Textual Criticism

The subject of semiotics is not to answer the questions such as what does the text says, who says the text, or what are the possible external— societal, individual, and historical—effects on the text. Instead, it is mainly interested in how signs are created, how they are articulated with each other to create the meaning in the text, and in what ways the meaning is created in different semantic layers within its system. The study necessitates focusing on the relations of the formative elements in the text which leads us to reach the narrative syntax that makes it possible to observe the underlying structures in different semantic strata of the text. Moreover, the approach helps us to analyze the meaning production process, as well as to observe the ways of the articulation process of meaningful items with each other to create the whole text.  The main purpose of this study is to figure out the semantic organization of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four narrative within the scope of Greimas's semiotic trajectory.

Il testo del Devisement dou monde (o Milione, secondo la tradizione italiana) trasmesso dal codice parigino fr. 1116 rappresenta la forma linguisticamente più vicina alla superficie discorsiva originale dell’opera poliana. Dopo l’edizione del 2010 Mario Eusebi ne ha rivisto la lezione: il frutto di tale revisione (già disponibile al lettore nell’edizione digitale di Dei viaggi di Messer Marco Polo di Giovanni Battista Ramusio, in questa collana, vol. 5) torna alla tradizionale forma-libro, accompagnato dal glossario integrale e dagli indici dei nomi e dei toponimi, curati da Eugenio Burgio.

After the 2010 edition (Il manoscritto della Bibliothèque Nationale de France fr. 1116, Rome-Padua: Editrice Antenore), Mario Eusebi reviewed the text of the Franco-Venetian redaction (F) of the Devisement dou monde (in collaboration with Eugenio Burgio and Samuela Simion). The result of this revision has long been available to the reader in the digital edition of Giovanni Battista Ramusio’s Dei viaggi di Messer Marco Polo (Simion, Burgio 2015): here the text goes back to the traditional book-form; the second volume, already promised in the subtitle of the 2010 edition, is dedicated to the full glossary and indexes (names and toponyms), edited by Eugenio Burgio (with a linguistic note by Mario Eusebi).

This chapter examines some of the assumptions that are typically employed when dealing with the development of the Hebrew Bible. The first part of the chapter is a critique of the very term "Jewish Bible." It points out some of the problems with the term and make a plaidoyer against being politically correct. The second part focuses on what it means to explain the "development" of the Hebrew Bible and suggests that diachronic analysis alone cannot fully explain its formation. In this author's view, proper understanding of the development of the Bible requires drawing upon intellectual and literary models more commonly associated with the period of the “reception of scripture” than with conventional composition history.

It is my belief that graphic design history has too often been presented through a parade of styles and individual achievements devoid of significant social context, and that this tendency has obscured much of the richness and complexity of its development. In contrast, this book is ...

Appena tornato a Firenze [sc. da Padova, nell'aprile 1351] il Boccaccio si propose di donare al suo ospite, forse una copia della corrispondenza tra Dante e Giovanni del Virgilio, certo un esemplare della Commedia. E da uno scrittoio donde un'ampia serie di codici del poema di Dante si diffuse a Firenze e nella Toscana prima e subito dopo la metà del Trecento si procurò l'attuale Vaticano Latino 3199, dove volle premettere un suo carme di presentazione del dono e di elogio del poeta della Commedia: "Ytalie iam certus honos, cui tempora lauro…" 1 .

Umberto Eco’s The Open Work deals with the making of art. Open work has two constituents: a) multiplicity of meanings and the participation of audience. Artists generate the work of art allowing the audience to fabricate numerous meanings. Work of art as an open work is contingent and the openness toward meaning determines its contingency. A work of art may be open from the audience point of view because interpretation is encompassing and occurs at various levels of human perception. Thus we perceive meanings in a work of art with various perspectives. Eco explains open work as an artwork in process or dynamic progress without any fixed conclusion/ending or meaning. He underlines the necessity in differentiating the association between the work of art and its creator. This paper is an attempt to interpretively read Umberto Eco’s concept of open work, meaning and information.

Recent scholarship has devoted much attention to the arrangement of the MT of the book of Psalms (here referred to as the MT Psalter). The differing arrangements found among the Dead Sea Scrolls have raised many questions. Scholars are not in agreement as to the reasons behind the ordering of the psalms at Qumran, but several theories have emerged. In the following investigation, I will not propose a new theory but will trace redactional activity in two specific psalms—Psalms
133 and 134—in two different arrangements.
These two psalms offer a unique opportunity for those seeking to understand the history of books of Psalms, as these psalms stand at the end of the Ascents collection. Regardless of whether the individual Ascents psalms predated the collection, it is clear that the collection served as a source that was shared by both the MT Psalter and 11QPsa. An examination of variations in the Ascents collection allows one to see how psalms fit within larger redactional schemes. Psalms 133 and 134 function in what has come to be known as the “shaping” of the MT Psalter, but they also play a key role in the shaping of 11QPsa.

