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What is Authorial
Philology?
Paola ItalIa, GIulIa RabonI, et al.
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Paola ItalIa, GIulIa RabonI, et al.
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What is Authorial Philology?
A stark departure from tradional philology, What is Authorial Philology? is
the rst comprehensive treatment of authorial philology as a discipline in its
own right. It provides readers with an excellent introducon to the theory
and pracce of eding ‘authorial texts’ alongside an exploraon of authorial
philology in its cultural and conceptual architecture. The originality and
disncon of this work lies in its clear systemazaon of a discipline whose
autonomous status has only recently been recognised.
This pioneering volume oers both a methodical set of instrucons on how
to read crical edions, and a wide range of praccal examples, expanding
upon the conceptual and methodological apparatus laid out in the rst two
chapters. By presenng a thorough account of the historical and theorecal
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 alteraon and modicaon.
What is Authorial Philology? will be of great didacc value to students and
researchers alike, providing readers with a fuller understanding of the raonale
behind dierent eding pracces, and addressing both tradional and newer
methods such as the use of the digital medium and its implicaons. Spanning
the whole Italian tradion from Petrarch to Carlo Emilio Gadda, and with
examples from key works of European literature, this ground-breaking volume
provokes us to consider important quesons concerning a text’s dynamism,
the extent to which an author is ‘agenve’, and, most crucially, about the very
nature of what we read.
As with all Open Book publicaons, this enre book is available to read for free on the
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Cover Image: Ludovico Ariosto, Frammen autogra dell’Orlando furioso, c. 26r, Ferrara, Biblioteca
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ItalIa, RabonI, et al. What Is authoRIal PhIloloGy?
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2. Methods
Paola Italia
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
dierent cases, each of them carrying with it problems that are dicult
to summarize in a general overview. To put it simply, the areas in
which authorial philology proves most useful can be divided into two
fundamental categories: the edition of in eri texts, which comes under a
category more precisely referred to by Cesare Segre as genetic criticism
(see Gavazzeni and Martignoni 2009), and the edition of texts in multiple
versions, which falls into the so-called criticism of variants.
2.1.1 Edition of in fieri texts
Let us start with the case of a text attested to by one manuscript, be it
an autograph or an idiograph. The manuscript can be clean (as in the
case of a fair copy), or it can bear traces of a reworking process. The
edition of a clean manuscript is similar in many ways to the edition of a
single-witness text in the eld of traditional philology (which studies
variants introduced through transmission). Of course, an autograph
is to be treated dierently than an idiograph. An autograph directly
exemplies the author’s writing and phonetic habits. In an idiograph,
in contrast, the copyist’s mediation can introduce alterations and/or
standardizations, resulting in forms which are alien to the author’s
© Paola Italia, CC BY 4.0 https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0224.02
30 What is Authorial Philology?
habits. There is a particular problem with regard to errors, which can
also be found in autographs. Errors especially occur when authors copy
down their own work, that is, when a text is transcribed by an author
from a previous document. There is a variety of positions on how errors
should be dealt with, ranging from absolute compliance to the text of
the autograph to the correction of everything that can be considered no
more than a mistake. Whatever the decision, editors have to point out
clearly their interventions.
When there are variants on the single manuscript preserving a text,
the philologist will have to establish critically the text and decide
which kind of apparatus will better represent the variants found on the
manuscript. The question ‘Which version should I choose as copy-text?’
can be answered in two ways.
1. The philologist can decide to transcribe the base-version, that
is, the very rst version of the text in chronological order. Any
further variants will be collected, from the rst to the last, in
the apparatus (which will be called evolutionary).
2. Alternatively, the philologist can take as a reference the
last version as it can be reconstructed from the manuscript. The
apparatus (which will be called genetic) will collect the
corrections through which the author came to the nal version
of the text, from the last to the rst. As we will see, it is also
possible to represent the corrections in a progressive way, that
is, from the rst to the last, the last being the one chosen as
copy-text.
In the case of unnished texts, it is necessary to make very dicult
choices, especially when the text has not come to a nal revision.
2.1.2 Editions of texts in multiple versions
Of course, the situation is dierent when a work is preserved in more
than one authorial version (manuscript and/or in print). In such a
case, philologists must ask themselves whether or not the preserved
versions are comparable. If they are, the whole elaboration process
can be represented in the apparatus with respect to the writing phase
which has been chosen as copy-text. If not, when the versions widely
31
2. Methods
diverge (as in the case of Alessandro Manzoni’s Fermo e Lucia — Seconda
minuta — Ventisettana: see section 3.4), or when it is preferable to look
at them separately for study purposes (as with Giacomo Leopardi’s
Canti in the Gavazzeni edition (Leopardi 2009a): see section 3.5), the
philologist can edit each and every compositional phase, presenting the
internal variants for each, and create a separate apparatus, establishing a
connection between the last stage of each phase and the following stage.
All such situations can be more or less complex. Authors may
have come back at dierent times on their manuscripts, reused parts
of a previous version, or worked simultaneously on dierent versions
(something like this can happen nowadays when an author works on
photocopies or on the print-out of a le). What is more, the original
manuscript may have been lost, but the version it contained may have
been preserved in the ‘indirect’ tradition, that is, in non-authorial
ways, or ones not directly depending on the author. In this last case,
authorial philology and philology of the copy should work together in
order to distinguish any error introduced in the transmission from the
actual authorial variants. It is necessary to identify accurately the case
under study and make well-motivated choices, taking into account not
only the socio-cultural background, but also the appropriateness and
eectiveness of the representation (e.g., how easily text and apparatus
can be read). As we are starting to see, then, it can be dicult to know
which text should be chosen as copy-text, and this choice will always
have far-reaching implications, both on the ecdotic and the literary/
cultural levels.
The author’s last will?
Let us begin with a concrete example. Let us say that a text was
republished by an author several times and in dierent formats. If a
publisher appointed us to edit a modern edition of this text, which
edition should we prefer? The rst, the second, the third, or the last
one? The choice is not easy to take. Until the last century, it was standard
practice to publish the text which reected the so-called ‘author’s last
will’. This would mean, in our case, that we should opt for the last
edition published by the author. However, objections to the concept
of the ‘author’s last will’ have been raised in recent years, gradually
32 What is Authorial Philology?
breaching the communis opinio which elevated this notion almost to the
status of a dogma. In order to tackle the various aspects of this problem,
it is necessary to distinguish two levels:
‒ rst, we have to take into consideration any element in favour
of or against the adoption of the ‘author’s last will’ when
establishing which is the reference-text;
‒ then, when the reference-text has been decided upon, we have
to think about the criteria to follow to respect the ‘author’s last
will’ for each single reading.
Our belief is that the two phases regarding the ‘author’s last will’ — that
is, the overall textual setting of the text for the publication of the work and
the editorial intervention in the case of each chosen reading — should
be treated separately (on this, see Italia 2005). The rst level concerns
the idea of themselves and of their own work which authors may have
expressed throughout their life by means of an editorial plan, be it carried
out or only envisaged in their mind, as well as the form in which authors
may have delivered that idea to readers. The textual choice is indeed a
very hard one for the editor precisely because it has a bearing on the new
image of an author and of their work which is necessarily established by
a new edition. Bruno Bentivogli and Paola Vecchi Galli have commented
on the role of the editor in twentieth-century editions: ‘It falls on the
philologist to determine the most appropriate editorial strategy for the
text and to promote with the publication its most authoritative source:
the source may not be identied with the denitive or last version of a
book, but perhaps with the most “groundbreaking” and “innovative”
one for readers’ (Bentivogli and Vecchi Galli 2002: 163).
