Text Typology
Basics. With ancient texts, the key difference is between simple and composite: those which are all of a piece, and those which are not. Within the latter type, it helps to note the different ways in which a text which is not everywhere the same can arise and be modified. Some of those ways are described in this section. We start with examples from the classical Chinese texts, but include other cultures both ancient and modern, to show that the ways of ancient texts are already familiar to us. The subject is not, after all, entirely strange.
Caution. But the ancient and modern worlds are nevertheless different in some important ways. Terms like "author" are valid, in their modern sense, for some some ancient texts. Sywndz did write the Essay on Heaven (SZ 17), and some one person, to whom in this case we cannot attach a name, wrote the Book of Ruth, a protest against the exclusionism of Ezra. But a less specific term can be desirable, and we will often refer, in these pages, to the "text proprietor:" the person in charge of a text, the one who can add to it as circumstances may make desirable. There may be a succession of such proprietors, like the disciples of a founding figure, who may form a 'school" in that tradtion, or the series of astrologers who kept up some court chronicle, century after century. Texts may also be modified from without, sometimes by hostile voices, and so we have the "interpolator" or, in the case of a poetry collection, the "anthologist." For the stubbornly modern term "editor," we admit that have found little use in ancient contexts.
Musicians, more than most of us, are aware from direct experience of formative and reformative processes. They understand the fluidity inherent in a fixed text. The composer who rewrites an aria at the last minute for the convenience of the replacement soprano is taking part in a text formation process.
Some categories in this typology might be combined, or additional ones recognized; the intent here is to organize previous experience as intelligibly as possible for first acquaintance. Suggestions for additional examples, or corrections of those here offered, are always welcome; use the mail link at the bottom of any page.
- Simple Texts
- Growth Texts
- Protracted (Single Texts)
- Accretional (Single Texts)
- Layered (Authorial)
- Extended (Post-Authorial)
- Accumulated (Collections of More Than One Text)
- Outside Modifications
- Collected Texts
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