On the readability of the critical edition

Much has already been written about the precarious balance between the conflicting claims of the two poles of critical editions: the medieval text at one end and the modern reader at the other. Nonetheless, this paper aims to stimulate a new debate over this old issue, because the dividing line between what is readable and what is not is far from being a sharp and definite one: in fact, in the present cultural climate we might well leave a larger space to the peculiar aspects of medieval texts without seriously reducing their comprehension on the part of the modern reader.