Editing Textual criticism (section)

=== W. W. Greg's rationale of copy-text ===

Anglo-American textual criticism in the last half of the 20th century came to be dominated by a landmark 1950 essay by [[Walter Wilson Greg|Sir Walter W. Greg]], "The Rationale of Copy-Text". Greg proposed:

{{blockquote|[A] distinction between the significant, or as I shall call them 'substantive', readings of the text, those namely that affect the author's meaning or the essence of his expression, and others, such in general as spelling, punctuation, word-division, and the like, affecting mainly its formal presentation, which may be regarded as the accidents, or as I shall call them 'accidentals', of the text.{{sfn|Greg|1950|p=21}}}}

Greg observed that compositors at printing shops tended to follow the "substantive" readings of their copy faithfully, except when they deviated unintentionally; but that "as regards accidentals they will normally follow their own habits or inclination, though they may, for various reasons and to varying degrees, be influenced by their copy".{{sfn|Greg|1950|p=22}}

He concluded:

{{blockquote|The true theory is, I contend, that the copy-text should govern (generally) in the matter of accidentals, but that the choice between substantive readings belongs to the general theory of textual criticism and lies altogether beyond the narrow principle of the copy-text. Thus it may happen that in a critical edition the text rightly chosen as copy may not by any means be the one that supplies most substantive readings in cases of variation. The failure to make this distinction and to apply this principle has naturally led to too close and too general a reliance upon the text chosen as basis for an edition, and there has arisen what may be called the tyranny of the copy-text, a tyranny that has, in my opinion, vitiated much of the best editorial work of the past generation.{{sfn|Greg|1950|p=26}}}}

Greg's view, in short, was that the "copy-text can be allowed no over-riding or even preponderant [[Authority (textual criticism)|authority]] so far as substantive readings are concerned". The choice between reasonable competing readings, he said:

{{blockquote|[W]ill be determined partly by the opinion the editor may form respecting the nature of the copy from which each substantive edition was printed, which is a matter of external authority; partly by the intrinsic authority of the several texts as judged by the relative frequency of manifest errors therein; and partly by the editor's judgment of the intrinsic claims of individual readings to originality—in other words their intrinsic merit, so long as by 'merit' we mean the likelihood of their being what the author wrote rather than their appeal to the individual taste of the editor.{{sfn|Greg|1950|p=29}}}}

Although Greg argued that editors should be free to use their judgment to choose between competing substantive readings, he suggested that an editor should defer to the copy-text when "the claims of two readings&nbsp;...&nbsp;appear to be exactly balanced.&nbsp;... In such a case, while there can be no logical reason for giving preference to the copy-text, in practice, if there is no reason for altering its reading, the obvious thing seems to be to let it stand."{{sfn|Greg|1950|p=31}} The "exactly balanced" variants are said to be ''indifferent''.{{citation needed|date=May 2023}}

Editors who follow Greg's rationale produce ''eclectic'' editions, in that the authority for the "accidentals" is derived from one particular source (usually the earliest one) that the editor considers to be authoritative, but the authority for the "substantives" is determined in each individual case according to the editor's judgment. The resulting text, except for the accidentals, is constructed without relying predominantly on any one witness.{{citation needed|date=May 2023}}