manuscript

The manuscript is not the text; it holds, it signifies the text. What we ‘have’ is the manuscript alone. We use it as a starting point to arrive at the text, and we go back to it to verify the text we have attained (by interpreting the manuscript). The manuscript record is in its contingency irrelevant for the text itself, but essential for the constitution of the text.

(Zeller 1995, 43)

Contributed by Jesse. View changelog.