A digital edition of the Commedia of Dante Alighieri, part two

《但丁的喜剧》是意大利文学中最重要的一部作品，也是世界文化的核心作品之一。然而，但丁到底写了什么，仍有相当大的不确定性。没有现存的作者副本，也没有关于哪一种现存的手稿可能最接近但丁原文的协议。过去半个世纪的两个主要版本(Petrocchi 1965；Sanguineti 2001)对文本传统提出了截然不同的观点。对这些问题的更好理解必须从最早的保存下来的手稿形式的文本传统的最早历史开始。七份手稿(事实上，六份手稿和一份早期印刷版，包括一份丢失的非常早期手稿的完整校对)最近被费德里科·桑吉内蒂确定为理解文本的早期历史和制作关键版本的“必要和充分的”，这是有争议的。该项目将在这七份手稿(每份约110,000字)中编写整个Commedia的完整电子记录。它将逐字核对七份手稿和两个印刷版，以完整记录所有协议和分歧，产生约100万条信息，然后通过各种计算机手段对所有这些信息进行分析。首先，最初由进化生物学家为相关物种之间的家族分组假说设计的软件将被用来创建关于这七份手稿的遗传假说：哪一份与哪一份关系最密切？这个软件已经在其他手稿传统上进行了很好的测试，并发现给出了有用的结果--这些结果可以确认、增强或修改传统学术方法所取得的结果。其次，将使用专门的数据库软件(VBase)来询问不同读物的分布情况：如果有证据表明七人中有一组，那么该组手稿到底分享了哪些在其他手稿中找不到的读物？从我们对这些读物的评估来看，它们的特点是否似乎是由抄写员介绍的--或者它们可能是作者修改的结果？这种分析将导致对这七个关键手稿之间的确切关系的理解比以往任何时候都更加全面：在计算机工具出现之前，不可能收集、处理和审问如此多的信息。这一分析的结果将以全面的数字版本以及讲座和印刷文章的形式介绍。电子版将以DVD-ROM和在线形式发布(包括向所有人免费出版成绩单)，将提供所有成绩单、校对和我们的分析，以及用于进行分析的主要工具。读者将能够阅读Commedia在七个手稿中的任何一个中的全文(直接从图像或抄本中)；他们将能够看到七个版本和两个版本在任何单词上的不同之处；他们将能够评估任何读物背后的权重，并查看我们对不同读物的分析和解释，并使用数字编辑中包含的工具来检查我们提供的分析，以便进行他们自己的分析。他们还将能够查看所有手稿的所有页面的图像(受图书馆协议的限制)，以查看最早的读者看到的文本。这样的版本已经有了实质性的模型，如鲁滨逊的米勒的CD-ROM故事(2004年出版)和萧伯纳的君主制(2006年出版)。这一电子版将使读者能够看到Commedia的最早文本与这些文本的最新学术版本之间的关系。它将开启新一代的Commedia文本研究，其特点是接触和理解关于但丁诗歌传播的前所未有的细节。

The Commedia of Dante Alighieri is the single most important work of Italian literature and one of the key works of world culture. However, there are considerable uncertainties as to exactly what Dante wrote. There is no authorial copy extant, and no agreement as to which extant manuscript might be closest to Dante's original text. The two principal editions of the last half-century (Petrocchi 1965; Sanguineti 2001) present radically different views of the textual tradition.A better understanding of these issues must begin with the earliest history of the textual tradition in the form of the earliest surviving manuscripts. Seven manuscripts (in fact, six manuscripts and one early print edition including a full collation from a lost very early manuscript) were recently and controversially identified by Federico Sanguineti as 'necessary and sufficient' for an understanding of the early history of the text and for the production of a critical edition. This project will develop full electronic transcripts of the whole Commedia in these seven manuscripts (some 110,000 words in each). It will collate the seven manuscripts against each other and the two print editions, word by word, to create a full record of all agreements and disagreements, generating around one million pieces of information.All this information will then be analysed by a variety of computer means. Firstly, software originally devised by evolutionary biologists for the hypothesis of family groupings among related species will be used, to create genetic hypotheses about these seven manuscripts: which are related most closely to which? This software has been well-tested on other manuscript traditions and found to give useful results -- results which can confirm, enhance or modify the results achieved by traditional scholarly methods. Secondly, specialized database software (VBase) will be used to interrogate the distribution of variant readings: if there is evidence of a grouping within the seven, exactly what readings do the manuscripts of that group share which are not found among the other manuscripts? From our assessment of the readings, is their character such that they appear to have been introduced by a scribe -- or might they be the result of authorial revision?This analysis will lead to a fuller comprehension than ever before possible of the exact relations among these seven key manuscripts: until the advent of computer tools it was not possible to gather, manipulate and interrogate so much information. The results of this analysis will be presented in a full-scale digital edition as well as in talks and in printed articles. The electronic edition, to be published on DVD-ROM and on-line (including a free-to-all publication of the transcripts), will present all transcripts, collations and our analyses, together with the key tools used to make the analyses. Readers will be able to read the full text of the Commedia in any of the seven manuscripts (directly from the images or in the transcriptions); they will be able to see how the seven and the two editions differ at any word; they will be able to assess the weight behind any reading, and view our analyses and explanations of the variant readings, and use the tools included in the digital editon to check the analyses we offer to make their own analyses. They will also be able to view images of all pages of all manuscripts (subject to library agreement), to see the text as its earliest readers saw it.There are already substantial models for such an edition, in the form of Robinson's Miller's Tale on CD-ROM (published 2004) and Shaw's Monarchia (published 2006). This electronic edition will permit readers to see how the earliest texts of the Commedia relate to the latest scholarly versions of those texts. It will open a new generation of Commedia textual studies, characterized by access to, and understanding of, unprecedented detail concerning the transmission of Dante's poem.