The second level concerns the editorial procedure that we need to
apply to the individual readings, and involves linguistic, graphic, and
typographic questions. Despite being related to the language and style
of every individual author, these matters can be addressed, at least to
some extent, in a general way. Twentieth-century critical editions feature
a wide range of interventions. Although there are signicant dierences
between one edition and the other, it is possible to identify a few constants,
which one day will hopefully lead to the adoption of a universal and
standard set of regulation within the academic community. We will
now present the problem as it is posed in Stussi (2006), who was the
33
2. Methods
rst to examine the elements in favour of and against both choices. The
elements in favour of the ‘author’s last will’ (i.e., republishing the last
version of the text published when the author was alive) can be traced
back to three main motivations:
‒ the authorial motivation calls for the respect for the personal
choices made by the author, a ‘feeling so commonly
widespread that it has easily come to dominate the publishing
eld too’ (Stussi 2006: 191): from this viewpoint, the ‘last will’
seems to provide the readers with a work perceived as ‘more
authentic’;
‒ the historical motivation maintains that the diachronic
perspective given by the adoption of the last version of a work
allows us to better understand the history of the text and
consider it as a historical process: from this viewpoint, the ‘last
will’ seems to provide the readers with a ‘more useful’ work in
terms of interpreting authors and their work;
‒ on the grounds that the passage from the rst to the last
version can be seen as a process through which the work
moves towards a more evolved stage, the critical-evolutionary
motivation implicitly looks at the last edition more favourably
than it does previous ones: from this viewpoint, the ‘last will’
seems to provide the readers with a ‘better’ work.
However, all the motivations in favour of the ‘author’s last will’ can be
overturned:
‒ authorial motivation: the last will does not always reect the
true intention of the author. Stussi has noted, for instance,
that there might be ‘restrictions to the expression of that will
in connection with the hereditary succession’, or ‘evident
mental disturbances, constraints etc.’ (2006: 191). The textual
‘primacy’ of the rst edition exclusively lies in the value
attached to it by the author, who links to that edition their own
idea of themselves and of their own work;
‒ historical motivation: the historical perspective can be better
appreciated if we consider the process in a diachronic way
from the rst to the last edition. Only the comparison between
34 What is Authorial Philology?
the editions can oer historically veriable information on the
language and style of the work, which are otherwise attened
out and oversimplied by a nal synchronic image. The rst
edition also allows us to appreciate the ‘critical reception’ of
the work and to acknowledge its ‘tradition’, that is, how the
work has had an impact on the literary system;
‒ critical-evolutionary motivation: the idea that the work evolves
from one edition to another towards a better form is a false
myth; the last editions are not always the best, and indeed
the inherent value of a work can be better appreciated in the
rst edition, which ‘normally represents the conclusion of the
original creative process of a work and is therefore the result
of the most intense creative period for the writer’ (Stussi 2006:
192).
It is easy to see that, depending on the circumstances, these arguments
can be applied both in favour of and against the adoption of the ‘author’s
last will’ as a criterion to establish which text we should publish. This
can lead to what has been called a form of ‘philological Pyrrhonism’,
if not to the ‘agnosticism of the self-appointed New Philology’ (Stussi
1994: 292), which can contribute to spreading a sense of annoyance at
critical texts and apparatuses, often considered as ‘accessory’ elements
of the text. In what follows, we will try to prove that that opinion is
wrong. As Paolo Cherchi has noted about the debate sparked o by the
New Philology, there are two matters at stake.
First of all, there is the dialectic between ‘text’ and ‘work’. As Cherchi
puts it, ‘The authority of philology has ended up creating so much
confusion between “text” and “work” that we feel uncomfortable when
we read a work whose text features uncertain readings, although for
centuries we have been doing nothing but reading “works”’ (Cherchi
2001: 145). The second issue is the relationship between philology and
Italian Studies. The prospect that (Romance) philology might develop
in innovative ways into a form of cultural history, and that Italian Studies
might grow into a form of comparative literature, has been regarded
as an antidote to the crisis of philology. This prospect, however, is not
borne out by the facts. On the contrary, such a notion has sometimes
contributed to a process of trivialization of the discipline, which can be
35
2. Methods
seen even in very prestigious editions. What is more, this issue has not
fostered a general debate on the methods and aims of the philological
discipline, especially beyond the eld of Italian studies. As a matter
of fact, there is no agreement within the scientic community on the
terminology to be used and on how corrections and authorial variants
should be represented. This has of course resulted in an anti-economic
proliferation of signs and abbreviations. Each new critical edition forces
the readers to learn a new system of representation (with new symbols,
initials and abbreviations), thus complicating the debate even within
the same community.
It is undeniable that reecting on these issues, as well as on the
reasonableness of any ecdotic choice, has far-reaching consequences for
the reception of the text and therefore for its interpretation. Let us take as
an example the case of the twentieth-century poet Giuseppe Ungaretti.
Ungaretti’s poems oer an example where an author’s last will
only appears gradually, but has ultimately taken form in two editions
that contain all the author’s works. These two editions represent or
have represented until now the unalterable standard, the ne varietur of
Ungaretti’s textual tradition. For Ungaretti, the Mondadori edition of
1942–1945, whose publication he sought and oversaw, concluded the
long and tormented variantistic process of the two collections L’Allegria
(we can now read this in a critical edition by Cristina Maggi Romano
1982) and Sentimento del tempo (in a critical edition by Rosanna Angelica
and Cristina Maggi Romano 1988). The 1942–1945 Mondadori edition
features three volumes: the rst and the second contain the already
mentioned L’Allegria and Sentimento del tempo; the third one is dedicated
to the Poesie disperse and was published, at the behest of the author, with
a dossier collecting the variants in print as commented on by Giuseppe
De Robertis. This represents an exceptional case in which textual
tradition and critics are connected by the author himself, who openly
directs the entire operation.
The denitive edition of Vita d’un uomo. Tutte le poesie — edited
in 1969 by Leone Piccioni while the author was still alive — gathers
the two main collections in their 1942–1945 version (there were very
few later authorial changes), together with the last nal editions of
Il Dolore, La Terra Promessa, Un Grido e Paesaggi, Il Taccuino del vecchio,
Dialogo, Nuove, Dernier Jours, and the Poesie disperse, that is, the texts
36 What is Authorial Philology?
published between 1915–1927 and not included in the denitive editions
of Allegria and Sentimento del tempo; another seven texts are grouped
together in a separate section of the edition entitled Altre poesie ritrovate.
The note to the text of L’Allegria — which was written by Ungaretti
himself — signicantly declares: ‘As a leopard cannot change its spots,
the author, who had dened the abovementioned editions as denitive,
could not help introducing at each new time a few small changes of
form’ (Ungaretti 1969: 528).
The choice made by the editors of the two critical editions of 1982
(L’Allegria) and of 1988 (Sentimento del tempo) diers from the one made
by Ungaretti in Vita d’un uomo. Cristina Maggi Romano and Rosanna
Angelica did not choose the 1942–1945 Mondadori edition (reproduced
in the three ‘Meridiani’) as base-text. They selected instead the second
1919 Vallecchi edition for L’Allegria, since this is more representative of
the literary pathway of the work than the 1916 princeps, and they chose
the initial version of each poem for Sentimento del tempo. In his 1990
‘N.d.D.’ (‘[Nota del direttore]’ published in Studi di Filologia Italiana),
Domenico De Robertis has explained that the development of Sentimento
del tempo essentially took place before the 1933 princeps (after which
there would only be textual additions), so that the history of the book
can be better understood ‘through the thorough examination of the
evolution of the single texts, until its 1933 denition’ (De Robertis 1990:
306). The concept of ‘author’s last will’ has been upset by the reasons
put forward in favour of these choices and the objections that even very
recently have been made.
The wide range of proposals which the critical editions have
provoked exemplies how delicate the choice made by the editor is.
Let us just look at L’Allegria. One option would be to choose as copy-
text the text of V, that is, the 1919 Vallecchi edition: this is the choice
taken by Maggi Romano. The alternative option would be to return to
U, that is, Il porto sepolto published in Udine in 1916. The adoption of
U is recommended by Carlo Ossola (Ungaretti 1990), who suggests
making use of the evolutionary variants within the commentary to the
text, thus, as Claudio Giunti remarks, ‘putting the critical interpretation
before the philological esprit de système’ (Giunta 1997: 174). In a similar
vein, Umberto Sereni and Carlo Ossola (1990) called for a critical edition
taking into account the transmission in print only: this last solution was
37
2. Methods
adopted in the 1945 Mondadori edition, which nevertheless ‘cannot be
called’, as Claudio Vela reminds us, ‘a critical edition’ (Bembo 2001:
1276). A further option would be to stick to the ‘last will’ expressed
in M (Mondadori 1942–1945), as proposed by Claudio Giunta (Giunta
1997: 175) on the basis of the ‘historical prestige of the witness’, ‘related,
on the one hand, to the exceptional “form” of the 1942 Mondadori print
(M), and on the other to the repercussions that that form had on the
subsequent work of Ungaretti’; this solution had already been adopted
when Ungaretti was alive by the editors of the denitive edition of Vita
d’un uomo. Tutte le poesie of 1969, but Giunta (1997: 183–84) proposes to
also give ‘the rst version published in volume’ of each witness, thus
determining a ‘multiplication of the textual items’ of each witness. The
existence of such opposite choices is a measure of the liveliness and
importance of what is a still-open debate.
