Prolegomena to the New Edition of Francesco da Buti’s Commentary on Dante’s Commedia. Purgatorio

Abstract

In this article I discuss the relationships between the extant manuscript tradition of Francesco da Buti's commentary on Dante's Purgatorio. My argument shows that the constitutio textus cannot be arrived at in a mechanical way, owing to the numerous contaminations and interpolations. I thus o er some general methodological reflections on how to critically edit a long prose text whose MSS tradition is densely contaminated. With this in mind I make the case that the most appropriate way to approach the making of the edition is to base the text on a single authoritative manuscript. VARIANTS 14 (2019) lished, is to provide a reliable and accurate text, expurgated of errors, equipped with an apparatus which critically justifies the editor's textual choices, and furnished with an apparatus fontium. 2 This article is thus a preparatory study to the new critical edition, which will soon be published by Salerno Editrice (Rome) as part of the series 'Edizione Nazionale dei Commenti danteschi' in several volumes. The main aim is to investigate the manuscript tradition of the Purgatorio's section of Francesco da Buti's commentary. Since Buti's commentary on the Commedia is a particularly long text (over one million words) it has seemed appropriate to o er separate preparatory studies for each canticle. 3 After a brief introduction on Buti himself and on the genesis and fortune of his Dante commentary, I intend to discuss in these Prolegomena the relationships between the extant manuscript tradition of the Purgatorio section. In doing so, I will show that the constitutio textus cannot be arrived at in a mechanical way, owing to the numerous contaminations and interpolations. I will thus o er some general methodological reflections on how to critically edit a long prose text whose MSS tradition is contaminated. As a result of this discussion, I will argue that the most appropriate way to approach the making of the edition is to base its text on a single authoritative manuscript (i.c. MS N).