Studies in the transmission of Latin texts

拉丁文本传播研究

• 批准号: AH/E003508/1
• 负责人: Stephen Phelps Oakley
• 金额: $ 3.62万
• 依托单位: University of Reading
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2007
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2007 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FE003508%2F1
• 关键词: Studies; transmission; Latin; texts

Classical Latin texts survived from antiquity until the beginning of printing in the 1460s and 1470s only because they were copied by scribes. The mass production of texts was impossible, and a work could survive only if someone wanted to read it and thereby went to the trouble of finding or making a copy. In the time of Charlemagne most copying took place close to the Rhine and the centre of his empire. In the High Middle Ages most copying took place in France, and Paris emerged as the centre of the learned world. In the Renaissance Italy replaced France, and first Florence and then Rome were the most important centres of learning. In general, far more copying took place in the fifteenth century than in previous centuries. I study the process by which eight works of literature (Curtius Rufus' Historia Alexandri Magni, Vitruvius' De Architectura, Porphyrio's commentary on Horace, Dictys' Trojan War, Cicero's speeches Pro Murena and Pro Sexto Roscio Amerino, and Cato's and Varro's treatises on agriculture) survived from antiquity until the first printed editions. This has led me to examine some 500 manuscripts and incunables (that is editions printed before 1500). Such a study has various uses. First, editors of these texts need to know which are the best manuscripts to use. One establishes the best manuscripts by looking at the errors shared by the manuscripts. This allows one to construct a stemma or family tree, and from a family tree it is often obvious which manuscripts need to be used by editors. In general, these manuscripts will have no surviving ancestors. This is the first systematic study of all the witnesses to these works, and for the first time it will allow a complete understanding of the various manuscript traditions. It will also allow the critical apparatus (that is the place below the text where editors cite manuscript readings) to be improved for all these authors, but most radically for Dictys, Cicero, and Curtius. My work on Curtius confirms a lesson already taught by others but sometimes ignored: editors should not ignore fifeenth-century manuscripts. Second, the process of the transmission of classical Latin texts from Antiquity to the Renaissance is an important and interesting subject in its own right. A consequence of the need for each text to be an individual copy is that some texts were not widely diffused. The general outlines of the process are well-known, but there is still much work to be done on the detail. No one read the speeches of Cicero that I study until c.1400, when a copy of them turned up at Cluny; this copy was carried off to Italy by the famous humanist Poggio Bracciolini, and I study the diffusion of the text in Italy. By contrast, of some fifty manuscripts of Cato and Varro only two were written outside Italy, and plainly these texts were hardly known in northern Europe before printing. Much of my work is concerned with this process of diffusion, especially in Italy. Third, manuscripts of classical Latin authors are studied also by e.g. paleographers, historians of culture, and art-historians. Scholars in these disciplines need to know where manuscripts were produced. In this my work can help. For given the difficult conditions under which texts spread it is likely that manuscripts of an author in a certain locality will share errors in common. This means that the genealogical families that my stemmata produce can often be used by e.g. art-historians to help in the localization of manuscripts. Many of the best results of recent research in the field have been achieved by paleographers and classicists making use of each other's expertise. This has led to an exciting transformation in our study of manuscripts, especially those of the Renaissance: no longer are manuscripts just impersonal artefacts represented on a stemma, but they can be related to a locality, and often to afigure of flesh and blood. I hope that my studies will help make further advances.

古典拉丁文文本从古代一直保存到14世纪60年代和14世纪70年代印刷术的开始，只是因为它们是由抄写员抄写的。文本的大规模生产是不可能的，只有当人们想要阅读一部作品并不辞辛苦地寻找或复制它时，它才能存活下来。在查理曼时代，大多数复制发生在靠近莱茵河和他的帝国中心的地方。在中世纪晚期，大多数抄袭发生在法国，巴黎成为学术世界的中心。在文艺复兴时期，意大利取代了法国，先是佛罗伦萨，然后是罗马，成为最重要的学习中心。总体而言，15世纪的复制活动比前几个世纪要多得多。我研究了八部文学作品(Curtius Rufus的《Alexandri Magni的历史》、Vitruvius的《建筑的历史》、Porphy rio对Horace的评论、Desiys的《特洛伊战争》、西塞罗的演讲Pro Murena和Pro Sexto Roscio amerino，以及卡托和瓦罗的农业论文)从古代到第一版印刷版幸存下来的过程。这使我研究了大约500份手稿和印本(即1500年之前印刷的版本)。这样的研究有多种用途。首先，这些文本的编辑需要知道哪些是最好的手稿。人们通过查看手稿共有的错误来确定最好的手稿。这使得人们可以构建一棵树干或家谱，从家谱中往往很容易看出编辑需要使用哪些手稿。一般来说，这些手稿将没有幸存的祖先。这是对这些作品的所有见证者进行的第一次系统研究，也是第一次让人们对各种手稿传统有一个完整的了解。它还将允许所有这些作者的批判性工具(即编辑引用手稿阅读的文本下方的位置)得到改进，但最根本的是对迪西斯、西塞罗和柯蒂乌斯来说。我关于柯蒂乌斯的研究证实了别人已经教给我的一个教训，但有时被忽视了：编辑不应该忽视五世纪的手稿。其次，古典拉丁文文本从古代到文艺复兴的传播过程本身就是一个重要而有趣的课题。每个文本都需要是单独的副本的结果是，一些文本没有得到广泛传播。这一过程的大体轮廓是众所周知的，但在细节上仍有许多工作要做。直到公元1400年，我研究的西塞罗的演讲稿才有人读过，当时克卢尼出现了一份演讲稿的副本；这份副本被著名的人文主义者波吉奥·布拉乔利尼带到了意大利，我研究了文本在意大利的传播。相比之下，在卡托和瓦罗的大约50份手稿中，只有两份是在意大利以外的地方写的，显然，这些文本在印刷之前在北欧几乎不为人所知。我的大部分工作都与这种扩散过程有关，特别是在意大利。第三，古典拉丁作家的手稿也被研究，例如古文字学家、文化史学家和艺术历史学家。这些学科的学者需要知道手稿是在哪里产生的。在这方面，我的工作可以提供帮助。因为考虑到文本传播的困难条件，某一地区的作者的手稿很可能会有共同的错误。这意味着，我的茎所产生的家谱家族经常可以被艺术历史学家等人用来帮助手稿的本地化。最近这一领域的许多最好的研究成果都是由古文字学家和古典学家利用彼此的专业知识而取得的。这导致了我们对手稿的研究发生了令人兴奋的变化，特别是文艺复兴时期的手稿：手稿不再只是在困境中代表的客观艺术品，但它们可以与一个地方有关，往往与血肉之躯有关。我希望我的学习能帮助我取得更大的进步。