recension

Recension is a scholarly term used chiefly in textual criticism to denote a revised edition of a text produced after comparing multiple manuscript witnesses. The term derives from Latin recensio “a reviewing,” from recensere “to review or revise.” In English usage, a recension can refer to either the process of revision or the resulting edition prepared by editors.

In practice, a recension involves collating manuscript copies, evaluating variant readings, restoring or emending passages, and choosing readings that best reflect the editor’s reconstruction of the original text. It is typically applied to ancient, medieval, or early modern works where surviving manuscripts show variation. A text may have several competing recensions, corresponding to different transmission lines, and a later recension may deliberately harmonize or reinterpret earlier readings.

A recension is distinct from other editorial products in that it emphasizes the reconstruction of a text’s underlying form rather than a new translation or a collection of annotations alone. In Greek and Latin literature, many works exist in more than one recension, produced by different scholarly communities across history. In English-language scholarship, the term is most often used to describe the text resulting from such editorial work; cognate terms in German (Rezension) more commonly denote a literary review.