Abstract

We are justified in doubting that we are in possession of reliable copies of classical works, all the great assets of Korean cultural heritage. Main reason for this doubt is provided by the fact that almost all the documentary exemplars of Korean classics published so far have been produced not as a result of the scholarly editing, but as an arbitrarily arranged mass of transmitted version of dubious provenance. Korean scholars used to think that such a job as textual studies are not really worthy of genuine scholarly effort, willfully ignoring the fact that procuring of the text through strict procedure of critical editing is the very foundation of the research in the field of humanities. To overcome this kind of prejudice towards to support the project of scholarly editing of Korean classics, I start the discussion by explaining about the meaning of the text and a variety of contingencies that can happen during the transmission of texts. After highlighting the possibility of making errors making in copying the text, I proceed to explain the contribution of textual criticism in preserving and procuring the classical texts as the European classical philologists were able to make. It is my firm belief that Korean scholars working on a critical edition of Korean classics can draw some profit from the knowledge of the Western textual criticism. I focus especially on the so-called Lachmann’s method in the hope that the constituent procedures of this kind of textual criticism, that is, collation, recension, examination and emendation will be also applicable to the Korean classical texts to be reconstructed. However, because I take it also recommend able to be cautious in applying the Lachmann’s method, I call to attention also to its limits as a scientific method.