Thesis--Freie Universität Berlin. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 201-207).

Thesis--Freie Universität Berlin. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 201-207).

The need for a science of the literary text is created when a startling number of critical theories succeed in mystifying rather than in clarifying the work of literature. The literary text disappears and it is replaced by one of its possible interpretations: certain aspects of the text are selected to serve as explanation for the whole. Even in more current critical trends the tendency is to subordinate the literary text to the methodology and to view it as one form of expression in an all-embracing typology of texts. In all of these cases the applied methodological canons are all foreign to the literary work in that they were elaborated to explain objects other than literature. When these canons are utilized to explain literature they are bound to give us only a partial and unsatisfactory rendering of its real complexity. To found a science of the literary text and to depart from the traditional critical approaches it is necessary first of all to define what is a literary text and what is this literariness which distinguishes it from other texts. On these bases a methodology is elaborated which is proper only to the literary text and to no other object. The manner in which we have attempted to approach the problem can be generally divided into two stages: deconstruction and reconstruction. The first stage indicates a process of demystification of the literary text by means of a critique of the basic methodological assumptions of the more dominant and current critical trends. As a result, the second stage points to the attempt to determine the laws which govern the production of the literary work: literary laws which underlie any literary work, an understanding of which is necessary to the explication of literature. This double theoretical undertaking can be more specifically subdivided into four parts: l) Marginalia: a general critical account of the basic critical fallacies of modern literary criticism; 2) Theory: a definition of the literary text and of the laws which condition literary production; 3) Theoretical Practice: the elaboration of a critical methodology developed in terms of literary laws; h) Critical Practice: the practical application of this method to a contemporary novel. In consideration of the complexity and difficulty of the task we are aware of the limitations and of the inadequacies of our own theoretical effort, and we cannot but present our findings as suggestions towards a future and more rigorous scientific elaboration. The paper itself indicates where the major obstacles are to be found and what are the major fallacies to be avoided. The main purpose of this thesis, for writer and reader alike, is then to contribute to a greater degree of critical self-clarification. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

No description available.

No description available.

The fifth-century manuscript known as the Codex Alexandrinus contains the entirety of the Greek Old and New Testaments and is a landmark in the history of the Bible. Though Alexandrinus represents a primary witness to the biblical text, no modern palaeographical or codicological analysis of the manuscript has been performed: the most in-depth studies of the codex pre-date the great papyrological finds of the 20th century. By executing both palaeographical and codicological analyses of the manuscript in light of a modern understanding of the textual history of the Bible and of Hellenistic Greek, and by additionally introducing statistical analysis into what has traditionally been a subjective field of research, this dissertation processes the textual and paratextual data of the manuscript to a degree previously unattained. The focus of the analysis is on the Gospels, which are quite unique in Alexandrinus: they stand at the headwaters of the Byzantine text form; they contain the earliest extant implementation of the Old Greek chaptering system; and the interaction between the unit delimitation and the Eusebian Apparatus in the Gospels is unique among the great uncial manuscripts. However, the analyses extend to both the Old and New Testaments to provide a context in which to study the Gospels. Among the discoveries made in this dissertation, this study overturns the view that a single scribe was responsible for copying the canonical New Testament books and demonstrates that the orthography of the Gospels can no longer be used to argue for the Egyptian provenance of the codex. As the first in-depth study of unit delimitation in the Gospels of Alexandrinus, this work reveals the complex relationship between the paragraphing system, the chaptering structure, and the incorporation of the Eusebian Apparatus from a separate exemplar. Finally, one result of the examination of the Eusebian Apparatus introduces the cascading error as a newly identified category of scribal error.

No description available.

