Envisioning Dante, c. 1472-c. 1630: Seeing and Reading the Early Printed Page

《预想但丁，1472-1630：看到和阅读早期印刷页》(ENVDANTE)首次深入研究了但丁《喜剧》(1472-1629)几乎整个版画语料库的早期印刷页的材料特征，除了书史、文学和艺术史的方法外，还使用了尖端的机器学习计算技术和图像匹配。但丁·阿利戈里(1265-1321)至今仍是意大利最具标志性和影响力的白话诗人之一，也是一位全球作家，其作品已被翻译成80多种语言。他的代表作《喜剧》讲述了诗人在来世-地狱、炼狱和天堂-的旅程，是意大利最早印刷的白话书之一(1472年)，在接下来的150年里有50多个印刷版，这样的频率使它成为欧洲最有影响力的书籍之一。该项目汇集了来自曼彻斯特大学(艺术、语言和文化学院和约翰·莱兰兹研究所和图书馆[JRRIL])和牛津大学(中世纪和现代语言学院以及工程视觉几何小组)的一个多学科团队，以建立一个独特丰富且几乎完整的早期印刷书籍语料库。JRRIL拥有世界上最完整的文艺复兴时期但丁版画收藏之一，包含了那个时期印刷的所有版本，只有三个版本。ENVDANTE使用但丁版画这一独特的语料库，以探索数字技术的可能性，以提供关于前现代书籍设计、印刷生产、传播和接受的机制和动态的新视角。这些工具将与定性方法结合起来，将印刷页及其组成部分重新概念化，将其视为一个物理和数字对象，追踪其在时间、领土和媒体中的图形演变。该项目将绘制和探索但丁版本的最全范围，从最小的袖珍版本到带有多个注释和插图循环的大型学习书籍。ENVDANTE将在广泛的年表上进行分析，然后将整个制作作为一个整体进行审问，以解决页面设计、图像的使用、副文本的作用、读者注释的位置以及印刷及其网络的社交世界等问题。该项目旨在确定一个跨学科研究领域的轮廓，该领域将吸引不同学科(文学、语言、艺术、印刷和经文文化)的历史学家以及数字人文主义者和计算机科学家。它重新评估了这位具有全球影响力的诗人的整个早期印刷语料库，并在最广泛的意义上对早期现代书籍设计的实践和原则进行了重大的方法论干预。预计该项目开创性地使用技术和多学科方法将为今后研究这本书、它的历史、它的用途以及与数字媒体的关系提供新的模式和方法。除了通过会议和学术出版物传播学术外，该项目还将制作曼彻斯特但丁数字图书馆，这是一个免费提供的在线但丁数字图书馆，包括1472年至1629年期间印刷的约99个版本的但丁(这是全球第一个此类图书馆)，并附有在线代理版本以及元数据和其他背景信息。其他成果包括数字展览和在线数据可视化，以及为学者、图书馆管理员和其他感兴趣的各方测试和使用我们的计算工具的设施。增强的目录条目(向全世界观众展示)，以及与馆长和图书馆馆长、平面设计师和印刷从业者以及当地摄影界和当地历史团体举办的一系列参与讲习班，将确保该项目尽可能广泛地影响到人们。

'Envisioning Dante, c. 1472-c. 1630: Seeing and Reading the Early Printed Page' (ENVDANTE) offers the first in-depth study of the material features of the early printed page for almost the entire corpus of prints (1472-1629) of Dante's 'Comedy', using cutting-edge machine learning computational technologies and image matching in addition to book-historical, literary and art-historical approaches. Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) remains to this day one of Italy's most iconic and influential vernacular poets and is indeed a global author whose work has been translated into over 80 languages. His masterpiece, the 'Comedy', narrating the poet's journey through the realms of the afterlife - the Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise - was one of the first vernacular books to be printed in Italy (1472) and the next 150 years saw over 50 print editions, a frequency which made it one of the most influential books in Europe. The project brings together a multidisciplinary team from the University of Manchester (the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures and John Rylands Research Institute and Library [JRRIL]), and the University of Oxford (the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages and the Visual Geometry Group in Engineering) to work on a uniquely rich and almost complete corpus of early printed books. The JRRIL holds one of the most complete collections of Renaissance Dante prints in the world, containing all but three editions printed in the period. ENVDANTE uses this unique corpus of Dante prints in order to explore the possibilities of digital technologies to provide new perspectives on the mechanics and dynamics of premodern book design, print production, transmission, and reception. These tools will be brought together with qualitative approaches to reconceptualize the printed page and its constituent parts, as a physical and digital object, tracing its graphic evolution through time, territories, and media. The project will map and explore the fullest possible range of Dante editions, from the smallest pocket-sized ones to large study books with multiple commentaries and cycles of illustrations. ENVDANTE will conduct its analyses across a broad chronology, and then interrogate that production as a whole to address questions of page design, the use of images, the role of paratexts, the place of readers' annotations, and the social worlds of print and their networks. The project aims to define the contours of an interdisciplinary field of study that will appeal to historians of different subjects (literature, language, art, print and scribal culture) as well as to digital humanists and computer scientists. It re-evaluates the entire early print corpus of this globally influential poet, and makes a major methodological intervention on the practices and principles of early modern book design in the broadest sense. It is envisaged that the project's pioneering use of technologies and multidisciplinary approach will offer new models and methods for future studies of the book, its history, its uses and relationship with digital media. In addition to academic dissemination through conferences and scholarly publications, the project will produce the Manchester Digital Dante Library, a freely available online digital library of some 99 editions of Dante printed between 1472 and 1629 (the first such library of its kind globally), with online surrogate editions accompanied by metadata and additional contextual information. Other outputs include a digital exhibition and online data visualizations, as well as the facility for scholars, librarians and other interested parties to test and use our computational tools. Enhanced catalogue entries (surfaced to a worldwide audience), and a series of engagement workshops with curators and librarians, graphic designers and print practitioners, along with local photography communities and local history groups, will ensure the broadest possible reach for the project.