I presented my paper, "THE REDISCOVERY OF CODEX BEZAE CANTABRIGIENSIS AND ITS SUBSEQUENT EFFECT ON THE RECEPTION OF LUKE 16:19-31" in room Central 214 of the Pontifical Gregorian University on Friday, July 05. My lecture was part of the Synoptic Gospels program unit (chairs: J. R. C. Cousland and John P. Harrison), which met for presentation at the 2019 International Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) in Rome, Italy (July 01-05, 2019). The Pontifical Biblical Institute and the Pontifical Gregorian University were the host institutions.

Description:
The Synoptic Gospels, which have formed a coherent unit since antiquity, have played an important role in modern scholarship. This section provides an open forum for the presentation of papers, from a variety of perspectives and using a variety of methods, on these seminal religious texts.

Call for papers:
This year’s primary focus will be on the parables in the Synoptic tradition. The Synoptic Gospels Section will have three sessions: i) a session for invited papers only on the parables; ii) a general invitation for papers related to the parables in the synoptic tradition, with particular focus on matters of material culture and methodologies; and iii), a general invitation for papers on the Synoptic Gospels. There are plans to publish a selection of studies on the parables.

This book is the edited proceedings from the conference 'The Art of Stesichorus' held at St John's College, Oxford, on June 29–30 2012. Contributors include: Ewen Bowie (Oxford), Chris Carey (London), Patrick Finglass (Nottingham), Richard Hunter (Cambridge), Adrian Kelly (Oxford), Ian Rutherford (Reading), Gerson Schade (Berlin), Laura Swift (Open University), Martin West (Oxford).

Pelling, C., Classics for All 2015/08/11

This thesis (1999) delves into Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd's hermeneutics of the Qur'an, which was, at that time, not yet systematically formulated. It tries to reconstruct his theories of text and interpretation based on his works, and gives some examples in which he implemented his hermeneutics, such as the issues of  evil forces (jinn, shayâtîn, sihr and hasad), ribâ and interest, slavery,  polygamy, and women's Inheritance. Abu Zayd's contribution to Qur'anic hermeneutics is important in developing critical Qur'anic scholarship.

A defense of the genuineness of John 7:53-8:11, with an explanation of the mechanism that elicited its early loss, a description of many of the witnesses for inclusion and non-inclusion of the passage, and a special chapter on the Old Latin chapter-summaries.

This article reconsiders Richard Wright's Native Son by comparing divergences between the published novel and an earlier typeset manuscript. It argues that such revisions render protagonist Bigger Thomas an icon of global class conflict rather than a national figure of racial tension. By revealing the continuities among critical essays that bookend the writing of Native Son, this essay also reveals how the novel's restructuring further elaborates Wright's globalism – highlighting his desire to produce work that transcended both national and racial categories. Finally, it considers Native Son as a work of “world literature” and a model for global minoritarian discourse. By examining “translations” of the novel into postcolonial contexts, it argues that the global afterlife of Native Son is no departure from the localized vision of the novel, but rather the recapitulation of its explicit globalism. This article thereby challenges critical convention dividing Wright's c...

Since they were first published in the 1890's Emily Dickinson's (1830-1886) poems have elicited queries regarding the proprieties of editing. This dissertation considers processes through which Dickinson's work has been edited in the twentieth century and how such editorial processes contribute specifically to the production of Emily Dickinson as author. As the project of editing Dickinson's work has always been associated with sketching her life any such editorial project is a production of a specific version of both her work and her life. The representation of Dickinson's work has been a concrete problem from the beginning. All the idiosyncratic aspects of Dickinson's handwritten manuscripts such as versions of poems and variants of specific words, calligraphy and choice of kind of paper and pen or pencil contribute to the complexity of her work and have been variously treated in different editions. The posthumous editing of her handwritten manuscripts into the conventions of the book and the conven tions of the electronic archive has been formed by editors' assumptions about the 'literary work.' At stake is fundamentally what a Dickinson poem may be, or, rather, how we may approach such an object. As this study assumes that all versions of Dickinson's work, including the edited versions, are part of what may be understood as a wider text, all editions are here understood as contributing towards the formulation of what Dickinson's work may be. This study proceeds by close readings of critical and editorial debates. Chapter 1 considers the early- to mid-twentieth century study and editing of Dickinson as a context both for more recent debates in Dickinson editing and for this study's metacritical approach. Chapter 2 analyzes the argument that Dickinson's work must be understood in its handwritten 'original' form. In the 1990s her handwriting became emblematic of a critical desire for an 'original' inscription. The most important effect of this argument is that one cannot easily read this set of texts in print: it is impossible to deny Dickinson's manuscripts artistic significance. Chapter 3 explores how this manuscript criticism has put into practice the editing of Dickinson electronically. I consider how electronic media may transform the editing, dissemination and interpretation of Emily Dickinson. (Less)

