From Transcription to Spectral Analysis: New Pathways for Editing and Interpreting Medieval and Renaissance Lyric Texts (in margine to the Anniversary of Milan Kopecký)

Abstract

This study explores the evolving approaches to the editing and interpretation of Medieval and Renaissance lyric texts, with particular attention to the methodology of Czech literary historian Milan Kopecký (1925–2006). The author traces Kopecký’s intellectual influences—his teachers Jan Vilikovský (often referred to as the “Czech E. R. Curtius”), the hymnologist Antonín Škarka, and the Slavist Frank Wollman—and shows how Kopecký’s work gradually shifted from traditional transcription practices toward an understanding of lyric poetry as a culturally and ritually embedded expression. A key example is the so-called Brno fragment of a secular Renaissance lyric, which opens up questions surrounding the interpretation of fragmentarily preserved texts and the potential of contemporary technologies: multispectral imaging, forensic analysis (UV, IR, X-ray), and database-driven research as new tools in modern editorial practice.