L. D. Reynolds
L. D. Reynolds | |
---|---|
Born | Leighton Durham Reynolds 11 February 1930 Abercanaid, Merthyr Tydfil, Wales |
Died | 4 December 1999 Oxford, England | (aged 69)
Spouse |
Susan Buchanan (m. 1962) |
Academic background | |
Education |
|
Influences | |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Classics |
Sub-discipline | Textual criticism |
Institutions | Brasenose College, Oxford |
Leighton Durham Reynolds
The central academic achievement of Reynolds's career was his monograph The Medieval Tradition of Seneca's Letters (1965), in which he reconstructed how the text was transmitted through the
Writing about the set of critical editions authored by Reynolds, the Latinist Michael Reeve stated that Reynolds's scholarship had the ability "to cut through dozens of manuscripts to the serviceable core".[3] At the time of its publication, his work on Seneca was considered by some commentators to be difficult to surpass.
Early life and education
Leighton Durham Reynolds was born on 11 February 1930 in the Welsh village of
Reynolds attended Caerphilly Grammar School and won a scholarship to study Modern languages at
With Austin's support, Reynolds went on to obtain a scholarship for a second undergraduate degree at
Career at Oxford
In 1954, Reynolds was elected to his first academic appointment, a
The post of Classics tutor at Brasenose College, Oxford, had fallen vacant after its incumbent, Maurice Platnauer, had become the college's new Principal. In 1957, after the end of his research fellowship, Reynolds was selected as Platnauer's replacement and duly elected to a tutorial fellowship.[4] He was also appointed a University Lecturer in Greek and Latin Literature. He held both appointments for the rest of his academic career.[3] Reynolds played an active part in the college's governing body, where, according to the Brasenose fellow and chemist Graham Richards, he "held a position of quiet authority". From 1985 to 1987, he served as Vice-Principal and, in 1997, as acting Principal of the college. He supported Brasenose's decision to become the first all-male college of the university to admit female students.[10] In 1996 he was raised to the rank of a professor.[3]
In 1962, he married Susan Mary Buchanan, an
Reynolds was elected a
Retirement and death
Reynolds retired from his teaching duties in 1997, one year after being appointed to a professorship. Around this time, he was diagnosed with cancer. In an obituary in the
Contributions to scholarship
Seneca's Letters
In the application for his position at Brasenose, Reynolds wrote that he had been working on the textual transmission of Seneca the Younger's Letters, and that he aimed to publish a new
Reynolds set out to answer two central questions regarding the medieval manuscripts of the Letters: how authoritative are the 'younger' manuscripts, written after the 12th century, in establishing the text, and how do they relate to the older segment of the tradition?
The transmission of Letters 89–124 depends on a much narrower manuscript base which he sought to supplement. Previously, three individual manuscripts had been considered the key textual witnesses (B, Q, p); Reynolds showed that p and Q were in fact representatives of larger groups of manuscripts comprising several more recent manuscripts.[16] This part of his research drew praise from reviewers,[16][15] with the classicist B. L. Hijmans commenting that its method of reconstruction would "be very useful in seminars on textual criticism".[17] Reynolds's concluding remarks about the younger manuscripts stated that, with few exceptions, "they have no contribution to make to the reconstruction of the text".[18] Writing for The Classical Review, the Latinist E. J. Kenney said that this conclusion was "an altogether Herculean feat" but added that it "hardly prepare[d]" readers for the large role these manuscripts played in editions of the Letters.[19]
Appearing in two volumes, Reynolds's edition of the Letters was based on the results of his monograph.[20] For Kenney, the edition displayed "almost constantly sound" judgement of textual problems and had a critical apparatus without "serious inconsistencies".[19] Although he criticised a number of editorial aspects,[21] he concluded by writing that "[Reynolds's] edition will surely be for a long time to come the standard text of this undervalued work".[22] Hijmans expressed a similar opinion while stating that Reynolds's work may not have provided the final assessment of all available manuscripts.[23]
Further critical editions
In 1977, Reynolds published a critical edition of Seneca's Dialogues.[4] Having identified the Codex Ambrosianus (A) as the most important source of the text, he relied heavily on it and drew on the readings of younger manuscripts only where A showed signs of corruption.[c][25] For Latinist D. R. Shackleton Bailey, the result was a text which surpassed that published in 1905 by the German scholar Emil Hermes.[26] Shackleton Bailey further stated that "it seems unlikely that [Reynolds's text] can ever be greatly bettered".[25] According to the reviewer Daniel Knecht, Reynolds was more willing than previous editors to posit cruces in places where the text was irremediably corrupt and to delete passages he considered inauthentic.[27]