Before we start any critical-interpretative study, it will be necessary,
as is now evident, to ask ourselves the following question: ‘What text do
we read when we read a text?’.
2.2 The apparatus
2.2.1 Genetic and evolutionary apparatus
If, as we have seen above, the apparatus is the concrete application of
the hypothesis represented by the text, the kind of apparatus to be used
in a critical edition will be determined by the choice we will have made
about the text. That choice will especially depend on whether or not we
stick to the author’s last will; and on how we decide to represent the
drafting process, either in a genetic or in an evolutionary way. According
to a punctual denition by Dante Isella (2009a: 100), an apparatus can
be genetic or evolutionary: what dierence is there between one and the
other?
1. A genetic apparatus is a graphical way to represent the
corrections that have formed over time on a manuscript, or on
a print with manuscript corrections, or on a typescript with
manuscript corrections in the case of twentieth-century texts.
The genetic apparatus is a synthetic and standardized system
to represent the genesis of a text, from its rst version to the
38 What is Authorial Philology?
one thought to be its last complete form, that is, the one picked
as copy-text. A genetic apparatus should not be considered as
a photograph of the text: it is rather a hypothesis made by the
scholar on the ways and chronological phases of the writing
process.
2. The evolutionary apparatus collects the variants that are
subsequent to the stage which we have decided to pick as copy-
text: that is, variants which do not belong to a phase in the
creation what is yet to become a text, but which rather belong
to the evolution of what is already considered a text. Of course,
the evolutionary apparatus is not an accurate reproduction
of the status of a manuscript: it is an interpretation given
by the editor of how the text evolved, from the phase which
has been picked as copy-text to the last version which can be
reconstructed from the manuscript.
The fact that an edition is provided with a genetic or an evolutionary
apparatus depends exclusively on what the critical editor has decided
to choose as copy-text (see Table 1 below). In short, if we decide to
pick as copy-text the last version of a text, the apparatus collecting the
corrections will be genetic. If, on the contrary, we choose as copy-text the
rst version of a text, the apparatus will be evolutionary. If we decide
to choose an intermediary version as copy-text (e.g., the base-reading
of the clean copy of a text immediately before further corrections were
made on it), the apparatus will be both genetic and evolutionary. It will
be genetic with regard to the corrections which have led to what has
been selected as copy-text; and it will be evolutionary as concerns the
corrections following the phase represented by the copy-text.
Table 1 Text and apparatus
Text Apparatus
Last version which can be
reconstructed
Genetic
First version which can be
reconstructed
Evolutionary
Intermediary version Genetic/Evolutionary
39
2. Methods
When we select as copy-text a version which is not the last one that we
can reconstruct from a manuscript provided with further corrections,
there are two possible scenarios: the variants persist or do not persist
in the complete text. The second scenario (i.e., the variants do not
persist) is oered by the eighteenth-century writer Giuseppe Parini’s
Il mattino, a work that was analyzed and edited by Isella. Parini’s rst
and second versions of Il mattino follow a very dierent compositional
logic. Between one and the other, there is an intermediate attempt to
correct the rst version. This attempt does not follow the logic that
will subsequently characterize the second version; it rather belongs
to a transitional, experimental phase, one soon abandoned by Parini.
In this case, the editor has no choice: it is necessary to distinguish the
dierent writing phases and to avoid any confusion. Thus, the variants
concerning the intermediate and provisional phase must be collected in
an evolutionary apparatus attached to the rst version.
In general, however, corrections usually lead to some kind of a result,
which is at least provisionally stable, and this can be achieved within the
same witness (as with the case of an overall revision of the same writing
phase), or on a dierent witness (when the corrections make it necessary
for the author to rewrite the text). In this latter case, the choice between
a genetic or an evolutionary apparatus is an open one, depending on
the editorial criteria. Let us take as an example the manuscript of the
most famous poem by Giacomo Leopardi, L’innito (in the version of the
so-called Naples notebook, housed in the Biblioteca Nazionale Vittorio
Emanuele III of Naples, C.L..). If we look carefully at the text, we
see that a few lines have been corrected with a pen which looks dierent
from the pen with which Leopardi wrote the base-version of the text
(see Fig. 1). Should we want to publish the text of the manuscript, we
would have two options:
1. we can publish the text which would better represent the
‘author’s last will’: in this case, we should select as copy-text
the transcription of the last reading which can be reconstructed
on the manuscript;
2. we can publish the text in its rst draft version: in this case, we
should select as copy-text the transcription of the rst complete
reading which can be reconstructed on the manuscript.
41
2. Methods
Let us see the two solutions, and the consequences they have in terms
of apparatus.
1. Text corresponding to the ‘author’s last will’
Idillio
L’Innito
1Sempre caro mi fu quest’ermo colle,
2 E questa siepe, che da tanta parte
3De l’ultimo orizzonte il guardo esclude.
4 Ma sedendo e mirando, interminato
5Spazio di là da quella, e sovrumani
6 Silenzi, e profondissima quiete
7 Io nel pensier mi ngo, ove per poco
8 Il cor non si spaura. E come il vento
9 Odo stormir tra queste piante, io quello
10 Innito silenzio a questa voce
11 Vo comparando: e mi sovvien l’eterno,
12 E le morte stagioni, e la presente
13 E viva, e ’l suon di lei. Così tra questa
14 Innità s’annega il pensier mio:
15 E ’l naufragar m’è dolce in questo mare.
The parts of text concerned with variants are here given in bold (both in
the case of immediate and late variants, about which see section 2.3.1).
As we have chosen as copy-text the last reading of the text, the apparatus
will necessarily be genetic, and it will try to represent the corrections
occurring from the rst version to the last one.
42 What is Authorial Philology?
2. Text corresponding to the base-version (rst writing of the text)
Idillio
L’Innito
1 Sempre caro mi fu quest’ermo colle,
2 E questa siepe, che da tanta parte
3Del celeste conne il guardo esclude.
4 Ma sedendo e mirando, un innito
5Spazio di là da quella, e sovrumani
6 Silenzi, e profondissima quiete
7 Io nel pensier mi ngo, ove per poco
8 Il cor non si spaura. E come il vento
9 Odo stormir fra queste piante, io quello
10 Innito silenzio a questa voce
11 Vo comparando. E mi sovvien l’eterno,
12 E le morte stagioni, e la presente
13 E viva, e ’l suon di lei. Così fra questa
14 Immensitade il mio pensier s’annega,
15 E ’l naufragar m’è dolce in questo mare.
As we have chosen as copy-text the rst complete reading, the apparatus
will necessarily be evolutionary, and it will try to represent the
corrections concerning the base-version as far as the last reading which
can be reconstructed on the manuscript.
Of course, the same set of issue applies in the case of dierent printed
versions, or in the case of versions transmitted both by manuscripts
and prints. When the versions can be compared with one another, so
that we do not have to provide an edition for each version, we have
once again two options: either we select as copy-text the last version
and represent the preceding writing process in a genetic apparatus, or
else we pick as copy-text the rst version and collect the subsequent
corrections in an evolutionary apparatus. We will later focus on how it is
possible to represent variants and corrections in a synthetic way by the
means of symbols and/or abbreviations referring to general categories
43
2. Methods
of corrections, without having to provide extended explanations. We
will see, in other words, how an editor concretely sets up an apparatus.
For now, let us see the general criteria that regulate how variants are
represented.
