Dear Reader:
This website presents a dynamic, electronic, critical edition of a medieval text that meets the established standards of traditional print editions. Thanks to new media tools, such as Extensible Markup Language (XML), the Internet, and modern web browsers, this research site pushes scholarship beyond the limitations of the traditional printed codex.
Traditional print editions pose at least three problems, but, as I will explain below, the inherent potential behind new electronic editions allows today's scholars to overcome those problems. Of course, with these advantages comes the potential for new problems. But these new problems can also be addressed with digital solutions. In what follows I will explain how I attempt to provide these digital solutions on this site.
The cost and effort required to produce a print edition, combined with a book's static nature, necessitate that a very complete text be produced before a publisher ever becomes willing to put money behind a project. The requirements for a "complete text" are extremely demanding. They include a meticulous apparatus, exhaustive footnotes, multiple indexes, and a lengthy peer review process. These requirements are considerably higher than what is required for a "working" edition, from which the community of scholars can derive considerable benefit. Imagine having to wait 10 years to get a glimpse of a text. Waiting a decade or more, scholars are denied access to primary source information that could have been useful in its formative state. Under the traditional schema, working editions simply sit useless on the hard drives of researchers. But with digital media this can change.
A digital edition allows for a working text to be made available at little to no cost. Thanks to its dynamic nature, an online digital edition can incorporate new features around the text as they are completed. For example, footnotes indicating the sources of the author in question can be added as they are found (which can often take a great deal of time). More importantly, the text can be made available before all the citations are found and the benefit of several eyes can result in the discovery of sources of citations that might never have been found otherwise. Likewise, initial transcriptions can be made available, even if a particular manuscript has not yet been acquired. Once the manuscript is found, its variants can be added to the digital apparatus. None of this is possible for a printed edition, which must be complete before it goes public.
Producing a perfected text is difficult. The confluence of so many variables can create errors in a finished text, despite the best efforts of an editor. Working in isolation puts editors at a serious handicap in creating a critical edition. The aid of other eyes, other perspectives, and distinct areas of expertise is a valuable part of the editorial process. Such wide collaborative work is hampered by the fact that editions traditionally only become publicly available after they have been printed, when it is too late for changes and additions to be made. This traditional difficulty is overcome by what researchers in the digital humanities refer to as "Social Edition" (cf. Siemens, Raymond and Leitch, Cara, "Envisioning the Devonshire MS (BL Add 17492) as Social Edition", Conference Presentation at the Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting, Montreal, March 24, 2011).
The idea behind a "Social Edition" recognizes the benefit of broad collaboration. In the application of digital media, it sees the potential for collaboration on an unprecedented scale. This website attempts to incorporate these social features by providing a comment feature that sits alongside each discrete paragraph of the text (accessible through the "paragraph menu"). With this tool researchers are invited to note any and all concerns with the paragraph in question. The comment feature allows readers to note anything from typos, to transcription errors, to punctuations mistakes, to larger concerns with the division of the text itself. An accompanying RSS (Real Simple Syndication) feed allows interested parties to track and follow any responses to their own comments for any given paragraph. The editor can use these comments to make changes to the text, providing the entire community with a more reliable text.
Paradoxically, the modern critical edition prevents access, while providing access. Just as the existence modern language translations often encourage a lack of consultation to the critical text, so it is also true that once a critical edition has been created, researchers often have little incentive to return to the manuscripts or incunabula from which the text was produced. This is understandable. Collecting manuscripts and even finding the corresponding passages throughout diverse manuscripts is a time consuming task. Thus, the very interpretative work of a particular editor becomes the new source text for all future work, despite the fact that the editor has played a large role in the construction of that text and the meaning that can be derived from it. In addition to the canonization of the editor's interpretative work, the inevitable mistakes of even the most conscientious editor become uncorrectable on account of the static and expensive nature of a printed edition.
The digital edition solves both of these issues. It allows for increased transparency, even as an edited text and translation are produced. And it also allows for minor mistakes (typographical and orthographical) to be corrected on the spot and for more substantial changes to be made through successive editions. As is the case on this website, each section of a given manuscript corresponding to a distinct paragraph of the edited text can be linked to the paragraph in question. Thus, one can easily flip (or "click") from manuscript image to edited text, without having to flip through pages or spend time associating corresponding sections in different editions. This "linking" concept can be expanded to other aspects of the textual process as they become available, including, but not limited to, "links" to transcriptions of individual manuscripts, to comparisons of texts, and eventually to translations. On this website, you can find a "paragraph menu" for each paragraph that allows you access to these features. Not all of the above mentioned features are currently available, but, of course, the beauty of the digital critical edition is that these features can be added as they become available without any substantial change to the text itself.
In summary, the job of the digital editor is to make it possible for each reader to have immediate access to all the materials necessary to become their own critical editor. Through the "paragraph menu," each reader can view the text from its most original instantiation and then actively watch its transformation through each step of preparation up to a modern language. (And of course, it is possible to allow access to multiple translations, from diverse translators.)
