Thursday, April 27, 2023
The Value of Bad Editions
Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve, "Brief Mention," American Journal of Philology 36.3 (1915) 358-369 (at 359):
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To come back to my Tauchnitz Aischylos. Like all men of my time, I own a number of these old Tauchnitz editions; and some of them are a joy to me, notably the Aristophanes, by reason of their faulty texts, showing as they do the advance of textual criticism just as the old Variorum editions give evidence of the progress achieved in exegesis. Both may be made to serve as adminicles to the work of the Greek Seminary. The veriest novice can be taught by these old Tauchnitz editions to restore the readings of the best MSS., to correct the false spellings, the bad forms, the abnormal syntax—an encouraging exercise in the art of handling texts.
