Complete the description of the division of labour.
A claim in ______ is refuted by a manuscript; a claim in ______ is refuted by a passage from the work; a claim in ______ is refuted by a counter-example from any literature at all; and a claim in ______ is refuted by a date.
Word bank: textual criticism · criticism · theory · literary history · comparative literature · philology
Hints
- Each blank is fixed by the kind of evidence that would refute it.
- A date refutes a claim about what came first.
Show the answer
A claim in textual criticism is refuted by a manuscript; a claim in criticism is refuted by a passage from the work; a claim in theory is refuted by a counter-example from any literature at all; and a claim in literary history is refuted by a date.
The exercise is worth doing because it shows the disciplines are separated by their falsifiers, not by their subject matter. All five are looking at the same shelf of books.
Practise Five Disciplines and Their Questions
The app has 6 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. Literature I is free to start.
More questions on Five Disciplines and Their Questions
- If forty manuscripts agree on a reading and two disagree, the reading of the forty is established beyond…
- Literary theory and literary criticism are both concerned with interpretation, but they have distinct…
- Match each step of the Lachmannian method to what it does.
- Which are true of comparative literature as a discipline?