Text-critical theory and the Tristan fragment

Abstract

The thesis is divided into five chapters and addresses itself to two basic topics. The first two chapters consist of an examination of the history and current state of textual criticism as it affects the editor of medieval German literature. The examination, which attempts to classify the various trends in textual criticism, is completed with the suggestion that a compromise method of editing texts is to be preferred. This compromise consists in the use of a "codex optimus" as copy-text, where the "codex optimus" is chosen by objective means. The stemmatic method of recension to an archetype is rejected. The next two chapters deal with the development of the compromise method and its application to the Tristan manuscript tradition (the Tristan of Gottfried von Straβburg). A hypothetical model of the manuscript tradition is set up, against which, by means of the use of probability theory, the actual tradition may be measured. Some of the tedious but essential sorting of data is done by computer and a programme for this work is included as an Appendix. The method is applied to lines 10610-10772 and 11429-11592 of the Tristan text: those lines which are covered by the Berlin fragment m (ms. germ.fol.923, Nr.4 [Oberlinsches Bruchstück]). A collation of the ten complete extant witnesses and the fragment m is undertaken from photographs of the manuscripts. The data are analysed and a "codex optimus" chosen. This is found to be the Heidelberg manuscript H (Cod.pal.germ.360). The fragment m is found to be a reliable and valuable witness to the Tristan manuscript tradition. The final chapter of the thesis outlines the conclusions reached as regards the Tristan manuscript tradition in particular, and the need for more objective and empirically verifiable text-critical methods in general. Included in the appendices are photographs of the fragment m.