Manuscript Tradition and Textual History
Two hundred and fifteen medieval manuscripts of the Historia survive, dozens of them copied before the end of the twelfth century. Even among the earliest manuscripts a large number of textual variants, such as the so-called 'First Variant', can be discerned. These are reflected in the three possible prefaces to the work and in the presence or absence of certain episodes and phrases. Certain variants may be due to 'authorial' additions to different early copies, but most probably reflect early attempts to alter, add to or edit the text.
Unfortunately, the task of disentangling these variants and establishing Geoffrey's original text is long and complex, and the extent of the difficulties surrounding the text has been established only recently.
Read more about this topic: Historia Regum Britanniae
Famous quotes containing the words manuscript, tradition and/or history:
“It is not as easy to emigrate with steel mills as it is with the manuscript of a novel.”
—Golo Mann (b. 1909)
“This is no argument against teaching manners to the young. On the contrary, it is a fine old tradition that ought to be resurrected from its current mothballs and put to work...In fact, children are much more comfortable when they know the guide rules for handling the social amenities. It’s no more fun for a child to be introduced to a strange adult and have no idea what to say or do than it is for a grownup to go to a formal dinner and have no idea what fork to use.”
—Leontine Young (20th century)
“If usually the “present age” is no very long time, still, at our pleasure, or in the service of some such unity of meaning as the history of civilization, or the study of geology, may suggest, we may conceive the present as extending over many centuries, or over a hundred thousand years.”
—Josiah Royce (1855–1916)