English

Noun

stemmatics ‎(uncountable)

1. The study of multiple surviving versions of the same text with the aim of reconstructing a lost original.
   • 2004, Conor Fahy, "Old and New in Italian Textual Criticism", page 404 in Raimonda Modiano, Leroy Searle, & Peter L. Shillingsburg (eds.), Voice, Text, Hypertext: Emerging Practices in Textual Studies

     In other words, they must carry out an operation similar to the collations required by Lachmannian stemmatics, after which they must make a critical (i.e., subjective) choice. And, when constituting the text, they do not just slavishly copy their source, obvious errors included; their editions always contain an element of interpretation.

Related terms

• stemma

Translations