What Catullus Wrote : Problems in Textual Criticism, Editing and the Manuscript Tradition

The poems of Catullus barely managed to survive the Middle Ages. All surviving copies of the collection derive from an extremely corrupt manuscript, and scholars have been working since the Renaissance to reconstruct the original text. This volume aims to contribute to this effort with a substantive Introduction, and with six original papers, from a team of noted international specialists. The papers were presented in 2011 at the conference 'What Catullus Wrote' at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich. The authors represent different generations of scholarship and different academic traditions. They here study aspects of the manuscript tradition of the poems and their editorial history as well as contributing directly to the reconstruction of the text.

The volume aims to set an example of a collaborative approach to textual criticism, in which significant choices are based not on the judgement of a single authoritative editor, but on the outcome of debate between scholars who represent a broad range of viewpoints.


Contents
Introduction: A sketch of the textual transmission (Dániel Kiss)
The lost Codex Veronensis and its descendants: three problems in Catullus' manuscript tradition (Dániel Kiss)
Catullus, Sabellico (& Co.) and ... Giorgio Pasquali ( Giuseppe Gilberto Biondi)
Pontano's Catullus (Julia Haig Gaisser)
Nicolaus Heinsius's notes on Catullus ( Antonio Ramírez de Verger)
Cui uideberis bella : the influence of Baehrens and Housman on the text of Catullus (David Butterfield)
Problems in Catullus 45, 62 and 67 (Stephen Heyworth)

"This slender and unassuming volume should be on the bookshelves of anyone with an interest in Catullus or the textual transmission of Latin literature. While it may be most appreciated by those with a healthy awareness of the vast problems of Catullan criticism, it is also written and edited throughout with a generous (and judicious) sense of awareness of the needs of diverse audiences. [...] Undergraduate and graduate students will find in its pages something of an introduction to the problems of paleography, textual criticism and the editing of a difficult and relatively poorly preserved poet (not least because Catullus remains one of the more popular authors in the early level Latin curricula). Scholars and specialists will be rewarded with new treasures of old wisdom and novel ways of looking at familiar problems." ----Lee Fratantuono, Classical Journal 2016.04.02