2.2.2 Vertical and horizontal apparatus
Variants can be represented in two ways: in a vertical apparatus (also
called ‘column representation’, Stussi 2006: 187), or in a horizontal
apparatus (also called ‘linear representation’, ibid.: 189).
Vertical or column representation
All the corrections from the rst to the last that concern a line are put
in columns. Deletions leading to the writing of a new reading and
insertions of new readings are identied by using typographic markers
such as italics or bold. The reference-text can be the last or the rst as
reconstructed from the manuscript. Sometimes it is identied with
typographic markers such italics or bold; sometimes it is reproduced
in full, either in the same page of the text put in columns, or at the
beginning of the edition, where it can be read in full either as a starting
or a nishing point. In the column representation, temporal succession
is set out in vertical form. Lines or textual segments where variants
are not found are not repeated, so that is easy to see where and how
corrections occur. Clearly, this kind of apparatus can only be used for
poetry because the line does not normally exceed a typographic line, so
that the variants can be put in columns below it.
This kind of apparatus was adopted for the rst time for Giacomo
Leopardi’s Canti in the 1927 edition by Francesco Moroncini. Since then,
it has been used in several important editions of poetic texts. Its great
advantage is that readers do not have to refer constantly to the apparatus
in order to follow the genesis of the text, because text and apparatus
are not divided, and they can visually reconstruct the writing process.
The disadvantage is that readers cannot read the text in its entirety and
free from the corrections, unless one form of the text is reproduced
separately, either before the actual critical edition, as Moroncini did with
Leopardi’s Canti, or in the upper part of the page, as Emilio Peruzzi did
45
2. Methods
in a subsequent critical edition of Canti (see section 3.5). Less obvious
but just as signicant is another drawback with this kind of apparatus,
namely, that since corrections are grouped together according to the
lines, this makes it dicult to see the connections between corrections
that relate to bigger syntactic units and thus exceed the length of a verse.
This often occurs in poetry, where syntactic and metric units do not
necessarily coincide.
Let us now look at another example from the Naples notebook of
Leopardi’s Idilli: La vita solitaria (see Fig. 2).
Let us focus on lines 64–68 reproduced below. As per the column
representation, corrections are given line-by-line. As can easily be seen,
this does not help us to understand the syntactic connection underlying
the real correction, which occurs between verses 66–67 (see ‘ritorna’ and
‘riede’, here marked in bold). At a rst glance, the column representation
can be misleading: ‘pensando’ (‘thinking’) seems to be corrected to
‘ritorna’ (‘returns’), while ‘riede’ (‘returns’) seems to be corrected to
‘tosto’ (‘quickly’). In fact, it is ‘ritorna’ that takes the place of ‘riede’
(in other words, ‘ahi ma pensando / Che di lui non si cura anima viva,
/ Riede al ferreo sopor’ is corrected to ‘ahi ma ritorna / tosto al ferreo
sopor’):
64 Odo sonar ne le romite stanze
65 L’arguto canto; a palpitar si move
66 Questo mio cor di sasso: ahi ma pensando
ritorna
67 Che di lui non si cura anima viva,
Riede al ferreo sopor, chè la più bella
Tosto ch’è fatto estrano
68 Parte di questa vita il ciel negommi
Ogni moto soave al petto mio.
46 What is Authorial Philology?
Horizontal or linear apparatus
The horizontal apparatus is based on a clear distinction between text
and apparatus, which are separated from one another and graphically
distinguished. The text is located in the upper part of the page, while
the apparatus is usually located immediately below it. Variants are
collected in the apparatus one after the other. Whereas in the column
representation temporal succession is set out in vertical form, in the
linear representation temporality is represented by the means of
horizontality. The part of text concerned with a variant is repeated
in the apparatus and is followed by a square bracket. The variant is
located immediately after the square bracket. In a horizontal apparatus
we can also nd numbers and/or letters which refer to various phases
of elaboration; abbreviations which indicate the position of the variants;
and diacritic signs or dierent fonts which distinguish the variants from
a chronological viewpoint. The end of a series of corrections is marked
with the letter T (Text), meaning that the series nishes with what we
nd in the copy-text (which in turn corresponds, of course, to what we
nd before the square bracket). We will focus on the meaning of the
most commonly used abbreviations and diacritic signs in section 2.5.
The disadvantage of the horizontal apparatus is that, in order for
readers to follow and appreciate the corrections, it is necessary for
them to refer constantly to the text placed above. This becomes more
problematic when the apparatus is located, due to editorial reasons, at
the end of the book — and not, as would be preferable, immediately
below the text. If the apparatus is overly complex, it can even be printed
apart, in a separate volume. This was the case for the critical edition of
Fermo e Lucia, that is, Manzoni’s rst draft of the novel I promessi sposi
(see section 3.4). Most scholars are more familiar with a representation
in which text and apparatus are separated. As well as this familiarity,
another benet of the horizontal apparatus is that it can be used for
both poetry and prose. In poetry, the verse number is usually given
immediately before the part of text in which the variants appear. In
prose, the topographic reference is given with the number of the carta
(recto/verso) or page (side of the page); or sometimes with the number
of the paragraph when the text is divided into paragraphs made by the
editor (this will then need to be explained in the Note to the text).
47
2. Methods
Let us see once again the lines 64–68 of Vita solitaria, now represented
with a horizontal apparatus:
64 Odo sonar ne le romite stanze
65 L’arguto canto; a palpitar si move
66 Questo mio cor di sasso: ahi ma ritorna
67 Tosto al ferreo sopor, ch’è fatto estrano
68 Ogni moto soave al petto mio.
------------------
66–68 ritorna … mio.] AN 1pensando | Che di lui (see varia lectio) non si cura anima
viva, | Riede al ferreo sopor, chè la più bella | Parte di questa vita il ciel
negommi. from which T (with pen C)
Further on, we will see in detail the meaning of numbers, letters,
abbreviations and dierent fonts used in the apparatus.
2.3 Variants
2.3.1 Immediate and late variants
Let us now return to the manuscript of L’innito (Fig. 1). If we look
carefully at the text, we can easily notice that the corrections are not all
of the same kind, since they have been made with dierent pens, and
probably at dierent times.
‒ Let us focus for a moment on the correction concerning line 9,
where the proposition ‘fra’ is corrected by Leopardi to ‘tra’. It
seems that the correction was made with a dierent pen from
both the pen used for the base-text and the pen used for the
other corrections: the colour of the ink is more reddish and the
stroke of the pen is thinner.
‒ The text concerned with a variant in line 7 remains the same
in both the nal versions. Here, the correction was made at the
time of the rst draft of the text, and it is likely to have been
caused by the anticipation of the pronoun ‘mi’ when writing
the verse: ‘Io mi’ is corrected to ‘nel pensier mi ngo’.
48 What is Authorial Philology?
‒ Finally, let us examine line 13, where the punctuation mark of
the apostrophe mistakenly referred to ‘e’ is corrected with the
same pen used for the base-text: ‘e’ l’ is corrected to ‘e ‘l’.
These examples show that variants cannot be regarded as an
undierentiated unied group. They should be rather understood as
series, or layers, of corrections that are chronologically separate from one
another. The term ‘layer’ and the geological image of the ‘stratication’ are
extremely useful metaphors in order to better understand a manuscript
as it appears to the eyes of a scholar: a document that will usually contain
two kinds of variants, both immediate and late ones. Immediate variants
are made at the time of the writing of the text, and can be recognized as
such because they are normally located in the writing line. In the case
of an immediate variant, the author has generally deleted a part of text
which has just been written and has replaced it with something else;
then, the author has kept writing on the same writing line. Coming back
to L’innito, the correction concerning line 7 (‘Io mi’ → ‘nel pensier mi
ngo’) was undoubtedly made at the time of the writing of the verse.
Had it not been made at that moment, the space between ‘Io’ and ‘mi’
would be dicult to explain.
