Textual Scholarship in the United States

http://www.iupui.edu/~peirce/writings/cse.htm

The mission page of the Committee for Scholarly Editions (CSE) alleges a great deal of activity and advancement in the area of textual scholarship. While I am certainly no authority in this regard, I have been led to believe (by my Italian professors and by my readings) that the field of textual criticism versed in a sorry state around here, and that the quality of critical editions remains quite poor in the United States as compared to overseas. In Italy (my country of origin), in particular, textual criticism is thriving and very advanced. This seems quite natural, as the primary works of the national canon are mostly from the medieval and Renaissance periods, and establishing acceptable texts is still problematic, even for the major authors. New critical editions of Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, Tasso, etc.. spurt out with extraordinary frequency, like mushrooms in rain, and armies of philologists still come to blows over every page of the Convivio, the Vita Nuova, The Gerusalemme, and so forth. The extremly recent inception of the CSE (in 1976) appears to confirm that in the US, at least until recently, the field of textual scholarship has been largely neglected. Is that in fact the case? And if so, why? and what does that mean? Thoughts/comments?