Speaking as the other half of the Villani team, I am sure that Matt will agree that the encoding is a lonely job, anf that it is much a relief to bring our work out into the open where we can benefit by the comments of those interested. I am looking forward to the new phase of annotation, but in the meantime, I am also thinking of test questions we could “ask” of the newly encoded text… One type of input that I would like to solicit is also of this nature. Perhaps interested users could pose questions whose answers are potentially covered by our encoding scheme. For example: “Can we find out what Villani knew about the geography of France?” or “What women are represented in the text and what are their characterstics?” “What can we find out about Florence’s war expenses?”

I would also like to say one or two things about the encoding, in anticipation of a longer, more thorough document outlining our encoding strategies.

1) I found the NAME category to be exciting, expecially because of the many women that seemed to emerge from the text, women identified without proper names, but as wives, sisters, and daughters of others. Hopefully the annnotation stage will bring these women to light.

2) The PB category, for me, was the most frustrating, since my knowledge of historical geography is less than perfect. I hope in the annotation stage to replace many of the “check” entries with real data, standardize some of the place names, and even create a map if possible.

3) Encoding for DATE, although less than thrilling, I hope will be useful. We encoded very precisely, down to day and hour. I am confident that we may find correspondences with other texts, allowing us to come closer to an understanding of Villani’s sources. Additionally, there are elements of the dating of composition of the text that one may investigate using dates, especially when Villani mentions events ahead or behind. I had a problem encoding this last aspect, and hope to tackle it before we are through.

4) ECON is a category that might be useful to economic historians, including references to any matter pertaining to money (fines, prices, texes, war booty, etc.) Villani’s chapters on the “entrate” and “uscite”of Florence have long been of interest, but this information, now pulled together from diverse areas of the Nuova Cronaca, will provide a broader base for inquiry.

5)VILLANAUTH is a category which includes Villani’s references to the text itself and his role as author. Encoded are, thus, changes of subject, ending of a subject, references to previous or future subjects, and Villani’s comments on how he decides to treat certain matters. Villani’s manipulation of the text, his directing of the reader’s attention, his awareness of himself as an author are all of interest here. VILLANMORAL is similar (but probably a subset?), referring only to Villani’s moral commentary on events.

6) Finally, VISIVO and ORALITA’ are two categories with which I attempted to encode Villani’s references to visual signs (paintings, banners, insignia etc.),and his references to oral culture (parlamenti, canzoni, il “grido” del popolo, sermoni, arringhe, etc.). I find these especially exciting, since it is quite simple to determine which parts of the text go into these categories, whereas the average user would never spontaneously manage to create a list of words to search that would elicit a full set of results.

I am looking forward to your imput and will soon be posting regarding the upcoming annotation work on Villani.