In the study of modern languages at universities, philology understood in the narrower sense of textual criticism has become such a specialized activity that for a long time it generated only very few methodological impulses of broader relevance to the subjects and disciplines in which it was practised. This state of affairs changed dramatically with the advent of the so-called 'New Philology' in the early 90s, an approach relating textual criticism to text theory and text history. The volume assembles the findings of an international colloquium held at the University of Jena (19 Oct. to 21 Oct. 1995), at which linguists, literary scholars and specialists in Romance and German Studies subjected the theories of this 'New Philology' to a critical review, the overall objective being to revive the dialogue between the relevant disciplines and sub-disciplines.