In the next few comments, what I'll be looking for is evidence that two or more sources share a common origin, i.e. are not fully independent accounts.
Disclaimer: my background is not in textual criticism, it's in historical linguistics, but the central method of historical linguistics, the comparative method, was first developed to detect and evaluate the relationships among texts, and the underlying principles of this method are the same in historical linguistics and textual criticism.
According to the comparative method, what counts as relevant evidence for relatedness are shared innovations. That means that if two sources relate something different from everyone else, that might or might not be evidence that the two sources have some source in common. If two sources relate something different from everyone else, but we have external evidence that it really happened that way, that's not necessarily an innovation. They could have arrived at that knowledge independently. But if they make the same mistake, that's interesting. For example, if we have letters in von Schack's hand, and he signs them "von Schack," we assume that he knows his own name. Then any text that refers to him as "von Schack" does not necessarily share a common origin with any other text. Two authors might simply have learned his name and remember it correctly. But if two texts refer to him as "von Schenk," it's likely that this mistake was only made once, and copied after that. Maybe one author got it from the other, or maybe they both got it from somewhere else, but they probably both didn't come up with it independently.
The larger the number of shared innovations, the more likely two texts share a common origin that the other texts don't. It's like a family tree: you and a sibling have more genetic material in common with each other than with your first cousin, and your sibling, first cousin, and you have more genetic material in common with each other than with someone outside your family.
For shorthand, the analysis section refers to each of the texts by the first initial of its author: P for Pöllnitz, W for Wilhelmine, T for Thiébault, C for Catt, V for Voltaire, F for the two sources cited by Fontane, M for Münchow, and FW for Friedrich Wilhelm.
In the following three comments, I will be examining the following claims:
1) P, W, and T have some common origin, because they have a large number of innovations that aren’t shared by other sources.
2) W and T are more closely related to each other than to P.
3) C and V are more closely related to each other than to other sources.
Finally, a note on the limitations of the comparative method: because we're only looking at the texts in isolation, the comparative method groups texts together in a relative manner. It doesn't tell you which was written first, or whether A is using B as a source, B is using A, or whether A and B have some source C, which may not be included in our corpus here in common. For that, one would need to look at external evidence.
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Katte Textual Criticism: The Comparative Method (DO NOT REPLY)
Date: 2020-01-04 12:26 pm (UTC)Disclaimer: my background is not in textual criticism, it's in historical linguistics, but the central method of historical linguistics, the comparative method, was first developed to detect and evaluate the relationships among texts, and the underlying principles of this method are the same in historical linguistics and textual criticism.
According to the comparative method, what counts as relevant evidence for relatedness are shared innovations. That means that if two sources relate something different from everyone else, that might or might not be evidence that the two sources have some source in common. If two sources relate something different from everyone else, but we have external evidence that it really happened that way, that's not necessarily an innovation. They could have arrived at that knowledge independently. But if they make the same mistake, that's interesting. For example, if we have letters in von Schack's hand, and he signs them "von Schack," we assume that he knows his own name. Then any text that refers to him as "von Schack" does not necessarily share a common origin with any other text. Two authors might simply have learned his name and remember it correctly. But if two texts refer to him as "von Schenk," it's likely that this mistake was only made once, and copied after that. Maybe one author got it from the other, or maybe they both got it from somewhere else, but they probably both didn't come up with it independently.
The larger the number of shared innovations, the more likely two texts share a common origin that the other texts don't. It's like a family tree: you and a sibling have more genetic material in common with each other than with your first cousin, and your sibling, first cousin, and you have more genetic material in common with each other than with someone outside your family.
For shorthand, the analysis section refers to each of the texts by the first initial of its author: P for Pöllnitz, W for Wilhelmine, T for Thiébault, C for Catt, V for Voltaire, F for the two sources cited by Fontane, M for Münchow, and FW for Friedrich Wilhelm.
In the following three comments, I will be examining the following claims:
1) P, W, and T have some common origin, because they have a large number of innovations that aren’t shared by other sources.
2) W and T are more closely related to each other than to P.
3) C and V are more closely related to each other than to other sources.
Finally, a note on the limitations of the comparative method: because we're only looking at the texts in isolation, the comparative method groups texts together in a relative manner. It doesn't tell you which was written first, or whether A is using B as a source, B is using A, or whether A and B have some source C, which may not be included in our corpus here in common. For that, one would need to look at external evidence.