical attitude towards the received text in the case of the Metamorphoses) but explains its advantages, limitations and pitfalls in what sees to me a fair and balanced way, and does the same for other more aggressive and more conservative approaches, too.

He includes a chapter dedicated to Propertius, a great poet whose text is garbled beyond hope or almost so, explaining how an editor’s textual choices need to take into account a literary estimation of what kind of poet the editor thinks Propertius is (or was): a poet of “finish, grace and charm” or of “tormented obscurity.”

The book concludes with an appendix explaining the symbols used in critical apparatuses, including many of the common Latin shorthand abbreviations.

Tarrant’s discussion is very clear and lucid, and at the same time elegant and a pleasure to read. I give the highest recommendation to this book for everyone interested in this topic–which most everyone on this site should be.

http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/classical-studies/classical-literature/texts-editors-and-readers-methods-and-problems-latin-textual-criticism?format=PB

http://www.amazon.com/Texts-Editors-Readers-Criticism-Literature/dp/0521158990?ie=UTF8&keywords=richard%20tarrant&qid=1462024608&ref_=sr_1_1&sr=8-1

[Paul_Derouda]

Thanks, sounds like an important book. My only hesitation is that I don’t really know Latin.

[Hylander]

I think you can get a lot out of this book even if you don’t know Latin, and even more if you’ve had just a little exposure to Latin. As I mentioned, all the Latin is translated into English. There are many examples drawn from Latin texts–especially the Metamorphoses (and in some cases retrospectively critical of Tarrant’s own editorial decisions)–but I think you might be able to follow them with some effort, and there is much discussion that doesn’t require a knowledge of Latin and that applies with equal force to Greek texts. If nothing else, the Appendix will be useful negotiating the Latin shorthand in apparatuses of Greek texts.

M.L. West wrote a similar–and very useful–book published by Teubner, addressing both Greek and Latin texts, with examples from both languages (I don’t know whether someone else took it over and has kept it in print), but West’s book is really more of a technical manual, whereas Tarrant’s really discusses the problems and pitfalls of editing classical texts in depth.

This is really a thought-provoking book that will make you feel like you’re looking down into a vertiginous abyss whenever you open a Greek or Latin text (as, of course, you should).

[anphph]

Thank you Hylander. This is extremely interesting. I read West’s book with great interest, plus a couple of other books on the subject (E. J. Kenney’s The Classical Text and some other ones), and always thought I’d enjoy something more up to date and more in the direction you seem to be implying this one takes.

When I asked about it, someone did suggest Bernabé’s Manual de crítica textual y edición de textos griegos, but person who suggested it having used it as a cudgel to try to destroy West’s, which was supposedly stupid by comparison, I decided I was not willing to trust that person’s judgement, perhaps to my detriment. Maybe the book is actually great.

Now I’m going to see if my library has Tarrant’s, but if it doesn’t I’m probably buying it.

[Ronolio]

Thank you for the recommendation. Hopefully I will have better luck with this than I did with Scribes and Scholars (six years after starting, I still have not made it through).

[Hylander]

You probably don’t need to read every word of Scribes and Scholars from beginning to end to get a reasonably good idea of the processes of transmission that Greek and Latin texts went through to reach the 21st century. But it’s a very good book, and I wish it had been available when I was an undergraduate. Read it selectively and then go back to it when you’re interested in a particular issue.

[Paul_Derouda]

I’ve read West’s book, which was in print then, a couple of years ago. It is quite short and I agree it’s more of a technical manual, a great part of the interesting stuff being only mentioned in passing.

I wish I could find the time to read all these great books. (Scribes and Scholars has been on my list as well.)