Teaching Manuscripts in the Digital Age

This chapter reflects on the author’s practical experience teaching palaeography in several different contexts at the start of the so-called “digital age”. Material for manuscript-studies is becoming available at an enormous rate: perhaps most obvious are the results of the large-scale digitisation programmes which are making high-quality colour facsimiles of manuscripts available online to wide audiences. At the same time, Virtual Learning Environments provide new possibilities for teaching and learning, and many tools for research on manuscripts can also be used for teaching. Perhaps more fundamentally, however, it has often been noted that scholarship is changing as a result of digital tools, resources, and methods. What, then, of teaching? Should the teaching of manuscript studies also change along with the scholarly discipline, bringing the Digital Humanities into our classes on palaeography and codicology? To begin answering this question, and to suggest some pedagogical possibilities brought about by technology, the author’s own experiences are discussed. Some limitations of technology for teaching are then considered, and some general remarks are then provided on the relationship between palaeography and Digital Humanities, two fields which are both fighting for recognition as full academic disciplines and not “mere” Hilfswissenschaften

Beyond the Text: Digital Editions and Performance

Brett D. Hirsch and Janelle Jenstad, “Beyond the Text: Digital Editions and Performance.” Shakespeare Bulletin 34.1 (2016): 107–27

Many witnesses, many layers: the digital scholarly edition of the Iudicium coci et pistoris (Anth. Lat. 199 Riese)

Il progetto di ricerca messo in cantiere durante l'anno della mia borsa di studio post-doc presso il Centro Linceo Interdisciplinare “B. Segre” dell'Accademia dei Lincei prevede la creazione di un'edizione critica digitale del Iudicium coci et pistoris iudice Vulcano di Vespa (Anth. Lat. 199 Riese), un testo latino tardoantico in versi con una tradizione pluritestimoniale. Tale edizione intende mettere a frutto gli apporti della semiotica, della linguistica e di quella sua parte detta grafologia, applicando le intuizioni teoriche e metodologiche di Tito Orlandi (vd. in particolare Informatica testuale, Laterza: Roma 2010); ed applicare, innovandolo, il markup XML/TEI. In tale edizione, le fonti primarie (manoscritti latini medievali) vengono codificate a più livelli testuali, ovvero: (1) il livello grafemico, le cui unità minime sono i grafemi specifici del sistema grafico del testimone (inclusi i segni paragrafematici e le brachilogie sistematiche); (2) il livello alfabetico, le cui unità minime sono costituite dalle unità alfabetiche (distinte dai grafemi, e da questi ultimi semplicemente rappresentate); (3) il livello 'linguistico', le cui unità minime vengono individuate nelle parole flesse, al di là del sistema grafico e persino dell'alfabeto utilizzati nei singoli testimoni. Ad un livello superiore del sistema-edizione, vengono creati sistemi per la collatio a vari livelli dei testi dei testimoni. Ai fini della critica testuale, la collatio avviene infatti al livello che abbiamo definito linguistico, ma si possono realizzare modelli più complessi di confronto tra i livelli grafemici ed alfabetici di diversi manoscritti. Il contributo principale che tale progetto intende apportare alla sperimentazione in atto nel campo della codifica delle fonti primarie e dell'edizione critica digitale risiede nella complessità del modello digitale implementato, che distingue formalmente all'interno di ogni testimone i livelli testuali e poi disegna relazioni tra testimoni a livelli diversi. Una sfida interessante è quella di coniugare – proponendo, laddove necessario, innovazioni – tale modello di testo e di edizione con gli schemi e le linee-guida attuali della codifica XML/TEI. Punti particolarmente problematici, a tal riguardo, sono la codifica: (1) delle fonti primarie nel loro complesso; (2) dei 'caratteri' (inclusi i segni paragrafematici); (3) delle brachilogie sistematiche.During my post-doc scholarship at the Centro Linceo Interdisciplinare “B. Segre” of the Accademia dei Lincei, I have been working to a digital scholarly edition of the Iudicium coci et pistoris iudice Vulcano by Vespa (Anth. Lat. 199 Riese), a Latin text in verse from Late Antiquity with a multi-testimonial textual tradition. This edition aims to apply concepts of Semiotics, Linguistics and Graphology, especially derived from the theoretical and methodological work of Tito Orlandi (see Informatica testuale, Laterza: Roma 2010). It also aims to use XML/TEI markup, while customising it. In my edition, each primary source (medieval Latin manuscripts) will be encoded at three layers: (1) the graphical layer, whose minimal units are the graphemes of a specific witness' graphical system, its paragraphematic signs (like punctuation, word breaks, line breaks etc.) and its systematic abbreviations; (2) the alphabetic layer, whose minimal units are the “alphabemes” (by which word Raul Mordenti means alphabetical letters; alphabemes are different from graphemes, in that the latter represent the former); (3) the 'linguistic' layer, whose minimal units are inflected words, regardless of the graphical system and even of the alphabet used in specific witnesses. The digital edition will include a module for automatic collation of witnesses at different layers. For textual criticism, collation will happen at the 'linguistic' layer, but more complex collation systems can by devised to compare the graphical and alphabetical layers of different manuscripts. This edition aims to be a proof-of-concept to test whether a more sophisticated model of encoding of primary textual sources and of digital scholarly edition can be implemented with a 'sustainable' workflow. Its main innovations are: (1) the distinction of different textual layers within each witness; (2) the declaration of a 'table of signs' for the graphical and the alphabetical layers of each witness; (3) a collation process carried out ad different layers. A major challenge will be to adapt XML/TEI to fit the purposes of this model of edition. Related issues include the encoding: (1) of primary sources generally; (2) of so-called 'characters' (including paragraphematic signs); (3) of systematic abbreviations