Since the eighteenth century, various hypotheses have been proposed by scholars in an attempt to solve the Synoptic Question. Most of these scholars have used more or less the same Greek text, yet they have come up with different conclusions. So, the question arises whether it is possible to find a trend in the manuscripts dating up to the fifth century which sheds additional clues on the relationships among the Synoptic Gospels. To address this, I have taken the text of the 27th edition of Nestle-Aland as the basis for analysis through the use of the colour-coded scheme proposed by the Karawara Gospels Project. However, in the same colour-coding exercise, the variant readings from the relevant manuscripts are also displayed. This facilitates the identification of any particularities. Since the Synoptic Gospels contain too much to cover within the constraints of this research project, there is a need to select enough material to make the study relevant. The passion narrative has been selected on the basis of its content and the generally agreed closeness of the texts in all three Synoptic Gospels. So, all the sections, as defined in the Aland Synopsis, in the Triple Tradition are colour-coded and analysed. The relevant variant readings in these sections are also taken into consideration. To display the colour-coding more accurately, it was found that a commonly used and available format is more appropriate since printing is still not a viable alternative. Thus, all the colour-coded sections, as found on the attached CD ROM, are converted into the PDF format and the Adobe Acrobat Reader, widely available through the Internet, can be used to view them. This study has pointed out that in spite of the commonly agreed closeness of the texts, that of Luke varies quite markedly from the other two.

La thèse vise à fournir une nouvelle édition critique des poèmes de Peirol d’Alvergne, un troubadour vécu pendant l’époque dorée de la lyrique occitane. En raison du nombre de mélodies attestées dans sa tradition manuscrite, l’œuvre de Peirol mérite d’être étudiée de façon plus approfondie de ce qui a été fait jusqu’à présent, surtout si on considère que la poésie et la musique étaient à ce moment-là indissolubles et que, dans les chansonniers des troubadours, la présence de mélodies est plutôt rare. Par conséquent, on propose une édition des seize compositions d’amour pourvues de notation musicale qui sont attribuées à ce poète. Le travail éditorial constitue un défi en soi. Si, d’une part, chaque attestation manuscrite doit être considérée singulièrement comme un « Texte », avec sa propre valeur historique, de l’autre part, une édition qui ne compare pas de façon minutieuse les données fournies par l’ensemble de la tradition renonce à approfondir notre connaissance de la littérature médiévale. Fort de ces constats, cette recherche vise alors à dépasser les méthodes d’édition traditionnelles, c’est à dire celle bédiériste et celle lachmannienne, en fournissant, à côté des textes, une analyse soigneuse de plus de trente sources, pour ce qui concerne soit leurs aspects codicologiques soit leurs relations génétiques, et un commentaire relatif aux choix éditoriaux et des questions d’ordre littéraire. En outre, le lecteur aura à sa disposition les éditions interprétatives de chaque témoin, ainsi que les autres étapes du procès philologique : les transcriptions diplomatiques et les collations. On fournit, enfin, les éditions des mélodies. / This work aims to offer a new, reliable edition of Peirol d’Alvergne’s poetry. A troubadour of the “Golden Age” of Old Occitan lyric, Peirol was an extremely successful poet during his time, as the abundance of manuscript witnesses proves. Moreover, while at the origins of vernacular lyric text and music were considered indissoluble, extant troubadour melodies are exceedingly rare. As Peirol is one of the few poets whose texts survive largely accompanied by musical notation, the edition is devoted specifically to this part of his corpus. The edition strives to go beyond the so-called Bédierian and Lachmannian perspectives of Medieval text editing: if each manuscript witness has the dignity of a «Text» that existed in time, it is also true that an edition that neglects a scrupulous study of the manuscript tradition is abandoning all efforts of deepening our knowledge of Medieval literature. For these reasons, on the one hand the text provides an extensive argumentation regarding the more than thirty manuscripts sources – both in their material aspects and in their mutual genetic relationships – and a commentary on literary issues and philological critical nodes; on the other, the reader will be able to consult the interpretative edition of all witnesses, along with every component of the philological process: diplomatic transcriptions, collations and edition of the melodies.

No description available.