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Handschriften
und ihre Texte: Dietrichs Flucht und Rabenschlacht im Spannungsfeld von
Überlieferung und Textkritik.Von Renate Achenbach. Bayreuther
Beitr˙ge zur Literaturwissenschaft, 26. Frankfurt a. M., Berlin, Bern:
Peter Lang, 2004. Pp. 300. $57.95.
Some fifteen years have passed since New Philology challenged some longstanding
assumptions about the interactions and interdependencies of texts and
manuscripts, literary traditions, and transmission during the Middle Ages.
In the present moment, the scholarly community has (for the most part)
embraced the broadest principles of New Philology and its rejection of
the Lachmannian stemma, text archetypes, and iron-clad manuscript filiations.
Achenbach's book is one of a number of recent studies on medieval textuality
that are beginning to draw attention to the potential—and limits—of
New Philology for the study of manuscript culture in the Middle Ages.
In her analysis of the interconnectedness of text, manuscript, and transmission
in four medieval German miscellanies, Achenbach provides some insight
into how philologists of the twenty-first century might negotiate safe
passage through waters that are roiled by the clash of competing methodologies.
Achenbach uses the metaphor of the "Spagat" (a gymnastic term for "the
splits"; p. 187) to describe the contortions that ensue when scholars
seek to balance New Philology's emphasis on the sovereign singularity
of each manuscript against Old Philology's confident (some might suggest
overconfident) reliance on textual filiation and descent. This book, appropriately,
places one foot firmly on each side of the debate. By examining each of
the manuscripts containing Dietrichs Flucht and Rabenschlacht
with the same non-judgmental eye used to examine the texts themselves,
Achenbach seeks to discover whether manuscript study—if integrated
with the modus operandi of New Philology—could help to uncover
previously undetected trends and influences within the medieval German
literary tradition.
William Layher
Washington University in St. Louis
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