Reynolds continued his work on Latin prose authors in 1991 with an edition of the collected works of the Roman historian Sallust. At that time, the standard text had been a 1954 edition by Alfons Kurfess in the Bibliotheca Teubneriana series. Reynolds innovated by limiting himself to reporting five manuscripts in passages where Kurfess had provided unnecessary detail.[28] For Stephen Oakley, the Kennedy Professor of Latin at Cambridge, the greatest merit of the edition was its judicious provision of readings from less reliable manuscripts, which has led to the solution of a difficult textual problem in chapter 114 of Sallust's Jugurtha.[29] The classicist Stephen Shierling considered the differences between the editions of Kurfess and Reynolds of "modest importance" but said the new text was "cleaner and more consistent".[30]
Published in 1998, the final critical edition of his career covered Cicero's philosophical text De finibus bonorum et malorum. This work had been edited competently by the Danish classical scholar Johan Nicolai Madvig in 1839 but technological and methodological advances had necessitated a new rendition of the text. Reynolds remodelled the stemma by defining two principal transmission groups (α and φ) to which all available manuscripts belong. In addition to a concise critical apparatus, he fitted the text with a secondary apparatus providing background information on the philosophical concepts discussed.[31]
Scribes and Scholars
After publishing his work on Seneca's Letters, Reynolds collaborated with Nigel Guy Wilson, a Hellenist and fellow of the neighbouring Lincoln College, to produce a general introduction to the transmission of classical texts. They were tasked with this endeavour after Oxford University Press had been made aware of the need for such a book. Their joint volume was published in 1968 as Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature. The book appeared in two further editions (1974 and 1991) and was translated into Italian, French, Greek, Spanish, and Japanese.[32] The book contained chapters on the afterlife of classical texts in antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance; the last chapter discussed modern textual criticism.[33]
Scribes and Scholars was met with enthusiastic reviews from the scholarly world. The Hellenist
Legacy
Reynolds's reputation as a scholar rests on his contributions to textual criticism. In an obituary for The Independent, the Latinist Michael Reeve wrote that Reynolds's scholarship had the ability "to cut through dozens of manuscripts to the serviceable core".[3] Scribes and Scholars, the introduction to textual criticism co-authored with Wilson, was described by Reeve as "the kind of book that one simply cannot imagine not being there".[32] Even though his scholarship on Seneca was at the time of its publication considered by some commentators to be insurpassable,[25][22] Winterbottom considers the transmission of the Letters much more open than Reynolds envisaged.[37] As of 2001, his text was nonetheless still consulted as the standard edition.[38] Writing in 2019 for the bibliographical repository Oxford Bibliographies Online, the Seneca scholars Ermanno Malaspina, Jula Wildberger, and Veronica Revello named Reynolds's editions as "the best and most cited" texts of Seneca's works.[1]
Publications
The following monographs and editions were written by Reynolds:[39]
- Reynolds, L. D. (1965). L. Annaei Senecae Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales. 2 Volumes. Oxford: Oxford University Press OCLC 70458249
- — (1965). The Medieval Tradition of Seneca's Letters. Oxford: Oxford University Press. OCLC 901949196.
- — (1968). OCLC 164411390.
- — (1977). L. Annaei Senecae Dialogorum Libri Duodecim. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-814659-9.
- — (1983). L. D. Reynolds (ed.). Texts and Transmission: a Survey of the Latin Classics. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0-19-814456-4.
- — (1991). Catilina, Iugurtha, Historiarum Fragmenta Selecta C. Sallusti Crispi. Appendix Sallustiana. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-814667-4.
- — (1998). M. Tulli Ciceronis De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum Libri Quinque. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-814670-4.
Reynolds also published the following articles or chapters:[39]
- Reynolds, L. D. (March 1955). "The Flowering Plants and Pteridophyta of the Caerphilly Basin". The North Western Naturalist. New Series. 3: 35–57.
- — (1957). "Two Notes on the Manuscripts of Seneca's Letters". The Classical Review. 7 (1): 5–12. S2CID 162206772.
- — (1968). "The Medieval Tradition of Seneca's Dialogues". The Classical Quarterly. New Series. 18 (2): 355–372. S2CID 162946690.
- — (1974). "Some Notes on the Text of Seneca's Dialogues". The Classical Quarterly. New Series. 24 (2): 269–275. S2CID 170861272.
- — (1984–1985). "The Lacuna in Sallust's Jugurtha". Revue d'Histoire des Textes. 14–15: 59–69.
- — (1992). "The Transmission of the 'De Finibus'". Italia Medioevale e Umanistica. 35: 1–30.
- — (1995). "Petrarch and a Renaissance Corpus of Cicero's Philosophica". In Pecere, Oronzo; Reeve, Michael D. (eds.). Formative Stages of Classical Traditions: Latin Texts from Antiquity to the Renaissance: Proceedings of a Conference held at Erice, 16–22 October 1993. Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull'Alto Medioevo. pp. 409–433. ISBN 978-88-7988-449-5.
