Metodo stemmatico ed ecdotica volgare italiana: Brevi considerazioni su alcuni recenti contributi metodologici

This essay examines the problematic transmission and editing of vernacular texts, especially of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century works, and the often misleading difficulties presented in the establishment of the stemma codicum. Reexamining early contributions on textual editing by Pasquali, Castellani, Greg, Avalle, Reeve, Timpanaro and others, this study integrates both new analyses of stemmatic methods by, for example, Montanari and Trovato and recent editorial experience in Italian vernacular works of poets such as Burchiello, Franco Sacchetti, Francesco d'Altobianco Alberti, with special reference to the textual contribution of copyists and editors such as Tommaso Baldinotti and the redactor of the mid-fourteenth-century Italicus 1 (now in Budapest) of Dante's Comedy. The essay goes on to question the limitations of stemmatic traditions seriously compromised by the loss of the archetype and/or the "high mortality rate" of large percentages of witnesses.