OK, as a compulsive surfer, I feel compelled to offer some links!
Brown University has some really great links on this, and you can look at
the original manuscripts and draw your own conclusions:
Interpreting Ancient Manuscripts
http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/mss/overview.html
Textual Criticism
http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/mss/text_crit.html
Dating the Oldest New Testament Manuscripts
http://odyssey.lib.duke.edu/papyrus/texts/manuscripts.html
Textual Criticism and Manuscript Interpretation
http://members.aol.com/dvdmoore/html/txtcrt.htm
Text-Types and Textual Kinship
http://www.skypoint.com/~waltzmn/TextTypes.html
Comparing Translations
http://www.cob-net.org/compare.htm
Here is the TC home page, which also includes their archives:
TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism
http://scholar.cc.emory.edu/scripts/TC/TC.html
The best part of their site, IMHO, is the collection of links:
TC Links: Other Sites Dealing with Textual Criticism
http://shemesh.scholar.emory.edu/scripts/TC/TC-links.html
Here's some info on textual criticism as applied to the Wife of Bath's Tale:
The Canturbury Tales Project
http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/projects/ctp/index.html
Hope this helps!
Jonathan
Jonathan Robie
jwrobie@mindspring.com
http://www.mindspring.com/~jwrobie