Textual Criticism(s) and the Edition of Spanish Classics. An Example from the Debate over Góngora’s Soledades: the Application of the Genealogical-Reconstructive Method to the Abbot of Rute’s "Examen del Antídoto"

This essay has two main goals: first, to give an idea of both the increasing interest in textual criticism that, over the last thirty years, has shaken Hispanic philology, and the plurality of methods that scholars have been trying out in order to edit Spanish classics; second, to offer an example of the genealogical-reconstructive method’s application by summarizing the most relevant outcomes of my previous research on the tradition of one of the most significant texts of the debate over Góngora’s Soledades, i.e. Francisco Fernández de Córdoba’s "Examen del Antídoto". Such case study, in fact, displays three of the main issues faced by philologists: the existence of an archetype, contamination, and potentially authorial variants.