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3.1 Petrarch: The Codice degli abbozzi Petrarch’s Canzoniere, also known as Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, is the earliest Italian work of which we have the original manuscript, which is partly autograph and partly idiograph (i.e., written by Petrarch’s copyist under the author’s direct supervision). Codex Vatican Latin 3195 preserves the final redaction on which the poet worked until his death, but at the same time contains traces of multiple redactions in authorial interventions on the manuscri...

A stark departure from traditional philology, What is Authorial Philology? is the first comprehensive treatment of authorial philology as a discipline in its own right. It provides readers with an excellent introduction to the theory and practice of editing ‘authorial texts’ alongside an exploration of authorial philology in its cultural and conceptual architecture. The originality and distinction of this work lies in its clear systematization of a discipline whose autonomous status has only recently been recognised. This pioneering volume offers both a methodical set of instructions on how to read critical editions, and a wide range of practical examples, expanding upon the conceptual and methodological apparatus laid out in the first two chapters. By presenting a thorough account of the historical and theoretical framework through which authorial philology developed, Paola Italia, Giulia Raboni and their co-authors successfully reconceptualize the authorial text as an ever-changing organism, subject to alteration and modification. What is Authorial Philology? will be of great didactic value to students and researchers alike, providing readers with a fuller understanding of the rationale behind different editing practices, and addressing both traditional and newer methods such as the use of the digital medium and its implications. Spanning the whole Italian tradition from Petrarch to Carlo Emilio Gadda, and with examples from key works of European literature, this ground-breaking volume provokes us to consider important questions concerning a text’s dynamism, the extent to which an author is ‘agentive’, and, most crucially, about the very nature of what we read.

At a time when written creativity no longer manifests itself through pen, but rather through keyboard, the growing interest inspired by authorial variants has led us to promote the English translation of the manual which, in 2010, first presented the history, methods and most significant cases of authorial philology, the branch of philology that deals with variants due to the author’s intentional desire to change the text, rather than with its transmission. Before authorial philology was ‘off...

2.1 The text Authorial philology is concerned, as we have seen, with the edition of the original, that is, of the manuscript written directly by the author (an autograph) or written by someone else under the author’s supervision (an idiograph), and of the prints edited by the author. There are many different cases, each of them carrying with it problems that are difficult to summarize in a general overview. To put it simply, the areas in which authorial philology proves most useful can be div...

4.1 Lope de Vega’s La Dama Boba Lope de Vega’s vast theatrical oeuvre is one of the most expansive bodies of texts from early modernity in Spain, and, for some time now, his more than four hundred plays have been the focus of the methodical analysis of philologists attempting to create a complete critical edition. The PROLOPE Project was founded by Alberto Blecua in 1989 to tackle this monumental undertaking, along with numerous efforts to improve the philological understanding of his literar...

A definition of authorial philology Authorial philology — a felicitous term coined by Dante Isella (Isella 1987) — differs from philology of the copy (which studies variants introduced through transmission) because it examines the variants introduced by the author himself/herself on the manuscript or on a print. These are variants that bear witness to a change in the author’s will, to a more or less significant change of perspective regarding a specific text. Hence, the object of study of aut...

1.1 Author’s variants from a historical perspective In his seminal book Storia della tradizione e critica del testo (1934), Giorgio Pasquali laid the foundations for revising Karl Lachmann’s philology. In this book, Pasquali replaced the dream of a very ‘accurate and mechanical’ philology as proposed by Lachmann with a more historical and documental approach to the transmission of texts. Pasquali also notably pointed out the possible occurrence of authorial variants in classical texts as one ...