L6-6373

Digital Critical Editions of Slovene Literature
eZISS - Elektronske znanstvenokritične izdaje slovenskega slovstva

No. of contract:

L6-6373
Duration:
from 01.07.2004 to 30.06.2007

Contact:

Tomaž Erjavec, Damjan Bojadžiev

Hypothesis. Critical editions are important for literary criticism and other fields of the humanities, since texts are their main research subject or their primary source. Critical editions transmit texts to be used in further research and at the same time occur as the result of the basic research.
Contemporary computer technologies offer new ways of presentation and analysis of texts in critical editions. Durability of electronic editions and their independence of changing commercial software requires careful and consistent application of international standards for electronic encoding, especially the XML based TEI Guidelines. E-editions should enable a variety of research approaches and perspectives on the text. In case of older Slovenian literary texts, this requires a wide selection of text-critical proceedings, including digital reproduction of original or facsimile, transcriptions and variants, apparatus and search tools as concordances, indexes etc. All of these elements can be linked in a hypertext structure, which is the main benefit of computer medium.

Goals. The project “Electronic critical editions of Slovenian literature” will make use of methodological achievements, critical as well as technological, of the project “Critical editions in electronic medium”. Both methodological aspects will be considerably expanded in elaboration of three final results: critical e-editions of Slovenian poetry (Dragotin Kette), narrative fiction (Izidor Cankar: From the journey) and drama (baroque Škofja loka passion play). In e-edition of the latter, a video recording of a stage performance will be included beside the facsimile, transcriptions and other elements. In this way, a multimedial caracter of the critical e-edition will be achieved. The results should be accessible on the internet, therefore the most updated and universal international standards of electronic encoding will be used.
Relevance. The methodology of critical edition of texts in the electronic medium, developed through our project, will be relevant for all branches of the humanities, dealing with texts as their research subject or source. The methodology can be later applied also to other kinds of texts, as for pedagogical purposes (school readings etc.). Such applications suggest possibilities of further development of this project in direction of popularization of literature and the humanities.