The Online Froissart : a searchable electronic edition

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The Online Froissart is a joint project based in the French Departments of the Universities of Sheffield and Liverpool. Arising from a colaborative programme of research completed in December 2003, it will deliver a facsimile edition of Books I-III of Jean Froissart's Chronicles, the most important prose history in French of the Hundred Years War, covering the years 1325-1390 and penned by the chronicler in 1390-91.Based on five of the earliest, most reliable and most beautifully decorated manuscript witnesses (Besançon Public Library MSS 864-865, Stonyhurst College MS 1, Toulouse Public Library MS 511, Brussels, Royal Library MSS II 88 and IV 251), it will incorporate fully manipulable high-resolution images, complete transcriptions and edited texts for Books I-III, a search engine to support sophisticated queries, detailed annotation of text and image content, a glossary, index, and hypertext commentaries. Word-for-word collation across witnesses, to compare different manuscript versions of the same text, will also be supplied, as will an entirely new translation into modern English of substantial sections of Books I-III, which readers will be able to compare both to the edited transcription and the original manuscript versions.The Online Froissart will incorporate new viewing software developed between June and December 2006 under the joint AHeSSC/EPSRC e-Science demonstrator initiative. The edition itself will be delivered over the web by HriOnline and be freely accessible worldwide.The resource will offer researchers, students and other interested persons, both in the UK and abroad, a rich source of material for the study of the Hundred Years' War and its conduct. Froissart was intent upon producing as accurate an account as he could manage of the dynastic and feudal wars between France and England and their respective allies, from 1325 to the late 1380s. He therefore travelled widely in Europe, reaching Aberdeen as well as Avignon, Chepstow as well as Rome, interviewing informants wherever he could. These included combatants on either side, heralds and other royal officers, and companions met with on the road as he journeyed south or north. Book III includes the celebrated 'Journey to Béarn', a mixture of narration and travelogue which tell us a great deal about the chronicler's interviewing techniques and professional approach to chronicle production.The Chronicles remain a major resource for historians of medieval, political and cultural history, but also for students of narrative and early modern historical literature in prose. They are a key resource for the study of Middle French language and syntax. They are, however, prodigiously long. The availability of a rapidly searchable and perusable electronic edition will allow scholars to scan the hundreds of thousands of words of text, and to swiftly locate information about persons and places referred to by the chronicler.The Online Froissart also offers students of medieval manuscript production and painting an unrivalled source of primary material. It features a series of early 15th-century illuminated manuscripts, all of which were produced in Paris at around the same time (ca. 1408-1418), and almost certainly under the direction of an 'entrepreneur' by the name of Pierre de Liffol. Across the two Besançon volumes, the Stonyhurst Library manuscript, the Toulouse manuscript and the two Brussels copies, one can trace the activity of the same small group of scribes and artists responsible for the production of these books. Pierre de Liffol seems to have spotted an opportunity, producing copies of the same text decorated for either French or English consumption. Two artist masters contributed to their decoration: the Boethius and Giac Masters, together with their associates and apprentices. We can examine their respective methods and techniques acrossthis fascinating group of manuscripts.