Critic speak is tough, but we've got you covered.
Quote :A Rationale of Textual Criticism Quote 1
Textual critics who focus on literary texts (as most people called "textual critics" have done) concern themselves in one way or another with alterations. Whether they present their work to the public in the form of editions or of essays, the force that impels their work—indeed, at one level or another the actual subject of it—is the possibility that received texts are incorrect (according to one of many conceivable standards) and in need of alteration to set them right.
What's the job of Textual Critics? According to Tanselle, it's pretty simple: it's to detect and correct any mistakes to be found in a literary work—especially old works that have been passed down through the generations.
The truth is that a text coming down to us from the 12th century, or even the 17th or 18th centuries, has passed through many hands. Along the way, all those editors, printers, author's buddies, and actors will have tampered with the text at one point or another. The job of the Textual Critic is to figure out where these mistakes are in the literary work and fix them.
Quote :A Rationale of Textual Criticism Quote 2
The split between the activities usually called "literary criticism" and those traditionally labeled "textual criticism" is symptomatic of a widespread failure to grasp the essential nature of the medium of literature. Those who believe that they can analyze a literary work without questioning the constitution of a particular written or oral text of it are behaving as if the work were directly accessible on paper and in sound waves.
According to Tanselle, literary critics need to ask about the nature of the text they're analyzing. Why are they analyzing this version of a literary work as opposed to another one? How did this version come to them? Who wrote it? Who edited it? Who printed it?
Basically, Tanselle's point is that you can't separate "literary criticism" from "textual criticism"—they're one and the same thing. What's the point of analyzing a novel by Laurence Sterne if you're doing literary criticism on the wrong text, or a corrupt version of one of Sterne's novels? Textual Criticism is the foundation of literary criticism: you can't do literary criticism unless you're sure the text you're analyzing is the real deal.