DIGITAL EDITIONS OF FRAGMENTARY TEXTS

The course aims at providing students a better understanding of the nature of text encoding and digital editions by encoding fragmentary texts (mostly papyri) and organizing them in a database.

By the end of the course the students will have acquired:
- advanced knowledge of TEI
- Knowledge and understanding of textual criticism
- Ability to judge digital editions
- Ability to retrieve and automatically combine information from different digital sources

Basic knowledge of classical Greek. On request Greek may be substituted by Latin.

The course provides the basics or the study of ancient original texts (ostraca, tablets, papyrus and parchment). Digital editions of papyruses are produced both on the basis of previous editions and of photographs in Leiden+ and TEI (these editions will be corrected by the teacher and eventually published online). The second part concerns as well the relation between the single witness of a text and its relationship to the standard text as the automated analysis of texts and the connection with other digital resources.
Non-attendants are required to contact the teacher to integrate the institutional preparation with the study of a choice of texts and original sources, as
well as with exercises to be agreed according to their interests and their skills.

R.S. Bagnall, The Oxford Handbook of Papyrology, Oxford 2009, chap. 1, 9, 12.
Leiden+ Documentation: http://papyri.info/docs/leiden_plus
Priscilla Walmsley, XQuery : search across a variety of XML data. Second edition, Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly Media, 2015.

The exam will cover the creation of a digital edition in Leiden+ and in TEI, as well as some notional questions about XQuery.

The first 12 and the penultimate 6 hours will be carried out in the conventional way (in presence with live streaming online), the 12 hours in between will be according to the switched classroom method (asynchronous), using moodle, papyrological databases and
zoom. Active participation of the students is required as mentioned above in the Contents. Attendance of the first twelve hours is strongly recommended.

English

written