definitive text–a term used primarily in the 1960s to describe the products of scholarly editing when appealing for funding on the grounds that the work once done definitively would never have to be done again.
It follows from this that no fixed, unique, definitive “Text” of a work exists. The “Text” of a work is rather composed of the sum of the transmitted “Texts” of the historically determinable versions of the text existing at any one time. Together they constitute the “Text” of a work in the editorial sense. Each of these textual versions is bound to a particular chronological place within the development history of the work, and each has its unique characteristics with regard to that time and place.
definitive text. A term used primarily in the 1960s to describe the products of scholarly editing when appealing for funding on the grounds that the work once done definitively would never have to be done again.
The very nature of writing, the creative process, and shifting intentionality, as well as the powerful social forces that occasion translation, adaptation, and censorship among readers–in short, the facts of revision, publication, and reception–urge us to recognize that the only ‘definitive text’ is a multiplicity of texts or rather, the fluid text.