Towards a synthesis? Essays on the New Philology (review)

146 Reviews Busby, Keith, ed., Towards a synthesis? Essays on the New Philology, (Faux titre: Etudes de langue et litterature franchise, No. 68) (Amsterdam and Atlanta, Rodopi, 1993), pp. 137; Hfl. 45.00 / $US 26.00. This book contains eight essays, a foreword by Keith Busby, an introduction to the final three articles by Rupert Pickens, and a bibliography. The essays take as their premise that a schism has taken place in medieval literary studies, with Bernard Cerquiglini and the N e w Philologists aligned against the tradition of editing decried in his Eloge de la variante (1989) (offensively or cheekily, depending on your stance) under the title 'Monsieur Procuste, Philologue', and the line of dinosaurs from which he descends. The beast had stirred before the publication of Eloge, as evidenced in discussions appearing in special issues of Romanic Review (79: 1 [1988], "The legitimacy of the Middle Ages') and Speculum (65: 1 [1990], 'The N e w Philology'). There was nothing in either of these collections to launch an actual school of criticism. Rather, they reflected a new preparedness to question established views of medieval textuality, largely lateral to editing. Till then, many editors had liked to pretend that their productions were theoretically neutral. They 'just edited texts'. Oralists had long been proving the separate validity of scripted texts, but the notion of the text as an individual performance, distinct from an 'author's original', had made no impact on the editorial tradition. Nor was there any overt departure in the Speculum and Romanic Review articles from the established ordo, according to which authors wrote, scribes contaminated, and editors recuperated 'real' medieval texts. Indeed, there was still a reluctance to hear dissident voices questioning this pattern. With Cerquiglini's book, editors became aware that the variance which the critic exalted was no more nor less than the mouvance so much admired by Zumthor, moved into the domain of the editor. It was no longer possible to compartmentalize theory, which emphasized the material medium of script, and practice, which concealed a preference for the intangible under a claim to philological purity. However glib Cerquiglini's 'opuscule' may be, his achievement lies in the fact that he broke down the divide, forcing editors to refine their theoretical bases in defending them. Reviews 147 As Donald Maddox states, the problem of definition is endemic to the discipline, as the term 'philology' is itself so vague (p. 61). Several authors here recognize the fact that, if there is such a thing as a N e w Philology, it has so far distinguished itself by the 'centrifugal' or 'dispersed' or 'diffuse' nature of the discussions to which it has given rise. Even in 1993, the shock of the collision was still too fresh to speak yet of a new 'synthesis' in relation to editing. So this book inevitably fails to live up to its promise of defining a N e w Philology, or of outlining such a sythesis. Rather, it reflects the insecurity, anger, and even resentment accompanying the integration process. Only a few of the contributors show any sympathy for the supposed objectives of this new critical approach. One of the book's weaknesses, in fact, is that it fails to include anyone w h o might safely be termed a N e w Philologist. One of the more likely candidates for the appellation is Evelyn Birge Vitz, a self-proclaimed editorial neophyte (pp. 72-73), w h o happily embraces the notion that medieval texts are in themselves 'performances', testifying to the vitality of the transmission process and the validity of individual texts. She recommends editing 'whole manuscripts', highlighting 'that wonderful miscellaneous character so typical of the medieval period', and suggests giving even 'the grubbier, the more oral' texts a hearing: 'We have been perhaps too preoccupied with the toilette du texte' (pp. 77-78). Here indeed is heresy. In several articles there is a definite sense of loss. Perhaps the most poignant expression of this nostalgia occurs in the first essay, where Richard O'Gorman discusses the Joseph d'Aramathie tradition. H e criticizes Cerquiglini for refusing, not only to consider stemmatic filiations as providing a valid yardstick for comparison, but...