Growth Tests
Protracted

A protracted text is a simple text whose composition extends over a long period of time. During that time, it may develop some of the internal differences that also characterize what we here call growth texts.

Chinese Examples

Lun Hvng. Wang Chung gave this title to a series of essays produced over his entire lifetime. Those of his youth are crisper and more combative than those of his more benign and patriotic old age.

Other Examples

Genji Monogatari. This long, and probably unfinished, novel by the Heian court lady Murasaki Shikibu was naturally enough begun under the literary influence of the romances of her day. At least in Waley's opinion (not shared by all readers, or even all translators, of the book), it took Murasaki some time to find her own style. If so, a text critic in a later age might rely on that style difference to reject the first chapters as spurious. Given other indications of authorial continuity, this would be an injudicious conclusion.

 

Philology is Copyright © 2001- by E Bruce Brooks

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