Comiat a les Regles de esquivar vocables i a tots els que s'han esforçat a escatir-ne l'autor, els continguts i la significació

Abstract

The aim of this article is to announce my decision to discontinue my interventions in the controversy over « Regles de esquivar vocables » (Rules for avoiding words, c. 1492), which broke out in 2000 and has raged from then to 2005 among certain scholars who do not share my position. It seems to me that, in addition to announcing my withdrawal from the debate, I should give reasons for my decision. Leaving aside personal reasons (my weariness with the topic and the conviction that it is leading nowhere), I believe that the discussion so far has failed to pay (sufficient) attention to certain philological data that, in my opinion, are decisive. For this reason, I wish to summarize the facts once again. For this purpose, I refer firstly to the critical edition of the text (1999), secondly, the resumption of the question in 2002, and thirdly, my intervention in the round table on 15/1/04 (2005). Basically, I insist once more on three aspects of the « Regles de esquivar vocables »: Philology, linguistic context and culture.