TRISDE51 envisages a scholarly digital documentary edition of BSL Cgm
51 of Gottfried’s Tristan. As in a graphic novel, the poetic text is combined with full-page illustrations, enriched with stratified inscriptions added by different hands over time. Given the multimodal nature of the artifact, any traditional editorial approach seems to be unsuitable. A digital model will provide more satisfying responses for the critical representation of its complexity.
The workflow will open with a study of the manuscript from a codicological-paleographic perspective, possibly by means of new technologies (e.g. multispectral imaging). Illustrations and captions will be modelled according to an agreed grammar and they will be related to the poetic text, either by analogy or difference. Categories of textual criticism will be applied to the visual parts, to classify variant readings or errors.
Texts and images (encoded according to up-to-date standards: XML/TEI, IIIF) will be edited in an integrated way, so that the user can easily visualize their relationships (this will require the implementation of a software). The interdisciplinary TRISDE51 assembles scholars from philology, manuscript studies and DH. It will contribute to digital scholarly editing, as the document offers a relevant object for research on how to treat multimodal documents digitally. The stratification of Cgm 51 makes it suitable for a step-by-step teaching. The pilot-phase of TRISDE51 was launched in the classroom (UniVr 2016-17), as a test-bed of the cooperation within the academic community. Students were introduced to philology on the instance of a digital object. The classroom was and will be engaged in the whole workflow and and has been trained to consider the DH approach to Cultural Heritage as a completely new way of delivering and interpreting of cultural objects digitally.
After publishing a prototype of the project, a conference on editing
illustrated mss will be organized.
