On the Significance of the Critical Text

Abstract

In the perspective of renewal of the methodology of the humanities (and, specifically, linguistic and literary science), we urgently need a comprehensive review of the accepted criteria for the edition of medieval Slavic texts, if we wish to prevent our discipline from becoming restricted to the role of a valuable but useless relic and our work to strictly editorial functions. Therefore I propose a number of reflections on three topics that I consider essential: (1) the distinction of the history of the work and the tradition of the text, (2) the editorial criteria, (3) the significance of the critical edition