In literary research, a “stemma” refers to:

Correct option is B

The correct answer is a diagram showing relationships among manuscript versions
Introduction: In the field of textual criticism, especially for works that survive in multiple, differing handwritten copies (manuscripts), scholars must reconstruct the most likely original text. The stemma is a key tool in this genealogical method.
Information Booster:
· A stemma codicum (or simply stemma) is a tree-like diagram constructed by a textual scholar.
· It visually hypothesizes the genealogical relationships between all known manuscripts of a given work, tracing them back to a lost common ancestor (an archetype).
· By identifying which manuscripts are copies of which, scholars can filter out errors that arose in specific branches and make informed decisions about the most authoritative readings.
Additional Knowledge:
· A poetic structure is a form or meter.
· A linguistic analysis tool could be a concordancer or tagger.
· A formalist checklist is not a standard scholarly term.