Text Editing: Principles and Methods

Abstract

Although manuscripts in different languages have different features, and can offer specific literary and artistic wealth, methods used to analyse manuscripts and texts are basically the same regardless of language of the material. This is also true for philology and text editing. Editors will always face same difficult task, have to avoid just as many pitfalls, and display just as much patience and humility irrespective of whether their text is in Greek, Latin, Armenian or any other language. This chapter focuses on philological process itself, reminding ourselves of nature and aims of critical editing. It then examines characteristics of Armenian editing in light of this nature and these aims. In the Armenian field, several studies have examined the typology of variants. This typology is the same as in Greek or Latin and includes the same categories each of which needs to be applied to the graphical peculiarities of Armenian. Keywords: Armenian field; graphical peculiarities; Greek; Latin; manuscripts; text editing