It is my belief that graphic design history has too often been presented through a parade of styles and individual achievements devoid of significant social context, and that this tendency has obscured much of the richness and complexity of its development. In contrast, this book is ...

The text of Willem Jordaens' translation, "Calculus, vel de perfectione filiorum Dei", of Jan van Ruusbroec's "Van den blinckenden Steen" is demonstrably closer to the form of the text translated into English as "The Treatise of Perfection of the Sons of God"––a form of the text that Edmund Colledge had predicted in the notes to his edition of the English text ("The Treatise of Perfection of the Sons of God': a fifteenth-century English Ruysbroeck translation", "English Studies 33 (1952), 49–66). The Heneage manuscript also contains a copy of a compilation of extracts from Richard Rolle's Latin writings, and a copy of the
Carmelite friar Thomas Fishlake's Latin version of Walter Hilton's "Scale of Perfection". The manuscript may have had fifteenth-century English Carthusian provenance or ownership, and was owned by George Heneage, dean of Lincoln, 1529–39.

Greek and Ethiopic versions of 1 Enoch 5:8 preserve a different text at the end of the passage. This note aims to demonstrate the superiority of the Ethiopic text of 1 En. 5:8 over the version preserved in Codex Panapolitanus by arguing that the Greek reading must be treated as a scribal addition influenced by Gnostic terminology.

This chapter considers how one may use Genette's concepts of paratext and hypertext within transmedia narratives and born-digital texts and explores how Web publication problematizes standard ideas of authorship and copyright. This challenges our concepts of originality and our understanding of what constitutes the text and what stands outside it. This chapter explores Nick Montfort's “Taroko Gorge,” a born-digital poem, and Jasper Fforde's “The Eyre Affair,” analyzed as a transmedia narrative, within the framework of Genette's theories of “paratext” and “hypertext.” This chapter highlights the difficulty of reconciling the intellectual and political necessity of a world in which data is freely shared with the practical concern of how the producers of creative work can make a living.

The first part of this article describes the development of the encoding system originally devised for the Commedia Project, 1 and subsequently adapted for other projects. 2 The second part of the article describes the encodings used for the transcription and editorial phenomena described elsewhere in this publication.

Il libro illustra la ricezione della figura di Alessandro Magno in Italia dalla fine dell’età antica all’Umanesimo compreso, concentrandosi in particolare sulla cultura ferrarese quattrocentesca da Leonello a Ercole I d’Este e propone inoltre l’edizione critica e commentata della traduzione latina di Niccolò Perotti e del volgarizzamento di Ludovico Sandeo di un opuscolo morale di Plutarco, il De fortuna aut virtute Alexandri Magni.

Questions about areas of controversy or conflict between the Christian faith and the academic discipline can (and sometimes do) assume an easy dichotomy between the two. One's dual commitments to "the Faith" and the guild are often seen as competing allegiances, each vying for possession of the Christian soul. The guild may even be perceived as intolerant or antagonistic toward the Christian faith. Would-be Ph.D. students of evangelical backgrounds, for example, are often warned not to be naïve, but to be suspicious of secular institutions of higher learning. Such was my experience, as I left Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (M.Div.; Th.M.) for doctoral work in NT at Emory University. The problem with the aforementioned formulation, however, is the a priori "us versus them" mentality it fosters-a mentality that can foreclose genuine learning opportunities and undermine the very faith it seeks to defend. It also assumes a broad consensus among Christians on the identity and definition of those items of the faith in need of safeguarding vis-à-vis "the guild." Little did I know that upon returning to my alma mater, I would be the one suspected of having wavered from "the Faith."

The present volume comprises eleven lectures delivered under Tattvabodha lecture series at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for Art, New Delhi. This article provides an introduction about the trends of textual interpretation in Indian scholarship, problems of understanding with regard to texts from different denominations and the need for systematic compilation, using ancient grammatical and interpretative texts and modern technology, for inducing correct understanding of the Indian devotional and scholastic tradition.