Textology (Textual Criticism)

Textology (textual criticism) is a philological science that studies the history of a work's text, its sources, redactions, and variants, with the aim of establishing the authentic, canonical text and its scholarly edition. Textology investigates authorial manuscripts (autographs, drafts), editions published during and after the author's lifetime, transcripts and copies, tracing the creative history of the text and detecting distortions introduced by copyists, editors, or censorship. Its main tasks are attribution, dating, the establishment of the base text (the author's 'final creative will'), and the compiling of commentary. One distinguishes the textology of modern literature and that of early monuments (medieval), which often uses the genealogical method of reconstructing the protograph (the method of Karl Lachmann). The foundations of Soviet textology were laid by Boris Tomashevsky and Dmitry Likhachov. The Ukrainian textological school (the Shevchenko Institute of Literature) prepares academic complete editions of the classics, freeing texts from censorship and ideological distortions.