Erros de autor em testemunhos dactilográficos: para uma edição digital da poesia de Pedro Homem de Mello

Tomando como referência a edição crítico-genética atualmente em curso para a poesia de Pedro Homem de Mello (1904-1984), este artigo detém-se na especificidade dos erros de autor que ocorrem em testemunhos dactilográficos modernos. Depois de sistematizar os tipos de erros mais frequentes nos documentos deste poeta, procura-se refletir sobre o tratamento editorial mais adequado, tendo em conta questões como a granularidade da transcrição eletrónica e o eficaz processamento das variantes e correções da génese. Devido ao elevado número de testemunhos envolvidos e às condicionantes específicas da metodologia digital, defende-se uma regularização sistemática de toda a componente acidental dos textos, incluindo não só os erros mecânicos de execução, mas também erros de língua ao nível da grafia.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Erros de autor em testemunhos dactilográficos: para uma edição digital da poesia de Pedro Homem de Mello

Tomando como referência a edição crítico-genética atualmente em curso para a poesia de Pedro Homem de Mello (1904-1984), este artigo detém-se na especificidade dos erros de autor que ocorrem em testemunhos dactilográficos modernos. Depois de sistematizar os tipos de erros mais frequentes nos documentos deste poeta, procura-se refletir sobre o tratamento editorial mais adequado, tendo em conta questões como a granularidade da transcrição eletrónica e o eficaz processamento das variantes e correções da génese. Devido ao elevado número de testemunhos envolvidos e às condicionantes específicas da metodologia digital, defende-se uma regularização sistemática de toda a componente acidental dos textos, incluindo não só os erros mecânicos de execução, mas também erros de língua ao nível da grafia

Texts and Documents: New Challenges for TEI Interchange and Lessons from the Shelley-Godwin Archive

The introduction in 2011 of additional “document-focused” (as opposed to “text-focused”) elements represents a significant additional commitment to modeling two distinct ontologies for textual data within the standard governed by the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) Guidelines. A brief review of projects using the new elements suggests that scholars generally treat the “document-focused” and “text-focused” models as distinct and even severable—the tools of separate interpretive communities within literary studies. This paper will describe challenges encountered by members of the development and editorial teams of the Shelley-Godwin Archive (S-GA) in attempting to produce TEI-encoded data (as well as an accompanying reading environment) that supports both document-focused and text-focused approaches through automated conversion. Based on the experience of the S-GA teams, the increase in expressiveness achieved through the addition of document-focused elements to the TEI standard also raises the stakes for “interchange” between and among data modeled according to these parallel approaches

Early modern intertextuality in the digital space. Notes on the design of the SFInC archive

Against the background of the ongoing scholarly debate on digital data collection, visualization, and fruition, this paper explores the methodological implications of Digital Humanities approaches to early modern intertextuality by discussing the design of SFInC, an experimental resource centred on the sixteenth-century French and English afterlives of Ludovico Ariosto’s Suppositi. Focusing on the Anglo-Italian branch of the prototype, the paper comments on the difficulties encompassed in its modelling and in the transcription of the early modern texts it hosts, from the long-standing dilemma between old and modern spelling to the representation of the scripts’ bibliographical ontology. Further reflection is given on the impact of a hypertextual structure on digital editorial practices, laying emphasis on viable visualization and representation modalities for genetically related texts. The resulting analyses highlight the project’s strengths and weaknesses while also identifying foreseeable technological improvements and ways forward for alike resources, promoting a more comprehensive and digitally aided study of early modern intertextuality