Of course, a deletion on the writing line does not necessarily indicate
an immediate variant. If a deletion concerns a part of text not necessary
for the meaning, then it could have been made at a later time, too. In
such a case, the text ‘works’ (that is, ‘it makes sense’), regardless of the
deleted part. On the contrary, in the presence of an immediate variant,
the text usually makes no sense if we read it with the deleted part. Line
7 of L’innito, for instance, should be read as follows: ‘Io mi nel pensier
mi ngo’. Such a reading would be problematic not only in terms of
meaning, but also from a metrical viewpoint, since it would imply that
Leopardi wrote a hypermetrical verse, and obviously the metrical aspect
is to be carefully considered when the editor works on a manuscript of
a poem.
In order to distinguish between immediate and late variants, it is
very important to pay close attention to the way the page is set out.
A part of text located in the external margin in place of a part of text
deleted in the writing line is very likely to have been added later in time
than the base-text. See, for instance, Figure 3.
51
2. Methods
A peculiar kind of immediate variant is represented by the implicated
variant. This category includes all the corrections implicated in the
meaning of what follows and that are above-written, below-written, or
aside-written (that is, written beside the base-text, either on the right or
on the left of it). The term implication refers to the connection between
textual elements: it can be syntactic, as in the case of gender or number
agreement, morphological, as in the case of verbal agreement, onomastic,
toponymical and so on.
Let us consider the manuscript of Manzoni’s Fermo e Lucia (Figure
4). Although it is written above, the correction ‘una’ → ‘un’ must be
immediate (i.e., it took place at the time of the writing of the base-
text), since it is grammatically implicated with the following masculine
noun ‘galantuomo’. On the contrary, the correction ‘che’ — which is
located in the interline — cannot be considered immediate because the
text retains its meaning even without the insertion: ‘che cosa vuol dire
parlare’ → ‘che sa che (inserted) cosa vuol dire parlare?’.
The corrections made after the rst draft are called late variants.
Strictly speaking, all the corrections not located in the writing line and not
implicated with the following text should be regarded as late variants.
Of course, a variant can be unmistakably acknowledged as late only in
a few cases. One such case is when an author has used two dierent
pens: one for the rst writing of the text; the other for the following
corrections. Another case is when a text has undergone systematic
corrections which have something in common, such as an onomastic
or toponymical change, or else when it is possible to identify within
the text dierent graphic or lexical habits belonging to the author. It is
therefore clear why it is fundamental for editors to have great familiarity
with the language and style of the text on which they are working, and
why philology, history of literature, and history of the language are
always interdependent in the edition of a text. An author can sometimes
come back to the text even shortly after writing a line, making an above-
written, below-written, or aside-written correction. In such a case, if seen
from a topographical standpoint, the variant could be considered late,
while it is in fact immediate when understood in terms of chronology
since it takes place at the same time as the writing of the base-text. How
is it possible, then, to identify — amongst the many above-written and
below-written variants that are not implicated — which variants are
52 What is Authorial Philology?
truly late, i.e., which variants were truly made in a subsequent moment
of revision? How can we identify which variants belong to a layer of
corrections later than the rst writing?
In the absence of graphic markers, such as dierent pens or pencils
with dierent colors, which could indicate dierent writing phases, it is
necessary to take into account a number of factors: the ductus (that is,
the stroke of the pen on the paper), the handwriting, the syntactic and
lexical connections, the style of the author, as well as the author’s habits
in terms of corrections. Of course, none of these factors can give us
certainty about whether a correction happened at the same time as the
rst drafting of the text. However, all of these elements can be taken into
examination and contribute — especially if they are all in agreement
with one another — to argue in favour of or against a hypothesis about
the chronology of a correction. This is the case for the late variants that
can be found in the so-called Prima minuta, that is, the manuscript of
Fermo e Lucia, Manzoni’s rst draft of I promessi sposi (see section 3.4).
Some of the variants are to be traced back to a late revision of the text of
the Prima minuta. Others are to be traced back to an initial revision of the
text of the so-called Seconda minuta, that is, the manuscript of the novel’s
revised version entitled Gli sposi promessi. For we now know, in the case
of many chapters of the rst tome and of a few papers of the fourth
one, the Seconda minuta/Gli sposi promessi has been written on the same,
thickly corrected papers of the Prima minuta/Fermo e Lucia.
Although authorial philology — like philology in general — is
not an exact science, it works towards the interpretation of the given
information with a precise scientic method, arguing for the most
plausible hypothesis to explain a problem. When new elements
emerge which cannot be explained by a given hypothesis, its validity is
suspended.
2.3.2 Horizontal apparatus: Explicit or symbolic
Since corrections over time are represented by the position of variants
vertically in the column, the vertical apparatus does not need
abbreviations or symbols. On the contrary, in the horizontal apparatus,
the use of markers and symbols keeps the editor from providing verbal
and analytical explanations for each and every variant. An eective
53
2. Methods
apparatus must be rational and synthetic, making use of a coherent and
consistent system of representation of the same graphic phenomena with
appropriate markers. The markers can be provided in an abbreviated
form in a symbolic way. Hence, the distinction between:
‒ explicit apparatus: the apparatus is called explicit when it makes
use of abbreviations in order to represent the same graphic
phenomena;
‒ symbolic apparatus: the apparatus is called symbolic when it
makes use of symbols for the same purpose.
In order to represent one of the most common cases in manuscript
texts — the correction from one variant to another, Italian editions of
authorial philology often make use of the generic abbreviation: corr. in (=
corretto in, ‘corrected to’), or of a directional arrow such as →. Dierent
arrows may represent dierent kinds of variants: a simple arrow
such as → may represent, for instance, an immediate variant, while a
two-colour arrow such as ➢ may represent a late variant. If a variant
is located in the interline, the explicit apparatus can make use of the
abbreviation: ins. (= inserito, ‘inserted’), which indicates that the text
in the manuscript is inserted in the upper interline (in the rare case of
a variant inserted in the lower interline, it is possible to further specify:
ins. nell’interl. inf. = inserito nell’interlinea inferiore, ‘inserted in the lower
interline’). For this same kind of correction, the symbolic apparatus
can make use of special markers such as a slash isolating the inserted
word: \word/. Mixed-type apparatuses, explicit and symbolic at the same
time, are very frequent: in order to represent in a synthetic and coherent
way the corrections, the apparatus makes use of both abbreviations and
symbols. Abbreviations are always italicized, so it is easy to distinguish
the text of the editor from that of the author. Both abbreviations and
symbols are usually explained in a Table, which is normally placed in
the edition after the Note to the text.
2.3.3 Photographic apparatus and diachronic apparatus
We are starting to see that some apparatuses try to account for the
dynamics of the corrections, while others try to provide a typographic
transcription of the status of the manuscript. This is the fundamental
54 What is Authorial Philology?
dierence which distinguishes the authorial philology practiced in Italy
from the French critique génétique and the German Editionswissenschaft,
all of which tend to represent the variants as they are found in a
manuscript, without distinguishing between text and apparatus. In an
attempt to respect the topography of the manuscript, above-written
variants are reproduced in the upper interline, while the parts of text
inserted in the margin of the manuscript are reproduced in the margin
too, and so on.
Following on from the methods of representation used by Francesco
Moroncini for Giacomo Leopardi’s variants, techniques of formalization
intended to reproduce the diachronic dynamics of the text have become
more and more sophisticated. This has been possible especially thanks
to Dante Isella and his students. A transition towards an apparatus
understood in a diachronic and systemic way has gradually taken place
over the last twenty years in Italy in the eld of authorial philology, thus
placing the Italian school at the forefront in the European philological
context. Let us see a few examples.
At the outset, the intention of the philologist was — even in the rst
horizontal apparatuses — to represent typographically the complex
phenomenology of the text. The idea was to provide a typographic
transcription of the text by means of abbreviations and symbols.
A particular eort was made attempting to provide the relevant
explanations with appropriate symbols or exponents. In the edition
of the Chigiano Codex of Torquato Tasso’s Rime supervised by Franco
Gavazzeni (Tasso 1993), for instance, the explanations concerning the
variants are given with an alphabetic superscript that refers to where
each variant is placed, depending on whether it is above-written (a),
below-written (b), written on the right (c), or written on the left (d).
This was a highly eective means for a better understanding of a
manuscript that is dicult to decipher such as the one considered here
(see section 3.3).
