The new peer-reviewed series Transmissions aims to constitute a space for documentation, theoretical and methodological reflection and critical discussion on the transmission of texts. The focus is on textual production in Greek and Latin, while remaining open to comparisons with the dynamics of transmission in the graphic and textual production of other cultures and languages, especially in the cases where the latter function as vehicles for the transmission of Greek and Latin texts. The series hosts studies on the various aspects of conservation and transformation, in all their manifold processes, from antiquity to the modern period. Its concern is above all with the material factors and practices of use and reception of texts and their physical supports, with the aim of reconstructing the cultural and social history that serves as a foundation for their transmission. The scope of reflection is thus the itineraries of texts, books and book collections, with particular attention to the role of the actors and institutions that participate in these dynamics, leading towards a phenomenology and theory of the processes of transmission.
The series responds to an increasing critical awareness, and to the search for theoretical systematisation in the field of the transmission of ancient texts. In the most recent research, alongside the philological approach to the text, an attention to the technical-material aspects of transmission has become widespread, and so also to the editorial and historical-cultural fortunes of the textual product right from antiquity itself, in the eastern and western Middle Ages and the whole of European humanism, up to the modern period. The philological approach to the book, with the observation of the physical signs of the material support, is ever more central to the investigation of texts, to the reconstruction of the paths taken by books and to a historical contextualisation of their use, in the need to tie the text to the fortunes of its vehicle. Increasingly conscious attention is being given to the transitions and arrivals of texts and books in different cultural and cultural-linguistic contexts, with their dynamics of confrontation and adaptation, resulting in new material outcomes of textual production, for example translations and commentaries, paraphrases, abbreviations and anthologisations.
In general, there is a strong need to trace the social and cultural environments and scenarios in which the journeys of books and texts occur, by observing morphological shifts and ways of use both in textual products and in their material witnesses, and so also in the role of the actors in the practices of writing and reading – scribes, readers, scholars, humanists – and of institutions – schools, universities, public and private libraries – in the production, circulation and conservation processes of written culture. These are Transmissions, thus, not only of texts, but also of praxeis, of books and of collections of books, in the encounter between cultures.
Transmissions publishes monographs, edited volumes and critical editions with commentary of texts which are particularly relevant for the study of the dynamics of textual transmission. The preferred language of publication is English, but German, Italian, and French are also accepted.
Series Editor:
Rosa Maria Piccione (Università di Torino)
Advisory Board:
Rodney Ast (Universität Heidelberg); Daniele Bianconi (Sapienza Università diRoma); Caterina Carpinato (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia); Paolo Eleuteri (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia); Gerlinde Huber-Rebenich (Universität Bern); Stefano Martinelli Tempesta (Università di Milano); Juan Pedro Monferrer (Universidad de Cordoba); Raphaële Mouren (Warburg Institute-University of London); Matthias Perkams (Universität Jena); Elisabetta Sciarra (Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana); Sofia Torallas Tovar (University of Chicago)
