Stemmatology is the discipline that attempts to reconstruct the transmission of a text on the basis of relations between the various surviving manuscripts. The object of this volume is the evaluation of the most recent methods and techniques in the field of stemmatology, as well as the development of new ones. The book is largely interdisciplinary in character: it contains contributions from scholars from classical, historical, biblical, medieval and modern language studies, as well as from mathematical and computer scientists and biologists. The contributions in the book have been divided into two sections. The first section deals with various stemmatological methods and techniques. The second section focuses more specifically on the various problems concerning textual variation.An earlier volume on Studies in Stemmatology was published in 1996 and opened the most actual state of the art in stemmatology to a broad audience. That first volume was very well received by stemmatologists and also gave an impulse to new research, as several articles in the current volume clearly illustrate. Both volumes are of interest to scholars in (historical) linguistics, literary studies, Bible studies, classical studies, medieval studies, and history.

This volume contains ten papers selected from among those presented at the annual Free University Stemmatological Colloquia 1990-93. Current issues in (automated) stemmatology, paleography and codicology are addressed from contemporary theoretical perspectives. All papers focus on new directions in textuology and manuscript affiliation, and especially on the use of computer science in this field.The theoretical implications of computer-assisted stemma construction are explored. In combination with achievements in codicology and paleography, these investigations allow for dealing with the major problems in textuology: extreme complex and entangled manuscript traditions. Following an introductory chapter, part 1 presents six theoretical contributions on stemmatology, and part 2 deals with auxiliary fields in textuology, such as codicology and paleography. In part 3 applications of the previously developed fields are presented.

Stemmatology is the discipline that attempts to reconstruct the transmission of a text on the basis of relations between the various surviving manuscripts. The object of this volume is the evaluation of the most recent methods and techniques in the field of stemmatology, as well as the development of new ones. The book is largely interdisciplinary in character: it contains contributions from scholars from classical, historical, biblical, medieval and modern language studies, as well as from mathematical and computer scientists and biologists. The contributions in the book have been divided into two sections. The first section deals with various stemmatological methods and techniques. The second section focuses more specifically on the various problems concerning textual variation.An earlier volume on "Studies in Stemmatology "was published in 1996 and opened the most actual state of the art in stemmatology to a broad audience. That first volume was very well received by stemmatologists and also gave an impulse to new research, as several articles in the current volume clearly illustrate. Both volumes are of interest to scholars in (historical) linguistics, literary studies, Bible studies, classical studies, medieval studies, and history.

Stemmatology studies aspects of textual criticism that use genealogical methods to analyse a set of copies of a text whose autograph has been lost. This handbook is the first to cover the entire field, encompassing both theoretical and practical aspects of traditional as well as modern digital methods and their history. As an art (ars), stemmatology’s main goal is editing and thus presenting to the reader a historical text in the most satisfactory way. As a more abstract discipline (scientia), it is interested in the general principles of how texts change in the process of being copied. Thirty eight experts from all of the fields involved have joined forces to write this handbook, whose eight chapters cover material aspects of text traditions, the genesis and methods of traditional "Lachmannian" textual criticism and the objections raised against it, as well as modern digital methods used in the field. The two concluding chapters take a closer look at how this approach towards texts and textual criticism has developed in some disciplines of textual scholarship and compare methods used in other fields that deal with "descent with modification". The handbook thus serves as an introduction to this interdisciplinary field.

Stemmatology studies aspects of textual criticism that use genealogical methods to analyse a set of copies of a text whose autograph has been lost. This handbook is the first to cover the entire field, encompassing both theoretical and practical aspects of traditional as well as modern digital methods and their history. As an art (ars), stemmatology's main goal is editing and thus presenting to the reader a historical text in the most satisfactory way. As a more abstract discipline (scientia), it is interested in the general principles of how texts change in the process of being copied. Thirty eight experts from all of the fields involved have joined forces to write this handbook, whose eight chapters cover material aspects of text traditions, the genesis and methods of traditional "Lachmannian" textual criticism and the objections raised against it, as well as modern digital methods used in the field. The two concluding chapters take a closer look at how this approach towards texts and textual criticism has developed in some disciplines of textual scholarship and compare methods used in other fields that deal with "descent with modification". The handbook thus serves as an introduction to this interdisciplinary field.

Stemmatology studies aspects of textual criticism that use genealogical methods to analyse a set of copies of a text whose autograph has been lost. This handbook is the first to cover the entire field, encompassing both theoretical and practical aspects of traditional as well as modern digital methods and their history. As an art (ars), stemmatology’s main goal is editing and thus presenting to the reader a historical text in the most satisfactory way. As a more abstract discipline (scientia), it is interested in the general principles of how texts change in the process of being copied. Thirty eight experts from all of the fields involved have joined forces to write this handbook, whose eight chapters cover material aspects of text traditions, the genesis and methods of traditional "Lachmannian" textual criticism and the objections raised against it, as well as modern digital methods used in the field. The two concluding chapters take a closer look at how this approach towards texts and textual criticism has developed in some disciplines of textual scholarship and compare methods used in other fields that deal with "descent with modification". The handbook thus serves as an introduction to this interdisciplinary field.

Textual criticism is in a period of change, as it seeks to account for an ever-growing body of textual data as well as the development of new methodologies. Since the older methodologies cannot simply be modified to meet our present needs, Multiple Originals seeks to build bridges between methods of traditional textual criticism and those of orality and formulaic analysis. Examining practices of textual criticism across a wide range of texts and disciplines, this book challenges the assumption that there can be only one correct reading and argues for the presence of multivalences of both meaning and text. It demonstrates that in some cases multivalences were intended by the composer, while in other cases, during the periods from which our earliest extant manuscripts derive, they fell within the limits of variability acceptable to those who valued and transmitted those texts.