Electronic Textual Criticism

The Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS) was originally established in the early nineteenth century for linguistic and literary studies, including laying the foundation of research in Hungarian literary history. Studying national classics of Hungarian literary history has been the Academy’s mission ever since, so HAS played and plays an essential role in the research into classic authors’ life-works. ¹ Scholarly text editions are made of the oeuvres of national classics or compiled from certain periods of literary history on the basis of genre. Most of these critical editions are produced by the Institute for Literary Studies of the HAS, even though faculties of literary history from prominent Hungarian universities contribute to the work. This work has been supervised by a HAS committee created for this purpose: the Textological Committee. The Committee was established in 1960 (Klaniczay) and has been operating ever since without interruption. Its functions include formulation of obligatory norms and methodological recommendations for critical text editions of Hungarian national classics; coordination and supervision of such works in different workshops; approval of plans for text editions; and accreditation of series and individual volumes as scholarly editions. In short: the Textological Committee provides quality assurance for text editions of Hungarian national classics. The efforts of the committee resulted in several hundred volumes of critical text editions in the past decades; ² thus, the most important authors in Hungarian literary history are available for study in reliable editions of high standard that are based on carefully considered uniform principles. In the beginning, it was the publishing house of the HAS, Akadémiai Kiadó, which published all critical editions. ³ In the 1990s, four other scholarly publishing houses joined in. These critical editions provide the basis for all of the popular text editions that aim for a wider audience. These are published by several other commercial publishing houses.