La contaminazione: logica e contraddizioni

La contaminazione: logica e contraddizioni
The author first distinguishes between the concepts of “codex”, “text” and “work”; he then examines the various meanings that the word “text” may have in textual philology; he establishes the difference between “contamination” and “change of antigraph”; and finally he notes some similarities between contamination and emendatio ex libro. He presents also the modern philologist as the last of copyists and, sometimes, as the last of the contaminators. Contamination usually confounds the philologists, but, in some cases, it can help building a more convincing stemma codicum. Two examples (taken from the Waldensian Bestiary and the Libro del conocimiento) seem to corroborate this hypothesis.