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Text und Werk – zwei Begriffe auf dem Prüfstand

Published/Copyright: February 5, 2014

Abstract

The operations and ways of thinking which occur during the critical editing of a text can often contribute to a more precise understanding of the concepts which are used in the field of literary criticism. Similarly, the concepts originating from analytical bibliography can contribute to a more exact grasping of the concepts of literary criticism. Using this assumption as its point of departure, the article investigates the key concepts ‘text’ and ‘work’, which in literary criticism are often used as synonyms, and tries to define them in relation to each other - with ‘copy’, ‘variant’, and ‘version’ as intermediate terms. With regard to the term ‘text’, the concept is separated into the ‘ideal text’, the ‘real text’, and the ‘material text’ - which are again distinguished from the ‘document’. Once these concepts are thus more sharply defined, much of the theory that is held in esteem within literary criticism can be critically judged according to its merits. In the course of the analysis, there are discussions with Joseph Grigely, Peter Shillingsburg, Gunter Martens, and Roland Reus, along with the essential views of Nelson Goodman, Roland Barthes, and Mikhail Bakhtin.

Published Online: 2014-02-05
Published in Print: 2013-12

© 2014 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co.

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