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642 UN DEBAT : LES MENTAUTES COLLECTIVES 12.

of the exact duplication of the copy-Bource, but that they resorted to tho method of the orał tansmission of the folklore. In confronting the pages of two chronicles (or of popular books) we eonie to believe that the copyist was not transcribing word by word the paragraph he was going through -_r he was either reading a fragment and then putting it in writing or repro-ducing from memory an entire story. The contact with the latter was through preyious indiyidual readings or through partieipation — in a group of listeners — in those eollective readings, and we have early evi-dence of such eyents takiDg place in monasteries and later eyidence (but which refers to an old custom) of them in the rural environment. The li-berty a copyist took with a test varied according to :

a)    the naturę of the text

b)    the period of time when the copying was done in relation to thfr cultural and social history

c)    the personality of the copyist

This liberty may rangę from the simplest level, the introduction of pronounciation peculiaritieB (nobody seems to have had seruples about the original text), to changes of the paradigm of verbs or nouns, to repla-cements in the lexicography or in the topie, to the introduction of new passages of different size. The specific of the additions or abbreviations was due to a certain predominant tendency of the culture at that time and less so to the amount of information and initiatiye of the scribe. The inter-yent-ions do not influence the writiDgs included in the category of folk books alone and even when they do, they are not uniform. It seems that Esopia and Archirie and Anadan underwent many alterations at the level of the epic units, regarding their number and order as well as their matter.-The scribe’s intervention was facilitated by the open structure of these writings.³⁶ Begarding Alexandria, it seems that there were only two main Eomanian yersions and the episodes added in this country are very few.³⁷ But the yariations are so great from the substance of an episode to its phonetic load, that one cannot invoke only the absence of certain copies which had been used as intermediary. It was a retelling within the limits of the same epic units, a retelling which sometimes suggested the false idea, that we are in the face of another translation.⁸⁸ In another popular book, Yarlaam and Ioasaf, one can hardly tell any interyentions beyond the lexical level (The gaps were mostly involuntary). The different yariants, copied at the end of the 18th century in Moldayia, and that included in the Neamtu edition (19 Hoyember), 1811 — as well as the translations of

³³ I. C. Chltlmla, op. cit., p. 351—429; Mlhal Moraru, Córflle populare. Ineercare de deflntre structuraló, post-preface to N. Cartojan’8 Cdrflle populare ..ed. II, Bucureętl, 1974; C. Giuchindel, Pooeslea lut Archirie fllosoful..Bucureętl, 1976.

³⁷ A synthetlc presentatlon of the problems posed by the research of Alezandrta In Enzyklopddie des M&rchens, vol. I (articles signed by Helmut van Thiel, David J. A. Ross, In es Kohler and Rudolf Schenda).

** Followlng closely the forms glven to one and the same fragment In different copies we understand that the disslmilarities between them are not due to the number of Intermediary speclmens which separate them, but to the habit of copyists to reproduce, in their owo way, one and the same narratlve materiał.