Register for a CSMC workshop
Identifying Models and Copies on the Basis of Material Evidence: At the Intersection Between Manuscript Studies and Philology
When: Thursday, 10 November 2022, 9:30 am – 5:30 pm; Friday, 11 November 2022, 9:30 am – 4:00 pm (CET)
Where: Warburgstraße 26, 20354 Hamburg, Room 0001
This workshop aims to investigate from a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary perspective the extent to which specific material features and matters of formatting can be studied to understand the genetic relationships between manuscripts. These fall under the umbrella category of the so-called 'material evidence' originally proposed for the eliminatio codicum descriptorum by S. Timpanaro (1985). As defined by M. Reeve (2011 [1989], 152), material evidence is 'any peculiarity of a witness other than its readings that accounts for an innovation in another witness'. This definition thus includes cases such as damaged or missing pages, peculiarities in the visual organization of content and paracontent, and unclear script.
Some of the questions this workshop will address are: To what extent has this methodology been so far used in the various manuscript cultures? Is it possible to allot the different manifestations of material evidence to meaningful and useful categories? What can the study of material evidence tell us about the transmission of manuscripts and works in different cultures? How can artefact profiling help scholars to evaluate the worth of certain cases of material evidence (e.g. ink analysis and recovery of erased content)? Is it possible to broaden up the scope of this approach in order to include epigraphy?