Variante testuale e medium digitale. Una premessa teorica e due esemplificazioni

The essay explores how digital media have reshaped one of the fundamental notions of philology: the textual variant. Starting from a theoretical reflection, it shows how the digital environment disrupts the traditional opposition between the main text and the critical apparatus, offering instead new models of representation and interpretation. Through two case studies based on works by Giuseppe Cocchiara, the paper demonstrates how digital encoding (with TEI standards) enables the identification of intermediate and invariant variants, thus enriching the interpretative possibilities of textual criticism. The study underlines the continuity between traditional philological reflection and the innovations brought by digital tools, suggesting that new techniques emerge from the refinement of existing methods.