Digital Documentary Editions and the Others

It is a truth universally acknowledged that documentary editions have found a very welcoming home in cyberspace. Documentary editing has often been considered a lower form of scholarship, as suggested by its being commonly called "noncritical editing," a name that barely hides the conviction of its being a non-or prescholarly endeavor. 1 However, this allegedly humble form of editing has now taken a leading role in the digital arena, boosted, it seems, by the availability of digital facsimiles. is rise in scholarly esteem has led to a worried call by Peter Robinson for editors to go back to preparing multiwitness critical editions. While conceding that "one can welcome this attention to documents as a long overdue correction to the millennia-long concentration of scholarly editors on the work rather than on the document," he sees "dangers" because "if we make only digital documentary editions, we will distance ourselves and our editions from the readers"; furthermore, "such editions [i.e., digital documentary editions], with their narrow focus on editor and document, fall far short of achieving the potential of editions in the digital world." 2 Franz Fischer has presented a not dissimilar line: if not detrimental, the provision of proper critical editions is much more worth pursuing than diplomatic editions of the sources. As he declares, if "all texts are equal, critical texts are more equal than others." 3 However, one must ask if this is really true. Does the provision of documentary editions represent a threat to the work of the editor and to the entire digital textual scholarship? e fact that these scholars have felt the need to defend the benefit of critical editions based on multiple witnesses, associated with the fear that "[i]f we make only digital documentary editions, we will distance ourselves and our editions from readers," 4 clearly demonstrates the central role that documentary