The same set of considerations applies for the most representative
apparatuses of twentieth-century works, that is, the ones included in
the editions of the works of Carlo Emilio Gadda. The fundamental 1983
critical edition of Racconto italiano di ignoto del Novecento by Isella adapted
a triple-lter system in order to represent in a rational way all the textual
materials which were not part of the copy-text: the apparatus, the
55
2. Methods
marginalia (metatextual notes) and the alternative variants (see section
3.6). In fact, this edition marked for authorial philology the beginning of
a new phase, one that was both more scientic and innovative in terms
of methodology.
In the apparatuses produced from the end of the 1990s onwards,
scholars have tried to represent — instead of the topographical location
of the variants — the stages in the text’s evolution as connected to one
another in chronological terms. The focus has not been on the way
in which a variant is graphically realized in relation to the base-text
(above-written, below-written, inserted, aside-written, and so on),
but rather on the chronological relation which a variant has with the
base-text and the other variants too. The main dierence — and the
main diculty when it comes to setting up the apparatus — lies in the
possibility of comparing the dierent phases with the nal text, as well
as in identifying and grouping the variants in relation to a ‘system’:
‘in the apparatus […] the portion of text altered by a variant (i.e., the
portion of text that comes before the square bracket) can always be
directly compared with the variant, or the variants, that aect it, so that
it can be studied directly and autonomously, without having recourse to
the copy-text’ (‘Introduzione’ to the critical edition of Canti supervised
by Franco Gavazzeni, in Leopardi 2009a: ).
The main advantage of this kind of apparatus is the autonomy it
oers to readers in terms of following the genesis of the text, with no
regard to its photographic representation. This possibility is even more
facilitated when there is the opportunity to have high-denition digital
reproductions, which allow us to distinguish — on the base of the
ductus and of the hand — the dierent phases of correcting presented
by the text. The apparatuses should not be designed to provide a
better interpretation of the autograph; they themselves should be
an interpretation of the autograph. Consequently, the reading of the
autograph should be intended as a possibility to test and verify — in
parallel — the work of philological interpretation and critical analysis
carried out by the editor. It is undeniable that, in order to set up an
apparatus of this kind, it is necessary to invest much more time than was
previously allocated in analyzing the manuscript. It is necessary in fact
to understand more deeply the ‘mechanisms’ underlying the correcting
process as well as the linguistic construction, whether in prose or in
56 What is Authorial Philology?
poetry. It is one thing to provide a representation of the variants in a
topographic way, but it is quite another to understand the variants in
relation to a diachronic system and place them within it.
2.3.4 Horizontal apparatus: progressive or derivative
Another important dierence concerns the distinction between
progressive and derivative apparatuses. The part of text concerned with
a variant, as we have said several times, is repeated in the apparatus
and followed by a square bracket. The corrections following the square
bracket can be represented in a progressive or derivative way, according
to the order followed in the presentation of the chain of variants.
In an evolutionary apparatus the corrections follow a progressive
chronological order, from the rst to the last. The passages from one
correction to another can be explained with an arrow or, as happens
in Italian editions, with the abbreviation corr. in (= corretto in). See
the following example, where corr. in is translated and abbreviated in
English as corr. to (= corrected to):
reading picked as copy-text] A corr. to B corr. to C corr. to D.
In a genetic apparatus, the corrections follow the exact opposite order:
they are reproduced in the apparatus from the last to the rst, i.e., in a
derivative way. In Italian editions the chain of variants starts with the
abbreviation da (translated as from in the example below), followed
by the chronologically second to last correction, which means that the
reading picked as copy-text is derived from the second to last, and that
the second to last is derived from the third to last, and so on, until the
oldest reading:
reading picked as copy-text] from D from C from B from A.
In a few cases, corrections can be represented both in a progressive and
derivative way. The correcting phases, for instance, are always represented
in a progressive way (e.g.: 1 from which 2 from which3 etc.), while minor
corrections encompassed within the same correcting phase are usually
represented in a derivative way (e.g.: 1 from which 2 (above-written to1) from
which 3 (aside-written to1 and 2)).
57
2. Methods
2.4 Marginalia and alternative variants
The work of Dante Isella also forms an essential precedent for one of the
major methodological innovations introduced over the last two decades
in the use of apparatuses. In his aforementioned 1983 edition of Gadda’s
Racconto italiano di ignoto del Novecento, Isella successfully rationalized
the representation of the dierent textual levels found in the manuscript
with a triple-lter system distinguishing between apparatus, marginalia
(metatextual notes) and alternative variants. Let us now examine these
elements in their fundamental relation to the text, considered as it were
as the fulcrum around which — unlike the methods adopted in French
philology — the critical edition should pivot.
2.4.1 The apparatus
The term ‘apparatus’ refers to a part of text which has a relation of
topographical and typographical subordination with the copy-text. The
apparatus is usually located in the footer and is in a smaller font size.
The apparatus may also be placed at the end of the volume. In this case,
the relation between apparatus and copy-text may become an extreme
subservient one. In a few cases, the apparatus occupies an entire volume
and is in the same font size of the copy-text. One example of this is found
in Isella’s edition of Fermo e Lucia (Manzoni 2006).
2.4.2 Marginalia (metatextual notes)
Isella has given the most exhaustive denition for the term marginalia
(Italian, ‘postille’) in the abovementioned edition of Racconto italiano di
ignoto del Novecento (Gadda 1983: xxxiv–xxxv):
[Marginalia refers to] the remarks provided by Gadda almost everywhere
on the page, commenting on what he has already written or what he is
about to write afterwards: the list includes statements of disappointment
or satisfaction, as well as words of warning or advice directed towards
himself; doubts (sometimes expressed with an interrogation mark), and
references to dierent sections of his text; and sometimes also annotations
which can be attributed to a later writing stage and are functional to the
rewriting of single passages in a clean version, or to the reuse of single
passages outside of the context of the Cahier.
58 What is Authorial Philology?
As they are side annotations to the base-text, the marginalia should
be ideally imagined in the margin of the page. In an edition, however,
typographical and editorial reasons make it necessary to collect them in
a separate section at the end of the text (ibid.):
The interested reader is punctually informed at the occurrence of every
marginalia by a conventional cross-reference mark located in the margin
of the page in place of the marginalia itself (>): something like a graphic
stylization of a hand with a pointed index nger which was frequent in
former times.
The placement of the cross-reference mark in relation to the text is
nothing more than a mere typographic and graphic arrangement to
indicate the presence of the marginalia. This is all the more appropriate
if we consider that the marginalia do not have the same status of the
text, but should be considered as metatextual notes (that is, as part of
the metatext).
2.4.3 The alternative variants
According to the denition given by Isella, alternative variants — which
are not to be mistaken for genetic or evolutionary variants — are
‘competing readings amongst which the author cannot choose, or
amongst which he/she has not made it unequivocally clear whether
or not he/she has chosen’ (Gadda 1983: xxxv). In editions, alternative
variants are located in the footer (below the copy-text) and are tagged
with superscript alphabetic letters, whereas a superscript number
is generally used for the notes of the author present in the text.
Alternative variants have a relation of parity with the text, both in
typographic and graphic terms, since they are in the same font size
as the text. The idea underlying this presentational approach is that
the editor does not know if the author — in a phase of further revision
of the manuscript — would have chosen the alternative variant, or the
reading that the editor has selected as copy-text. Consequently, from a
theoretical point of view, the alternative variants have the same status
and value of the text. The location in the footer and the use of the same
font size as the copy-text are, in other words, a way of conrming that
they are part of the text and not of the apparatus, i.e., that they have
the same status and value of the text as they are potentially part of it.
59
2. Methods
Likewise, marginalia are separated from the actual critical apparatus,
as we have seen above, as they do not have the same status and value of
the materials therein collected.
The distinction between text, apparatus and metatext is not only very
important in general terms, but it also has remarkable consequences
for the editing of single-witness texts which, although they cannot be
properly said to be ‘critical’, are nonetheless presented as ‘scholarly’,
resembling in every aspect a critical edition with regard to what
is found in the copy-text, despite not having an apparatus. These
editions — which meet a need for philological precision and accuracy,
as well as satisfying material and editorial requirements (the kind
of readers they address, the cost of paper, and so on) — attempt to
preserve the basic ‘theoretical framework’ we have just seen. They give
an account to readers of the alternative variants (located in the footer)
and of the marginalia (separately collected in an appendix or in the Note
to the text), although they do not oer the genetic and/or evolutionary
apparatus; or do not have the space for it. An example of the former
case is oered by the works of Pier Paolo Pasolini as edited by Silvia de
Laude and Walter Siti for the Mondadori series ‘i Meridiani’.
