Manuscripts with Few Significant Introduced Variants.

Description: Acknowledges two problems in identifying manuscript families in traditional stemmatics ("coincident agreement" and "contamination") and posits a third: "the phenomenon of multiple manuscripts within a tradition which cannot be assigned to any family because there is no consistent pattern of agreement in introduced variants between them and other manuscripts." Clarifies the nature and implications of this third problem in four textual traditions: the "Svipdagsmál," Dante's "Commedia," the Greek New Testament, and the CT. For the latter, includes discussion of how variant analysis reveals that the Hengwrt manuscript (Hg) the Ellesmere (El), and Oxford, Christ Church 152 (Ch) "form an extraordinarily close trio."