Disputes about Propertius.

I’m afraid it’s another passage from Richard Tarrant’s Texts, Editors, and Readers (cf. Abbots and Beavers, Textual Criticism as Rhetoric) — I just can’t resist this stuff! Disputes about the text of Propertius involve many of the issues discussed in earlier chapters, for example, recension (specifically, disagreement over the shape of the stemma), the proper scope of conjecture, weighing of an author’s habits of expression as they can be elicited from a controversial transmission, the place to be given to interpolation. But because Propertius is agreed to be a major poet, even a great one, the disputes surrounding so many of his lines can also show how textual and literary considerations interact. That topic will be the focus of this chapter, after a brief review of Propertius’ recent editorial history. For a few decades in the mid to late twentieth century, the text of Propertius seemed to have attained a degree of stability after a period marked by extremes of conservatism and…