Evolution in Literature: Texts and Series

Presentation at the Distinguishability in Genealogical Phylogenetic Networks workshop at the Lorenz Center (Leiden), showcasing how trees and networks have been used both in textual criticism and historiography of literature. I briefly discussed stemmatology (with specific example from the Bible and from the Divine Comedy), as well as history of literature mentioning Tynyanov and Jauss.

Transcript

1. Evolution in Literature: Texts and Series Evolution in Literature: Texts and Series Tiago Tresoldi Computer-Assisted Language Comparison (CALC) Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History (MPI-SHH / Jena)
2. Textual Criticism • Investigates the evolution of written texts, focusing in understanding differences among copies of a work (its witnesses) in order to produce a critical edition – Concepts of “errors” and “corruption” • Evolved from the long tradition of “philology” (religious and legal exegesis) into a scientific discipline in the same period and cultural framework of Darwinism and Historical Linguistics
3. Steps of Stemmatology • Recensio, a survey collecting textual and non-textual information of all copies • Collatio, scrutiny of manuscripts’ contents which are transcribed, aligned, and compared • Identification of shared disjunctive errors, assumed as evidence of relationship • Production of the stemma codicum, a tree representing the evolution of the tradition • Emendatio, a reconstruction that explains the variants and represents the archetype
4. Stemma Codicum for Dante Aligheri’s Divine Comedy (source: Petrocchi, 1965)
5. Textual Tradition of the Gospels (source: yuriystasyuk.com)
6. Relationships among the Synoptic Gospels
7. Augustinian Theory Q Hypothesis Farrer Theory Jerusalem School Hypothesis
8. Phylogenetics • First phylogenetic methods by Platnick & Cameron (1977) • Number of editions using such method is increasing very slowly: Barbrook et al. (1998); Stolz (2003); Lantin et al. (2004); Shaw (2011), as well as critical thinking over it as Robinson (2016) – Overall, low acceptance • For a review of developments, criticisms and responses, see Macé & Baret (2006), Howe et al. (2012)
9. Consensus phylogram the Divine Comedy (source: Tresoldi, not published)
10. NN for selected manuscripts of the Divine Comedy (source: Tresoldi, not published)
11. From history to evolution • Historiography of literature is itself a genre, of teleological motivation – Gervinus’ Geschichte der poetischen Nationallitteratur der Deutschen (1835–1842) – De Sanctis’ Storia della letteratura italiana (1883) • Not evolution but either – A path towards some individuality (of genre, of national literature, etc.) – The biological metaphor • After the nationalist experiences, either – Psychological genesis – evolution by authors “ahead of time” – The history of genres – Influences (Warburg, Curtius) • Still being taught this way
12. Yury Tynyanov • First serious movement from “chronology” to “evolution” (Литературная эволюция [Literaturnaya evolyutsiya], 1927) – Part of the Russian “Formalism”, associated with Jakobson and Trubetzkoy in linguistics • The study of genesis is not the study of evolution • Condition of being literary is defined by the opposition with the non-literary – Experiments with sound symbolism are sometimes child play, sometimes vanguard (зáумь [zaum]) – Elevated odes of the 18th c. (Derzhavin) automatized, replaced first by “feminine” poetry (Karamzin), and then by the narrative strategies of letters (Turgenev), preparing the way for the Golden Age (Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky)
13. Tynyanov and Series Narrative Fiction Poetry
14. Tynyanov and Series Narrative Fiction Poetry Popular Verse Court Verse
15. Tynyanov and Series Narrative Fiction Poetry Popular Verse Court Verse Letters, Private Communication Philosophy
16. Tynyanov and Series Narrative Fiction Poetry Popular Verse Court Verse Letters, Private Communication Philosophy
17. Tynyanov and Series Narrative Fiction Poetry Popular Verse Court Verse Letters, Private Communication Philosophy
18. Tynyanov and Series Narrative Fiction Poetry Popular Verse Court Verse Letters, Private Communication Philosophy
19. Tynyanov and Series Narrative Fiction Poetry Popular Verse Court Verse Letters, Private Communication Philosophy
20. Hans-Robert Jauß • Against the contempt for the contemporary • The evolution is not explained by “sources” and especially “influences” • History is the history of reception • The horizon of expectation – The structure by which the public comprehends any text, based on cultural codes and conventions particular to their time in history – Influence comes not from the text, but from how the text is read – Influence is not only or necessarily intertextuality – there might be influence without the same text, and the same text might have a different meaning
21. An example: Ulysses • Iliad and Odyssey (8th-6th c. BCE) • Attic Tragedies (5th c. BCE) • Aeneid (Virgil, 29-19 BCE) • Medieval vulgarizations – Le Roman de Troie (Sainte-Maure, c. 1160) • Divine Comedy (Alighieri, 1308-1321) • Troilus and Cressida (Shakespeare, 1602) • Ulysses (Tennyson, 1842) • Ulysses (Joyce, 1920) • Post-war adaptations (including television, comics, etc.)
22. Odyssey
23. Odyssey Iliad
24. Odyssey Iliad
25. Odyssey Iliad Near-East Epics
26. Odyssey Iliad Near-East Epics Oral Trojan Tradition
27. Odyssey Iliad Near-East Epics Oral Trojan Tradition Hermes’ Trickster narratives