- — (2000). "Petrarch and Cicero's Philosophical Works". Les Cahiers de l'Humanisme. 1: 37–52.
- — (2000). "Beatus Rhenanus and Seneca, De Beneficiis and De Clementia". In Hirstein, James (ed.). Beatus Rhenanus: Lecteur et Éditeur des Textes Anciens: Actes du Colloque International tenu a Strasbourg et a Sélestat du 13 au 15 Novembre 1998. Turnhout: Brepols. pp. 101–115. ISBN 978-2-503-51120-7.
- — (2001). "Experiences of an Editor of Classical Latin Texts". Revue d'Histoire des Textes. 30 (2000): 1–15. .
Notes
- ^ a b Transmission refers to the ways in which classical texts were circulated and preserved prior to the invention of printing.[2]
- ^ In textual criticism, Greek letters denote reconstructed manuscript families. Letters of the Latin alphabet commonly refer to manuscripts whose existence is certain.[14]
- ^ Corruption occurs when the original wording of a text has been altered in the process of transmission.[24]
References
- ^ a b Malaspina, Wildberger & Revello 2019.
- ^ De Nonno 2010, pp. 31–32.
- ^ a b c d e f Reeve 1999.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Wilson 2004.
- ^ Winterbottom 2001, p. 660.
- ^ Winterbottom 2001, p. 661.
- ^ Winterbottom 2001, pp. 661–662.
- ^ Winterbottom 2001, p. 662.
- ^ a b Winterbottom 2001, p. 663.
- ^ Winterbottom 2001, p. 673.
- ^ Winterbottom 2001, p. 674.
- ^ a b c Winterbottom 2001, p. 675.
- ^ a b Maurach 1968, p. 159.
- ^ Reynolds & Wilson 1968, p. 141.
- ^ a b Kenney 1966, p. 342.
- ^ a b c Maurach 1968, p. 160.
- ^ Hijmans 1968, p. 324.
- ^ Reynolds 1965, p. 80.
- ^ a b Kenney 1966, p. 343.
- ^ Hijmans 1968, p. 322.
- ^ Kenney 1966, pp. 343–344.
- ^ a b Kenney 1966, p. 344.
- ^ Hijmans 1968, p. 326.
- ^ De Nonno 2010, p. 44.
- ^ a b c Shackleton Bailey 1979, p. 76.
- ^ Shackleton Bailey 1979, p. 77.
- ^ Knecht 1978, p. 646.
- ^ Oakley 1993, p. 58.
- ^ Oakley 1993, p. 59.
- ^ Schierling 1994, p. 99.
- ^ Dyck 2000.
- ^ a b Winterbottom 2001, p. 668.
- ^ a b Easterling 1970, p. 237.
- ^ Fahy 1970, p. 151.
- ^ Hörmann 1970, p. 259.
- ^ Hörmann 1970, pp. 258–259.
- ^ Winterbottom 2001, p. 667.
- ^ Winterbottom 2001, p. 666.
- ^ a b Winterbottom 2001, p. 676.
Bibliography
- De Nonno, Mario (2010). "Transmission and Textual Criticism". In ISBN 978-0-19-921152-4.
- Dyck, Andrew (2000). "Review of M. Tulli Ciceronis de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum Libri Quinque by L. D. Reynolds". from the original on 11 August 2021.
- S2CID 163375602.
- Fahy, Conor (1970). "Review of Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature by L. D. Reynolds and N. G. Wilson". JSTOR 563072.
- Hijmans, B. L. (1968). "Review of The Medieval Tradition of Seneca's Letters and L. Annaei Senecae Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales by L. D. Reynolds". JSTOR 4429658.
- Hörmann, Wolfgang (1970). "Review of Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature". Gymnasium (in German). 77: 258–259. ISSN 0342-5231.
- S2CID 246881049.
- Knecht, Daniel (1978). "Review of L. Annaei Senecae Dialogorum libri XIII". L'Antiquité Classique (in French). 47: 646–647. JSTOR 41651371.
- Malaspina, Ermanno; Wildberger, Jula; Revello, Veronica (3 June 2019). "Seneca". ISBN 978-0-19-539657-7.
- Maurach, Gregor (1968). "Review of The Medieval Tradition of Seneca's Letters by L. D. Reynolds". JSTOR 27684391.
- S2CID 162939525.
- from the original on 5 March 2016.
- Reynolds, Leighton Durham (1965). The Medieval Tradition of Seneca's Letters. Oxford: Oxford University Press. OCLC 887802865.
- Reynolds, Leigthon Durham; OCLC 164411390.
- Schierling, Stephen (1994). "Studies in Sallust". JSTOR 3297823.
- JSTOR 268271.
- doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/73567. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- (PDF) from the original on 19 July 2021.