Bédier’s Contribution to the Accomplishment of Stemmatic Method: An Italian Perspective

This paper is concerned with an aspects of Bédier’s legacy, possibly the least known in the English-speaking world. Bédier›s works of 1913 and 1928–29 did not just create a schism in the apparently peaceful context of textual scholarship: through his statements, critical editions produced with a single copy-text regained the academic prestige that Gaston Paris› adaptations of stemmatic method had taken away from them. Since then, Bédier’s objections have also forced meticulous textual critics to rethink their editorial practice: though retaining the method of shared errors, such scholars (often scarcely known outside Italy) have brought important progress in the methods of textual criticism.