Section "Manuscript Cultures"

Studying texts transmitted in manuscript form raises specific questions of interpretation as well a series of issues over and above that of content. All these lend themselves to be engaged with under the auspices of this interdisciplinary and cross-thematic section on manuscript and writing cultures of the Doctoral School. The spatial or temporal hiatus separating author and transmitter, may he be scribe or translator, is one of these concerns in that the degree of textual variation, be it intentional or unintentional, is directly dependent on it. In a similar vein, a text’s function, perception or prestige may vary considerably diatopically or diachronically. In many fields, an increased awareness of the multifaceted challenges presented by (editorial) philology and interpretation of texts transmitted in manuscript form is in evidence. Increasingly it avails itself of the greatly enlarged range of editorial techniques resulting from the advent of digital editing and the rise of digital humanities. Over and above reconstructing ‘original’ authorial texts, the representation of later stages of textual development (that may be of particular interest from the viewpoint of reception history) and paratextual phenomena are increasingly placed into the centre of scholarly attention. The materiality of texts and text production and its relation to textual content has revealed itself as another profitable vector of research: a text’s sitz-im-leben, we now know, may well be deduced through a close reading of its physical aspects, as may be the history of its use and its users. The Doctoral School’s Section “Manuscript Cultures” is aimed at doctoral students working on issues of historical philological interpretation, issues related to the history and transmission of texts, their materiality and pertinent editorial techniques.