He modestly acknowledges that his text “will for sure repeatedly fall short” of presenting “what Sophocles actually wrote” (ix). Rather than proposing new readings, he carefully evaluates existing variants, often in defense of MSS. Finglass has worked closely especially with West and Diggle and is an excellent textual critic, although he is distinct from others in several ways. This tradition is characterized by brilliant and therefore sometimes over-confident emendations of ancient texts, by scholars showing little patience (a recent American scholar calls them scathing) toward others on textual questions as well as literary and historical interpretations. Diggle (Diggle’s festschrift is titled Ratio et Res Ipsa). Housman and in recent generations by luminaries including H. In his third major Cambridge edition of Sophokles’ plays ( Electra 2007, Ajax 2011), Patrick Finglass reflects and improves on a venerable tradition of British textual criticism, linked especially with Richard Bentley under the mantra ratio et res ipsa (“reason and the thing itself are more powerful than a hundred manuscripts”), and continued i.a.
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