28. Odyssey Iliad Near-East Epics Oral Trojan Tradition Hermes’ Trickster narratives Etruscan, Italic narratives
29. Odyssey Iliad Near-East Epics Oral Trojan Tradition Hermes’ Trickster narratives Etruscan, Italic narratives Epic Cycle
30. Odyssey Iliad Near-East Epics Oral Trojan Tradition Hermes’ Trickster narratives Etruscan, Italic narratives Epic Cycle Lyrical Poetry
31. Odyssey Iliad Near-East Epics Oral Trojan Tradition Hermes’ Trickster narratives Etruscan, Italic narratives Epic Cycle Lyrical Poetry Attic Tragedy
32. Odyssey Iliad Near-East Epics Oral Trojan Tradition Hermes’ Trickster narratives Etruscan, Italic narratives Epic Cycle Lyrical Poetry Attic Tragedy Pre-Cynic Philosophy
33. Odyssey Iliad Near-East Epics Oral Trojan Tradition Hermes’ Trickster narratives Etruscan, Italic narratives Epic Cycle Lyrical Poetry Attic Tragedy Pre-Cynic Philosophy Post-Cynic Philosophy
34. Odyssey Iliad Near-East Epics Oral Trojan Tradition Hermes’ Trickster narratives Etruscan, Italic narratives Epic Cycle Lyrical Poetry Attic Tragedy Pre-Cynic Philosophy Post-Cynic Philosophy Roman narratives Roman & Christian Philosophy
35. Odyssey Iliad Near-East Epics Oral Trojan Tradition Hermes’ Trickster narratives Etruscan, Italic narratives Epic Cycle Lyrical Poetry Attic Tragedy Pre-Cynic Philosophy Post-Cynic Philosophy Roman narratives Roman & Christian Philosophy Second Sophistics
36. Philosophy Fiction, Poetry Dictis & Dares
37. Philosophy Fiction, Poetry Dictis & Dares Medieval Trojan Narratives
38. Philosophy Fiction, Poetry Dictis & Dares Medieval Trojan Narratives Divine Commedy
39. Philosophy Fiction, Poetry Dictis & Dares Medieval Trojan Narratives Divine Commedy New Interpretation of the Divine Comedy
40. Philosophy Fiction, Poetry Dictis & Dares Medieval Trojan Narratives Divine Commedy Odyssey New Interpretation of the Divine Comedy Odyssey
41. Philosophy Fiction, Poetry Dictis & Dares Medieval Trojan Narratives Divine Commedy Odyssey New Interpretation of the Divine Comedy Odyssey Translations, Adaptations
42. Philosophy Fiction, Poetry Dictis & Dares Medieval Trojan Narratives Divine Commedy Odyssey New Interpretation of the Divine Comedy Odyssey Translations, Adaptations Shakespeare
43. Philosophy Fiction, Poetry Dictis & Dares Medieval Trojan Narratives Divine Commedy Odyssey New Interpretation of the Divine Comedy Odyssey Translations, Adaptations Romanticism, Sea Narratives Shakespeare
44. Philosophy Fiction, Poetry Dictis & Dares Medieval Trojan Narratives Divine Commedy Odyssey New Interpretation of the Divine Comedy Odyssey Translations, Adaptations Romanticism, Sea Narratives Most contemporary narratives Shakespeare
45. Philosophy Fiction, Poetry Dictis & Dares Medieval Trojan Narratives Divine Commedy Odyssey New Interpretation of the Divine Comedy Odyssey Translations, Adaptations Romanticism, Sea Narratives Most contemporary narratives Shakespeare Joyce
46. Darwinian literary studies • Arising with the dissatisfaction with post-structuralism and post- modernism • Study of literature in the context of evolution by means of natural selection (including gene-culture co- evolution) • Digital Humanities, “distant reading” and longue durée • Evolution of literature in the framework of cultural evolution
47. “Admixture” • Stemmatology can be used to study the evolution in the reception – Bédier and the “good copy” • Historiography of literature is not ready to use quantitative methods (but Darwinian literary studies are getting there) – Understand its own history – Understand evolution in other fields, analogies and differences – Make hypotheses and test them – are features possible, and if so which features? – Intertextuality is not a complete answer… but it is where we should start • For phylogenetics – Understand evolution in other fields – Consider literary evolution as one of the extreme cases in cultural evolution – Understand that descendency material might not be intertextual, and that influence might be “negative”
48. Cited Refereces BARBROOK, Adrian C.; HOWE, Christopher J.; BLAKE, Norman; ROBINSON, Peter (1998). “The Phylogeny of the Canterbury Tales.” Nature, 394 (6696): 839. HOWE, Christopher J.; CONNOLLY, Ruth; WINDRAM, Heather F. (2012). “Responding to Criticisms of Phylogenetic Methods in Stemmatology.” Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, 52 (1): 51-67. LANTIN, Anne-Catherine; BARET, Philippe V.; MACÉ, Caroline (2004). “Phylogenetic Analysis of Gregory of Nazianzus’ Homily 27.” 7èmes Journées Internationales d’Analyse statistique des Données Textuelles: 700-707. MACÉ, Caroline; BARET, Philippe V. (2006). “Why Phylogenetic Methods Work: the Theory of Evolution and Textual Criticism.” in Linguistica Computazionale. The Evolution of Texts: Confronting Stemmatological and Genetical Methods 24: 89-108. PLATNICK, Norman I.; DON CAMERON, H. (1977). “Cladistic Methods in Textual, Linguistic, and Phylogenetic Analysis.” Systematic Zoology: 380-385. ROBINSON, Peter (2016). “Four Rules for the Application of Phylogenetics in the Analysis of Textual Traditions.” Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 31 (3): 637-651. SHAW, Prue (2011). Commedia: a Digital Edition. Birmingham: Scholarly Digital Editions. STOLZ, Michael (2003). “New Philology and New Phylogeny: Aspects of a Critical Electronic Edition of Wolfram’s Parzival.” Literary and Linguistic Computing, 18 (2): 139-150.
49. Thank you! Thank you! Tiago Tresoldi tresoldi@shh.mpg.de