New Philology as Helpful for Spirituality Research
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The academic field of spirituality studies is still searching for how to understand spiritual texts adequately. A spiritual text is always embedded in a kind of “producer and user web” and if this “web” is vital, texts will be modified and new text variations will be added. Therefore, we should not study spiritual texts as if they were pure, fixed, grand expressions. We should indeed examine the particularity of a spiritual text, but interconnectivities with other texts of these “text families” should not be forgotten. I want to argue here that ideas arising from the field known as New Philology might be a key to such a comparative and contextualized approach to spiritual texts. Through the examination of two case studies—a Middle Dutch Pseudo-Eckhart treatise and a recent theatre production based on the Epithalamium of Jean de Saint-Samson—I want to show what the intellectual space provided by New Philology can contribute to the field of Christian Spirituality.
NEW PHILOLOGY
In the field of editorial theory, a principal innovation has been made with the development of the so-called New Philology, first presented in a special issue of Speculum in 1990 by the philologist Stephen Nichols.1 The inspiration for this innovation came from Bernhard Cerquiglini, who stated that instability, or variance, is a central feature of many medieval texts.
“Old” Philologists—if we may call them that—had developed strong hierarchical approaches to the editing of these instable variances in texts, but at the end of the last century their criteria for preferring a certain version of a text to another were strongly questioned. Should we underpin our preference for a text with the argument that the first version should be taken as the starting point, or should we argue that the best amended or elaborated or illuminated version should be preferred? Should we give authority to a certain stage of maturity of a text, or is maturity itself a kind of fluid notion? And how should we deal with the involvement of other people who contributed in one way or another to the production of a literary work? How should we evaluate author concepts of former centuries that made no clear difference between a writer’s own contribution and what he or she took from others? Aren’t we following [End Page 172] arbitrary decisions when thinking hierarchically about text variants, and wouldn’t it make more sense to respect all different versions in their own right?
These and similar questions brought about the development of the so-called “New Philology.” The key ideas of New Philology may be summarized as follows: (1) Literary works do not exist independently of their material embodiment. Any changes in the material features of a literary work, such as its illuminations, cover, or surrounding texts in the manuscript, are relevant to the meaning of the literary work in question. (2) Literary works come into being through instable and complex processes involving larger or smaller numbers of people, all of them playing a significant part in the final manifestation of a literary work. The place and time of origin and the purpose of a work are also important to the purport of the text. (3) Literary works continue to exist through time, and their meaning is also affected by the changing social, economic and intellectual climates to which their users are exposed.
According to Gumbrecht, New Philology scholars form a kind of guild within the philological research environment focusing on these shifts and alterations. They abandon the principle of one single, correct text edition in favor of the intellectual space provided by plurality.2 New Philology research focuses on the diversity of forms, languages and meanings of texts within text families, where one text is not by definition prioritized over another, but where every text is respected both individually and in its manifold kinship with other texts. The development of and reflection upon research strategies and techniques which are helpful to map text variations and their interconnectivities are at the centre of New Philology studies.
Up to now, New Philologists have investigated mainly medieval texts. Following Cerquiglini, Fleischman emphasizes the...
