 previous article in this issue | next article in this issue  |
|
Document Details : Title: L'Histoire des Patriarches d'Alexandrie Subtitle: Une nouvelle évaluation de la configuration du texte en recensions Author(s): PILETTE, Perrine Journal: Le Muséon Volume: 126 Issue: 3-4 Date: 2013 Pages: 419-450 DOI: 10.2143/MUS.126.3.3005395 Abstract : The Arabic text of the History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria (HP) is preserved in a highly complex manuscript tradition. Translated from scattered Coptic sources and then continued directly in Arabic from the 11th century onwards, it has been generally described as a double corpus, transmitted in a primitive – or authorial – recension on the one hand, and in a widely spread Vulgate version on the other. This article intends to point out that this dichotomous articulation of the transmission could be the product of a mis-conceptualization due to wrong working bases, i.e. uncritical editions from the early 20th century. A critical review of these editions, informed by recent methodological insights, will show how this perception of HP as a 'double' corpus came to be taken for granted. Then, the concept of Vulgate itself will be questioned, by problematizing the current definitions of this term as well as by a systematic analysis of the textual data obtained from the manuscripts. A discussion on the results of such an analysis will lead to a new conceptualization of the transmission, which proposes to consider the text of the HP as a dynamic, or fluid, textual tradition. |
|
