Philology and the Turn Away from the Linguistic Turn

Journal of the History of Ideas Blog, 2015

P Ph hi il lo ol lo og gy y A Am mo on ng g t th he e D Di is sc ci ip pl li in ne es s ( (I I) ): :

The Future of Philology: Proceedings of the 11th Annual Columbia University German Graduate Student Conference. Edited by Hannes Bajohr, Benjamin Dorvel, Vincent Hessling, and Tabea Weitz, 2014

The conference whose proceedings are collected in this volume initiated by a rather simple observation and a rather simple question. The observation was that probably no other discipline in the vast spectrum of academic fields has undergone as sweeping a transformation as philology has during its history. Since the days of Karl Lachmann, it seems that nearly every aspect of it has changed radically, be it the subject, scope, or methodology. The question, then, is whether it still makes sense to speak institutionally and epistemologically of 'philology.' Does this venerable title still signify a truly coherent field, and not rather a multitude of scattered currents and competing genealogies, differing national characteristics and inconsistent methodologies? And if we ask what philology is and what it can be, must we not also ask ourselves what it is that we do? And how, more importantly, we can continue to do it? 1 In posing these questions, we follow a number of assumptions. We use the term 'philology'-not literary studies, criticism, or Germanistikbecause, historically, 'philology' is the root from which all these other disciplines stem. 'Philology' might then well mean something that, in one way or another, exceeds these disciplines. This intentional vagueness is what could be called the broad sense of the term 'philology'-an umbrella term that both betrays a certain distance and acts as a generic surface onto which one can project utopian ideals. Yet at the same time, philology can also mean, in the narrow or emphatic sense, something more specific, something that embodies what we call the 'core competencies' of literary studies. Traditionally, these 'core competencies' entail the constitution of texts and textual criticism; stemmatics and the edition of manuscripts; the delineation of the transcript history of 1 While we do not share all of Sheldon Pollock's assumptions or conclusions, we must acknowledge that from the very start our questions were stimulated by his sweeping argument for the legitimacy of philology: Sheldon Pollock, "Future Philology? The Fate of a Soft Science in a Hard World," Critical Inquiry 35 (2009): 931-961.

Journal of the History of Ideas

in which I review three books: Philology: The Forgotten Origins of the Modern Humanities by James Turner; World Philology edited by Sheldon Pollock, Benjamin A. Elman, and Ku-ming Kevin Chang; and Minima Philologica by Werner Hamacher

Neo-Latin Philology: Old Tradition, New Approaches, 2014

Studia Neophilologica, 2023

This article explores the ideo-political background of the so-called 'new philology' by looking closely at some works by its 'founding fathers', Bernard Cerquiglini and Stephen G. Nichols. It addresses the tendency among adherents of 'new philology' to downplay authorial intention in medieval works and to reject basic principles of textual criticism.

1990

As the Byzantinist Ihor Ševčenko once observed, "Philology is constituting and interpreting the texts that have come down to us. It is a narrow thing, but without it nothing else is possible." This definition accords with Saussure's succinct description of the mission of philology: "especially to correct, interpret, and comment upon the texts." Philology is not just a grand etymological or lexicographical enterprise. It also involves restoring to works as much of their original life and nuances as we can manage. To read the written records of bygone civilizations correctly requires knowledge of cultural history in a broad sense: of folklore, legends, laws, and customs. Philology also encompasses the forms in which texts express their messages, and thus it includes stylistics, metrics, and similar studies. On Philology brings together the papers delivered at a 1988 conference at Harvard University's Center for Literary and Cultural Studies. The topic "What is Philology?" drew an interdisciplinary audience whose main fields of research ran the gamut from ancient Indo-European languages to African-American literature, signaling a certain sense of urgency about a seemingly narrow subject. These papers reveal that the role of philology is more important than ever. At a time when literature in printed form has taken a back seat to television, film, and music, it is crucial that scholars be able to articulate why students and colleagues should care about the books with which they work. Just as knowledge will be lost if philological standards decline, so too will fields of study die if their representatives cannot find meaning for today's readers. On Philology will be of interest not only to students of philology but also to anyone working in the fields of hermeneutics, literature, and communication.

Intellectual History Review, 2015

2010

This is the second of a series of columns on philology. Christine Franzen's work on the Tremulous Hand of Worcester shows that when "material philology" and a concern for manuscripts and variants is supported by traditional "old philology," important new knowledge about past cultures can be recovered. §1. In an issue dedicated to the uses and abuses of manuscripts, it seems appropriate to make the topic of our second column the convoluted relationship between philology and manuscript study. Our first column highlighted a debatable phrase in the Beowulf manuscript, "mere wio ingasmilts ungyfeðe," and demonstrated how philological methods enabled scholars to reconstruct with confidence an original reading and meaning, "Merewioingas milts ungyfeðe" (the favour of the Merovingian has been denied), which the scribe had garbled, most likely because he himself could not understand it. This approach to a problematic phrase is fully in the tradition of the "old" philology, in which accumulated knowledge about language, and language change, is applied to enigmatic texts for the purpose of reconstructing their original forms and, hence, deciphering them. This approach, it is both fair and sad to say, is regarded by many contemporary medievalists, if they think of philology at all, as being old fashioned, while a discussion of the un-interpretable words in their physical, manuscript context would probably be perceived by many as cutting-edge work: sound changes are "old" and manuscript study is "new," and often, even in medieval studies, what is "new" is seen as being superior to, and taking the place of, what is "old." We think this dichotomous approach to philology is wrong. In this column, we will explore how the "old," language-based philology and a "new," manuscript-based philology can enrich each other, and we argue that approaches which ignore either end of this spectrum are likely to miss meaningful insights.

Diacronia, 3, 2017, 1(5)., 2017

Creating the medieval saga: Versions, variability, and editorial interpretations of Old Norse saga literature, ed. Judy Quinn & Emily Lethbridge, 2010