Conjecture (textual criticism)
Conjecture (Latin coniectura, guess ', ' interpretation ' ) is a method of textual criticism (or scholarly editing ), which in turn is an important part of the field of literary studies. It is used in the edition of codices, manuscripts or printed editions and means the assessment made by editors add missing passages and deemed necessary content and stylistic improvements. On a conjecture is always referred to in detail and constitutive. The implied correction pure spelling or typographical errors called emendation; one applies it takes is a general reference.
Conjectures made in the edition of texts where the editor suspected corruption and inauthenticity of the text witnesses against the underlying stock. This occurs when a body of the text in the style, rhyme and Versschema, sentence structure, vocabulary, etc. do not seem to match the rest of the text. Conjecture is thus based on the idea of an intended by the author of the original text, which is exposed in the course of its textual history for many reasons " Corruption ". Such corrupted text is called in the jargon " corrupt text".
If several hand-written versions of texts compared with each other ( for example, the poems, the various versions differ greatly from one another ), a publisher from case to case must decide which text is incorporated into the print version of the classic edition process. He can opt for the earliest manuscript, if he considers it the " primitive ," and from it konjizieren an " original text ". Alternatively, it can use, for example, the so-called " final edition " as the most important witnesses to the text, this is the last print version, which has been corrected by the author himself. Not infrequently revised some authors for the late printed versions of their early works, because they were once even so unsatisfied.
Often, however, are just the fixes and changes from version to version made by the author interesting. In some cases an original text must be konjiziert, where he has fallen " corrections " of an early printer victim ( for example in Shakespeare's plays, which are preserved only in several first editions, which differ greatly from each other to some extent ).
All completed conjectures are printed on critical issues in the critical apparatus in the appendix or at the foot of the page. This leaves the possibility of tracking the conjectures of the editor.
A radical possibility of the text edition, which replaces the edition by conjecture in special cases (eg editions of the poetry of Friedrich Hölderlin and Georg Trakl ) is the ultra- critical edition that is practiced around in the Frankfurt edition of Hölderlin's works: Each page of the manuscripts can be also reproduced in facsimile; next to a readable print version will be inserted which has special designations for strikethrough, highlighting, different writing tools and other text characteristics. Specialists can then track in the interpretation of the text, as the lyrics have been created and has the manner in which an author resorted to certain changes. Conjectures must here be made only if the handwriting is illegible.
In the philology of the 19th century conjectures were much more generous than practiced today. However, the problem of overzealous Konjizierens was recognized at that time; so said the famous classical philologist August Boeckh: [ ... ] the suspicious mind leads the critic easily mistaken if it is not held in check by objectivity. Even a Bentley and Valckenaer have often been mistaken [ ... ] In general we can say that, not 5 are true of 100 conjectures that make the critics.
A critical objection of modern scholarly editing is that conjectures are often made without sufficient justification and " feeling down "; The publisher shall thus as it were in competition with the author and thus exceeds its powers. The project to reconstruct an " unintended Urtext " always encountered greater skepticism. Modern methods of literary studies therefore do not deal so much with speculation about a presumably corresponding to the view of the author statement, but use as a starting material the oldest preserved text. For editions only unique write errors often be corrected; yet formulated conjectures are generally never stated in the text of a critical edition, but only in the critical apparatus or in the comments of the editor. They have no a priori textkonstituierenden, but only argumentative character, ie are not part of the text for the installation, but the beginning of the text interpretation.