Tekstologiia drevnei Rusi, and: Tekstologiia russkikh letopisei XI–nachala XIV vv., and: Galitsko-Volynskaia letopis′: Tekst. Kommentarii. Issledovanie (review)

Until Aleksei Aleksandrovich Shakhmatov (1864–1920) began his scholarly work in the late 19th century, the main goal of chronicle studies was to extract historical information from chronicle texts. Thus if two chronicles had basically the same information, it was thought unnecessary to publish the full text of the second chronicle. Likewise, it was thought unnecessary to provide variant readings from other copies in any systematic way. The editor simply chose one representative copy to edit. Shakhmatov was a major influence in revolutionizing the study of Rus′ chronicles by exploring the language, alternative readings, and relationship of chronicles to one another. Chronicles then became an object of study in their own right. Editing of chronicles began in the 18th century when German scholars at the Academy of Sciences realized their importance and began their systematic study and publication. In the middle of the 19th century, the series Polnoe sobranie russkikh letopisei (Full Collection of Rus′ Chronicles, hereafter PSRL) was begun with the goal of publishing all Rus′ chronicles. Early editions tended to reflect the pre-Shakhmatovian view of the purpose of chronicle study. As a result, the first six volumes of the series had to be re-edited later. The total number of published volumes, now at 43, includes some volumes in more than one edition.¹

In publishing a chronicle text, the editor has the choice of a number of ways to present it, depending on the goals of the edition and on the circumstances of the manuscript copies themselves. If one copy is clearly the best representative of the archetype or authorial text, then it should be used as the copy text and variants provided from the other copies only to show the history of the development of the text. If no single copy is best and if the manuscript tradition is “open” (i.e., no clear genealogical relationship can be established among the copies), then picking and choosing readings from different copies based on the knowledge, skill, and intuition of the editor is to be preferred. If the manuscript tradition is “closed” (i.e., a clear genealogical relationship can be determined), then a stemma should be used. A stemma is a genealogical representation of the relationship of copies of a text. One creates a stemma by comparing the similarities and differences in readings among the various copies and by grouping the copies accordingly. One can then use the stemma to help figure out the primacy of readings in cases where there is a difference among those readings. In addition, when only one manuscript copy of a chronicle text exists or when a “best representative” copy exists, then the editor has the choice of simulating the morphologic and paleographic features of that copy, including abbreviated forms, superscripts, titlos, accents, punctuation marks, specialized characters, ligatures, and so forth (note that even in this attempt at manuscript verisimilitude, the editor is expected to make choices of word division). When Shakhmatov prepared the Hypatian Codex (which includes the Povest′ vremennykh let [The Tale of Bygone Years, hereafter PVL], the Kievan Chronicle, and the Galician-Volynian Chronicle) in 1908 for the second edition of volume 2 of PSRL, he used the Hypatian manuscript as his copy text (replicating many of its morphologic and paleographic features) and provided...