Yesterday, Massimo and I met with Paul to talk about where our various projects stand and where we go from here. The following are some highlights of that exciting hour and a half, full of cautious optimism and web browsing, as well as a general recap of the project so far..

The VHL interface is currently located here, on STG’s development server. It is very much a work in progress, and some features may not work at any given moment. But it’s coming along!

Part of Boccaccio’s Esposizioni sopra la Comedia is already online, and the rest is currently being encoded. The current plan is to have the entire text up online by the end of the current semester. The text can be viewed by exposition (example). We are looking for alpha testers of the annotation system! If you are a scholar with relevant expertise and would like to get an account, please email me (vhl-at-wordsend-org) There is no quantity commitment; however, at this point we’re looking for people who can both annotate the text and give us constructive feedback: what is good, what needs work (and what kind of work), what features would be desirable. The content of the annotations is up to the participant scholars. Current project participants: if you can think of possible interested parties, please email me as well.

We also have indexes, notably of people and places in the Esposizioni. If you would like to help us verify the entries, please help yourself! Instructions are on the above-linked pages.

Pico’s Conclusiones Nongentae, also known as the 900 Theses, is coming along. A group of scholars is ready to start annotating it as well. In order to render it more easily cross-referenced with other texts, Paul will merge the Pico database with the VHL database (which contains the Esposizioni annotations). This will not affect the user’s experience.

Massimo showed us a Latin lemmatizer called LemLat, the standalone software version of which looks potentially useful for the Pico text(s). We’re looking into it.

Paul told us about PhiloLogic, a search engine that STG has been studying. It is a powerful piece of software, which copies texts into its electronic brain and does its own thing with them, but allows you to modify the interface to fit into your project. We can potentially ask it to search annotations, if they are located within a file (as opposed to database). Paul is looking into its redundancy with MySQL; if it has unique features that we like, it may be our search engine soon.

The search engine is the largest overall VHL task for the year, technically speaking. What would you, o Researcher, like to be able to search for in our texts? Aside, that is, from simple string searches and already-developed things like word collocations?

One wish list item, which perhaps we’ll get to before the end of the grant, is a comparative Boccaccio/Villani glossary. This would be in addition to a glossary of terms that Boccaccio defines in the Esposizioni.

That’s about it, for the moment. Massimo, Paul: have I missed something?

Last Friday Massimo, Rala, Matt and I met to talk about the Villani project. Here are a couple of notes from that meeting:

1. The encoding is well under way, and Matt and Rala think they can finish it (complete with corrections) by the end of this month. They agreed to email me once they’re done with the first pass of encoding and corrections, hopefully sometime this week, so that we can go over them together and tweak as needed.

2. Annotation: when we do get to it, Rala and Matt expressed interest in encoding people, places and historical events. Naturally, we won’t limit the Villani annotation to these three topics, but they’re quite large enough to keep our consultants and any annotators busy for a while!

3. Matt and Rala will come up with a list of potential annotators whom we might contact. If anyone else has a potential lead for involvement, by all means, comment here or email me (vika-wordsend-org).

4. We’re thinking of conferences that might be useful for presentations and feedback. Anyone have ideas for conferences or other meetings as regards this project specifically, as opposed to the larger VHL? (Kalamazoo/Leeds are two obvious choices, but it never hurts to have more venues.)

5. The question of cross-referencing Villani with other online projects (such as Pico, Catasto and Tratte) remains open and subject to our having time and resources for it.

My question here to everyone is about encoding stars and constellations as “places.”

Although I know that we have to chose one or the other (at least for now), I personally think that Jupiter, Venus, Taurus etc. would be better listed as “people” insofar as they are active influences rather than possible destinations. What’s the opinion out there?

M

As heartened as I am by the increased use of the blog this year, it would be most excellent if we could keep discussion of index entries confined to the forum. This will make it easy to see at a glance whether there’s been some discussion already about a given entry.

Registration for the forum is free and fast, and there are plenty of instructions there; moreover, it is open to all – so whether or not you’re a poster on this blog, you are invited to get an account and start discussions on the forum.

As a follow-up on the encoding of personalities of deities, I’d like to add “Giove Liberatore.”

If anyone has any ideas about what to do for “Campi Ciri” or the “Rostri Aguglia,” I’d be very grateful to know about it! All bibliographical suggestions welcome.

For those interested in doing some “scalpitio capitis,” here are some little puzzles related to encoding:

1. FALACRO. It seems no one has any idea who this is. While this is not a problem in itself (cf. Leontonio), it could come back later to haunt us if we decide to give a special weight to attributes because (in my opinion) there is some confusion here on B’s part. Falacer is a god (perh. Etruscan) and so implicitly poses the problem of what to do with gods. See point 2.
2. VENERE PONTINA and GIOVE INDIGETE. We’ve encoded these two personalities of the major deities separately. Is that a good idea? In fact, have we decided what to do with the Christian God? He has so many personalities in the Esp. and is cited so often that this could be more trouble than it’s worth.
3. FRANCONE and MARCOMANNO. This one is of a less theoretical nature. Boccaccio cites them as if they were individuals, but in reality this may be due to a misreading (with all due respect). Marcomannus and francus were just two adjectives used to describe Germanic tribes. I’m bringing this up simply because we’ve decided to make a distinction between individual and collective names.

Any ideas on this would be much appreciated.

M

I’ve gone through the index nominum for cantos I-IV and have some observations that, I hope, are helpful.

Some typos to correct in the encoding:

Agrippina Maggiore is really Agrippina Minore;
Alcipiade should be Alcibiade;
Gaio Antonio should be added;
Antonio, Marco duplicates Marco Antonio;
Aristotene should be added;
Arunte should be Arruns;
Asclepiade the philosopher should be added;
Benedetto is the same as Boniface VIII;
Capi should be Capis;
Dionisio the Younger should be added;
Diotima should be Diutima;
Eune should be Eune Maura;
Since we have other personifications (e.g. Onore), we should add Filosofia;
Galeno, Claudio should be just Galieno;
We should add “san” to Gregorio, just for the sake of consistency;
Iaso should be Iasio;
Igino should be Iginio;
We should add the collective Inglesi;
Lucia and Lucia, santa should be merged;
Anco, Marcio should be changed to Marcio, Anco;
Marco Annenio should be merged with Seneca;
The Minturnesi are collective;
The first Nerone is the same as Domizio, Gneo;
Poppeia should be Poppeia Sabina;
The two entries for Proculo should be merged;
Roboam should be added;
Sciti should be Scizi;
The three entries for Silvio could be clarified by making them: Silvio, Enea; Silvio, Postumo Giulio; Silvio, Latinus.
Simone should be Simone Mago;
Tolomeo Feludense is the same as Tolomeo, Claudio.

Of course, if anyone notices a problem with any of this, please let me know. I’ve put together a list of the English equivalents and will send them shortly to Vika. There are, however, some more problems of a different nature that I’ll bring up in another post.

M

It looks like the online text is missing IV.lit.205-211.