This simple, straightforward distinction between dierent textual
levels is the core premise of many critical editions by Isella and his
students, editions which contributed to providing specic ecdotic
solutions in several complex cases. It is particularly in these editions that
took place over time a signicant development towards a diachronic
and systemic apparatus.
2.5 Diacritic signs and abbreviations
In order to represent the phenomena found on the manuscript, critical
editions in the eld of authorial philology have made use of the
most diverse range of diacritic marks and systems of abbreviations.
Even though the scholars have repeatedly expressed the need for
homogenization, there are still no standard criteria. For this reason,
readers nd themselves forced to familiarize with the various systems
adopted by the editor every time they encounter a new edition. Standard
symbols are available only for a few corrections, and there is widespread
confusion about most of the others. Sometimes, the same symbol can
60 What is Authorial Philology?
even be used by dierent editors to represent dierent, if not opposite,
phenomena.
There is a certain agreement as for what concerns the most frequently
used symbol: the square bracket [ ]. It is well known that square brackets
are used to mark everything that is due to intervention of the editor,
including: restoring letters missing in truncated words (e.g., wor[d]);
the explanation of various phenomena; the lling in of lacunae and
of punctuation in texts with no print tradition (although it would be
preferable to explain how punctuation has been restored in the Note
to the text). When we nd square brackets, in other words, we should
expect an editorial intervention on the text. In a few cases, editors can
also make use of the angle brackets < > in order to represent the same
phenomena.
There is some agreement on the use of the series of three dots or
ellipsis within square brackets […] or round ones (…) to indicate that
part of the text is missing (the ellipsis is regularly used in this way
in abbreviated quotations). A closing square bracket ] marks in the
apparatus the separation between text and variant. What comes before
the bracket is the copy-text; what comes after it is the variant (which
can be either manuscript or in print), including any symbols and/
or abbreviations used to explain its topography and/or chronology.
Inverted angle brackets > < generally refer to a deletion (e.g., >xxxxx<).
A deletion can also be noted by the use of the italics (e.g., xxxxx). In
several apparatuses, however, the italics can also be used to indicate
what does not change (the ‘invariant’), while square brackets are used
to signal the deletion. Square brackets are often used, as we have seen, to
restore parts of the text, or even when the reading of a word is doubtful:
this is of course a very hazardous enterprise, because the use of the
same symbols to represent dierent phenomena, as we are seeing, can
cause great confusion.
Unlike the symbolic apparatus, the explicit apparatus makes use of
several abbreviations in order to represent the phenomena found in the
manuscripts. To distinguish them from the text (which is in a standard
non-italic font), the abbreviations are usually italicized. Here below you
may nd a list of some of the most frequently used abbreviations found
in Italian editions (an English abbreviation is suggested next to the
English translation):
Table 2 Abbreviations and their meaning
Abbreviation Complete Italian
form
English translation English
abbreviation
Meaning
da from from the reading is derived from a previous
reading, with one or more letter being
reused
da cui Tda cui il testo nale from which the nal
text
from which T the nal reading (that is, the one chosen
as copy-text) is derived from a previous
reading, with letters and/or words being
reused
corr. in corretto in corrected to corr. to the previous reading is corrected in the
following reading
sps. soprascritto written above written above the nal reading is written above a reading
deleted in the writing line
sts. sottoscritto written below written below the nal reading is written below a reading
deleted in the writing line
ins. inserito inserted ins. the reading is inserted
prima before before the nal reading is preceded by a previous
reading deleted in the writing line (there is
no reuse of the words/letters)
dopo after after the nal reading is followed by a reading
deleted in the writing line and then
abandoned
62 What is Authorial Philology?
In a symbolic apparatus, these abbreviations are replaced with diacritics
that are understood in the same way. While the explicit apparatus usually
gives us some details on the position of the variant such as whether
it is written above, below or in the margin of the text, the symbolic
apparatus cannot provide the same information, or must gather it in
footnotes attached to the apparatus. This was the approach taken by
Isabella Becherucci in her apparatus to Alessandro Manzoni’s Adelchi
(see Manzoni 1998).
In order to represent the diachronic relationship between the
variants, the symbolic apparatus makes use of arrows:
‒ the direct arrow → represents a correction (and thus replaces
the abbreviation corr. in ‘corrected to’);
‒ the inverted arrow ← represents a derivation (and thus
replaces the abbreviation da ‘from’).
In a few cases, in order to represent the chronology of the variants,
two kinds of arrows can be used: a simple arrow for an immediate
evolutionary variant (→), a two-colour arrow for a late evolutionary
variant (➢). In the case of a particularly extensive correcting phase, it
can be useful to represent smaller corrections within the same phase.
Topographic and diachronic details are placed within italicized round
brackets and are to be referred to the word that comes immediately
before the opening brackets. When details are referred to more than
one word, a reference mark is located at the beginning of the part of
text concerned with the variant. This mark can have dierent forms: a
black dot, a little star, an asterisk, or half of a square opening brackets
(⌈). When on the same line of the apparatus there are more than one
dierent variant, the variants are separated one from another with a
xed blank space (corresponding to the space of four or ve characters),
a small square gure □, or a tilde ~.
2.6 How to prepare a critical edition
Let us now see how an editor can prepare the critical edition of a
manuscript that features various series of corrections. Let us examine the
manuscript of Giacomo Leopardi’s poem to the Moon Alla luna — titled
in the manuscript (as we will now see) La Ricordanza — which helps
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2. Methods
us to understand, because of the number and types of corrections
it presents, how an editor should proceed. Like the manuscript of
L’innito that we have discussed above, the manuscript of Alla luna (see
Fig. 5) belongs to the so-called Naples notebook, which is housed at
the Biblioteca Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele III of Naples (C.L..)
amongst other papers that belonged to Leopardi. As we have already
noted, the manuscript is a clean copy, but still bears traces of interventions
of dierent kinds. The question one might ask when facing such a
document is: which textual version should be chosen as copy-text?
If we decide to document the last textual version of the manuscript,
we will have to transcribe the text including in it all the corrections, no
matter if they are immediate or come from later phases. We will have to
include in the text, in other words, both the corrections made with the
base-pen (the pen used for the rst writing) and the corrections made at
a later time. As we have decided to publish the last textual version, the
apparatus will obviously be genetic, giving account of all the correcting
phases tagged with superscript numbers. Any deletions made on the
writing line will be represented in the apparatus in a smaller font size
with a two-point dierence from the rest of the apparatus. Further
corrections will be indicated with round brackets, which will also be in
a smaller font size to help the passage to be read easily and to assist the
understanding of the compositional phases.
Let us see the corrections which interest the title of the poem,
changing from 1La Luna to 2La Luna o la Ricordanza to 3La Ricordanza.