Ease of access and transparency make it easy for users to spot errors, provide suggestions, and generally contribute to a "Social Edition." Accordingly, many non-substantive corrections can be noted in the comment feature and can, in turn be immediately fixed by the editor, a process simply not possible for a printed edition. Likewise, substantial changes can be made in successive editions (which will be discussed below). Access to successive editions can be added to the "paragraph menu" allowing older editions to be easily accessed, both allowing citations of older editions to be found and allowing scholars to check the development of the text over time.
The digital edition faces at least two questions pertaining to quality control and proper citation. These questions are related, and I will treat them as one. The dynamic quality of the digital text is, of course, a large part of its promise. It is precisely this element that allows advances over the printed edition. However, it is the static quality of the print critical edition that facilitates quality control and ease of citation. Because of the expensive process of print production, editors and publishers have an extra incentive to get things right. Likewise, because of the static nature of the printed text, users can be sure that what they cite can always be found and will never be changed.
But how are we to deal with the problem of citing a text in "Social Edition" whose promise lies in its ability to be changed and corrected. Likewise how are we to trust the quality of a text, which has the advantage of being quickly available, but lacks the trustworthiness that comes from a text that has undergone a lengthy editorial and peer-review process? The last hurdle that the digital edition faces is showing that it can preserve these features of the print edition, while providing its obvious advantages of progressive perfection and instant availability.
On this website, I attempt to deal with these concerns in the following way: By providing a clear and established system of successive editions, I am able provide an avenue for reliable citations and quality control. A system of successive editions, all of which remain immediately available in the digital edition, can be a valuable contribution to scholarship in its own right since it allows for scholars to see how the editorial consensus about the text has evolved. We can note additionally that this is a system already employed to great effect by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Two "edition statuses" form the backbone of this site: these are the categories of a "Working Edition" and a "First Edition."
A "Working Edition" meets the following criteria. It is represents a single editor's best attempt before the contributions of others can become useful. It is marked by firm structural and paragraph divisions. However, since it is the lowest level edition, it remains the most dynamic.
Being dynamic, it remains subject to peer review and thereby subject to structural rearrangement. (In short, it is possible that the paragraph numbers may change, though I expect this to be infrequent.) Likewise, a working edition continues to mark uncertain transcriptions with a [?], which invites a second opinion. All in all, it can be described as a "semi-stable" edition whose sections, divisions and paragraphs are likely to remain the same, but may ultimately be changed. The most important fact is that a working edition will not be archived.
A "First Edition" distinguishes itself from a "Working Edition" in two distinct ways. First, it will be archived. That means that any substantial changes (meaning not orthographical or typographical) will only be reflected in a subsequent edition. (In comparison to a "Working Edition," the paragraph numbers will be entirely static.) If occasion arises for a "Second Edition," wherein it is possible, though unlikely, that the text will structured differently, it will only take a click for a user to view the corresponding section of the previous edition. Second, the "First Edition" will have the benefit of an external editor or peer review. The external editor will be noted under the title for each section and a named external evaluator will need to be found before a "Working Edition" can be promoted to a "First Edition."
The issue of stable citation is solved by the ability to access archived editions. In each citation, the edition name, the section of the text, and the paragraph number will be cited. Because the paragraph numbers of working editions are relatively stable, these, too, can be cited. However, if there is concern about a fundamental structural shift, one can simply cite the section number of the text and leave the reader to find the cited text in question. Finally, in order to facilitate consistent citation practices, the "paragraph menu" for each paragraph includes a "how2cite" feature. By clicking on this link, the user receives direct instructions on how to cite the paragraph in question.
From the outset, I have tried to explain how the digital edition reverses the order of a print edition. The print edition becomes usable once it is recognized as absolutely complete. The digital editions allow for text to become progressively available. Yet, at the same time, it still finds a way for the text to be cited consistently and maintain quality control. In other words, the digital text is available as it progresses towards its completeness -- and one can argue, that upon reaching its final stage, it is more complete because of the public nature of its production. The added benefit of producing the text in TEI P5 XML format is that, once it is so encoded, it is ready to be typeset for print. Using XSLT and XML-FO, the very same source text that is displayed on the web can be prepared quickly for a printed codex. No changes to the text, apparatus, or footnotes need to be made. Thus, the production of a "Social Edition" can exist on the web and in print in identical versions. Further, if the time comes for another revision, which goes beyond the printed text, the printed edition (perhaps the "First Edition" or more likely the "Second Edition") will remain an archived copy, accessible within the digital edition as merely one layer of the production process among many, each of which stands only a click away from the user.
Thanks for vising the site. I hope you find it useful. Please feel free to let me know if you have any comments concerns or questions about the site. I can be found at www.jeffreycwitt.com and reached at wittj [at] bc [dot] edu.
Sincerely, Jeffrey C. Witt, Boston College, April 2011