Variance dialectics - New philology and interpretative strategies of medieval text

A history of recent medievalism with no mention of The New Philology would hardly be conceivable. A scandal to some, a promise to others, the challenge to traditional philology posed by Stephen Nichols in the early 1990s - and the harsh controversies that followed - had such an impact that, even when peace and quiet gradually returned, the philological landscape did not seem quite the same. Evidence of this lasting importance of revisionism can be found in the article "Why Material Philology?" published by Nichols in 1997. Renewal of the critique of an outdated discipline, but at the same time a subtle demonstration of a non-stagnant revisionism, the article is itself a challenge to the reader who wants to assess the main ideas of the material approach, its implications as well as its unforeseen complications. Suggesting the concept of variance as a key to the understanding of this difficult, perhaps even contradictory renewal, the following pages try to discern the consequences of a philology that claims the priority of the context - the physical mansucript, the reception, and the surrounding culture - over the traditional linguistic and literary support. It is not, however, as one might expect, the interpretation of the text that falls victim to this strategy, but, much more likely, the hermeneutics of the interpreted text : A loss that, in order to be countered, makes it necessary to consider the possibility of basing a modified approach to the diachrony of the medieval text on the carefully reconstructed concepts of finality and authority. If, in the first place, the article intended to question the hidden dialectics of radical revisionism, it gradually seems to point to this deeper concern, namely the assumption that the complications of revisionist theory might very well be at the heart of our present-day philology.