The phases are always indicated with a superscript number and
separated by a double spacing. If a phase is derived from another with
the conspicuous reuse of textual materials, such as one or more letters,
that phase is introduced by the abbreviation from which (It. da cui), or
by a direct arrow →. How can we understand that the original title was
‘La Luna’ and not ‘La Luna o la Ricordanza’? Even though the ductus
and the ink (which is identical in both phases) do not provide enough
information, the placement of the text on the page provides useful
orientation. If the original title had been ‘La Luna o la Ricordanza’,
it is easy to imagine that the author would have placed it right at the
center of the page — and not on the right, as the autograph clearly
shows. Based on this, we can think that the title ‘La Luna’ was already
written, and that, at a later time, Leopardi added on the right of it the
64 What is Authorial Philology?
second part ‘o la Ricordanza’, changing only at a third further stage the
lowercase character ‘l’ (contained in the article ‘la’) to uppercase. This
last correction does not seem contemporary to the base-writing, but
bears some similarities with a few interlinear corrections in lines 2, 7–8
and 9, which were made at a further stage, and are contemporary to
the writing of the texts which follow ‘La Luna’ in the Naples notebook,
the so-called ‘second time’ of the Idilli (see Italia 2007b). This important
observation gives us the possibility of identifying dierent levels of
corrections in the text, corresponding to dierent pens, always indicated
by the editor with capitalized alphabetical letters (A, B, C, D), which,
alongside the superscript numbers, identify each correcting phase. In
the case of smaller corrections, such as the one in line 5, the pen used is
given within italicized round bracket and in a smaller font size. Further
variants can indeed be found in the reconstruction of the same correcting
phase, and, where present, they are represented in a smaller font size in
a derivative from, such as in the case of line 4:
(su quella selva) 1Asopra quel bosco, from which 2Asopra quel prato, (with
prato written over bosco) 3Asu quella selva, (written next to2) from which BT
This example gives us the opportunity to go into more detail on the use
of the abbreviations from (It. da), from which (It. da cui), and from which
T (It. da cui T). The rst one from/da is used to represent a correction in
which the nal text materially reuses one or more letters of a previous
reading. The second one from which/da cui, which can be replaced by the
arrow →, refers to the reuse, in a subsequent variant, of a major textual
portion of a previous variant. When the subsequent variant corresponds
to the copy-text, it is possible to use the abbreviation from which T/ da cui
T, and this can be replaced with an arrow pointing to T: → T.
The representation of the variants in lines 7–8 illustrates what we
meant when we introduced the notion of diachronic and systemic
apparatus. The rst denition — diachronic — stems from the fact
that the apparatus does not focus on representing the placement of the
corrections: for example, it does not indicate where the variants are
located in the manuscript, that is, if above, below, or next to the text.
It rather focuses on representing the chronology of the corrections, the
evolution, that is, of the variants from an earlier to a later form, with each
phase identied by a superscript number. Phases are here reconstructed
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2. Methods
as being four, including the last one, which corresponds to what has
been chosen as copy-text. The second denition — systemic — refers to
the fact that corrections are not represented individually and linked to
the term (or terms) to which they refer from a topographic standpoint;
corrections are instead represented in a system, including the variants
and the nal text too. The variant can obviously exceed the measure of
a line and be related to the following line (this is the case of lines 7–8).
This example shows that it is very dicult, if not almost impossible,
for the vertical apparatus — which parcels out every variant and
connects it very strictly to the words that are positioned closer to it — to
represent eectively the corrections which concern two or more lines (a
detailed examination of this is found in section 3.5).
In the edition of the manuscript, immediately below the band
occupied by the genetic apparatus, there is a box collecting the so-called
varia lectio, that is, all the variants, quotations, linguistic and metatextual
observations which Leopardi would annotate on his own manuscripts.
We nd them — albeit to a lesser extent than in other Neapolitan
autographs — also in the manuscript of Alla luna. Leopardi penned a
variant in the right margin of the page, in a position directly opposite to
the written text of the poem, probably in a phase of later revision of the
manuscript, as indicated by the reddish ink (here identied as pen D).
Immediately below the box dedicated to the varia lectio, a further band
accommodates the ‘Philological notes’, which are clearly distinguished
from the apparatus by being italicized. When notes of this kind are
instead included in the ‘Note to the text’, they are generally printed
in a standard non-italic font. As these ‘Philological notes’ provide an
analytical illustration of the makeup of the manuscript and its correcting
dynamics, they serve a very useful function. Such notes also suggest
various ways of interpreting the text, and report if and when the reading
of one or more words is doubtful. More generally, the ‘Philological notes’
can include everything that editors might like to add in order to justify
their choices in terms of apparatus, especially if such explanations
cannot t in the limited space underneath the text. A way to understand
whether or not an ecdotic choice has been made judiciously is to reect
on the delicate balance between the need for analytical accuracy and
the need for an economical form of representation. An apparatus is
successful only when it represents the manuscript and its corrections in
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2. Methods
the most precise, clear and synthetic way, turning what is at rst visual
and iconic into a dynamic text.
Let us now examine how the critical edition of the manuscript would
look like. The abbreviations and expressions used in the ‘Philological
notes’ have been translated in English as clearly as possible on the model
of the abbreviations which would be used in an Italian apparatus (see
sections 2.3.2, 2.3.4 and 2.5).
AN p. 1
Idillio
La Ricordanza
1 O graziosa Luna, io mi rammento
2 Che, or volge un anno, io sopra questo poggio
3 Venia carco d’angoscia a rimirarti:
4 E tu pendevi allor su quella selva
5 Siccome or fai, che tutta la rischiari.
6 Ma nebuloso e tremulo dal pianto
7 Che mi sorgea sul ciglio, a le mie luci
8 Il tuo volto apparia; ché travagliosa
9 Era mia vita: ed è, nè cangia stile,
10 O mia diletta Luna. E pur mi giova
11 La ricordanza, e ’l noverar l’etate
12 Del mio dolore. Oh come grato occorre
13 Il sovvenir de le passate cose
14 Ancor che triste, e ancor che il pianto duri!
tit. La Luna o La Ricordanza] 1ALa Luna from which 2ALa Luna o la
Ricordanza from which 3BLa Ricordanza (with L over l)
2Che, or volge un anno,] 1ACh’or volge un anno, (with an over al) from
which 2ACh’è presso a un anno, from which 3BT sopra] from su (pen A)
4su quella selva] 1Asopra quel bosco, from which 2Asopra quel prato,
(with prato written over bosco) 3Asu quella selva, (written next to2) from
which BT
5Siccome or] written above Com’ora (pen B)
68 What is Authorial Philology?
7–8 a le mie luci | Il tuo volto apparia; chè travagliosa] 1Aa le (before al<le>)
mie luci | Il tuo viso apparia, perché dolente from which 2Ail tuo bel
viso | Al mio sguardo apparia, perché dolente 3Ba le mie luci | Il tuo
volto apparia, che travagliosa from which 4DT
9cangia] 1Acangia 2Bcambia (written above1) from which 3DT
11 ricordanza] from rimembranza (pen A)
12 come] written above quanto (pen B)
14 triste] from tristi (pen B) il] from ‘l (pen C?)
AN c. [1r]
right margin, directly opposite to the written text
(12) (come sì grato) (pen D)
tit. The text, initially only consisting in the title ‘La Luna’, is corrected to
‘La Luna o la Ricordanza’ with the same pen being used for the base-
text (A); subsequently, it is corrected with pen B to ‘La Ricordanza’.
The two phases A in the writing of the title are identied thanks
to Leopardi’s customary practice of writing the title at the center,
immediately below ‘Idillio’ (as in ‘La sera del giorno festivo’ and ‘La
vita solitaria’).
2 The rst correction (‘Ch’è presso a un anno,’) is made with pen A;
the same applies for corrections in ll. 7–8 and 11.
4–5 The corrections made with thicker and heavier ink belong to phase B.
7–8 As already noted by Domenico De Robertis (in Leopardi 1984: II,
327), the correction of the comma to a semicolon after ‘apparia’ and
the accentuation of ‘che’ seem to have been made with the pen with a
reddish ink (here called D).
9 The correction of ‘cambia’ in ‘cangia’ was made at a later time (De
Robertis in Leopardi 1984: II, 327) with pen D, the same pen which
introduces in l. 8 the grave accent on ‘che’ and which Leopardi uses to
write the variant in the right margin, directly opposite to the written
text ‘(come sì grato’); in the edition ‘come’ is not in bold because
the correction of l. 12 ‘quanto’ → ‘come’, made with pen B (though
Lucchesini (in Leopardi 2009: I, 278) thinks that the correction was
made with pen A) is thought to have been made before the writing of
the varia lectio.
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2. Methods
14 The correction over ‘tristi’ obscures with the lower part of the ‘e’ the
point of the ‘i’, creating an unusual upward swirl in the formation of
this letter. If the correction of ‘’l’ to ‘il’ might belong to phase C, given
the serial nature of the intervention, the varia lectio in the margin is
closer to phase D, sharing with it the ductus and the reddish color
(again De Robertis in Leopardi 1984: II, 327).