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，也是世界文化的重要作品之一。然而，关于但丁到底写了什么，有相当大的不确定性。没有现存的作者抄本，也没有关于哪个现存的手稿最接近但丁原文的共识。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。要更好地理解这些问题，必须从现存最早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，包括一份丢失的早期手稿的完整整理）最近被Federico Sanguineti有争议地认定为“必要和充分的”，以理解文本的早期历史，并制作一个批评版本。该项目将在这七个手稿中开发整个喜剧的完整电子抄本（每个手稿约11万字）。它将逐字核对七份手稿和两个印刷版，以创建所有协议和分歧的完整记录，产生约100万条信息。然后，所有这些信息将通过各种计算机手段进行分析。首先，最初由进化生物学家设计的软件将用于在相关物种之间进行家庭分组的假设，以创建关于这七个手稿的遗传假设：哪个与哪个关系最密切？该软件已经在其他手稿传统上进行了很好的测试，并发现可以提供有用的结果-结果可以确认，增强或修改传统学术方法取得的结果。其次，专门的数据库软件（VBase）将被用来询问不同读数的分布：如果有证据表明在这七个手稿中有一个组，那么这个组的手稿中有哪些读数是其他手稿中没有的？从我们对阅读材料的评估来看，它们的特征是由抄写员介绍的吗？还是它们可能是作者修改的结果？这种分析将使我们比以往任何时候都更全面地理解这七份关键手稿之间的确切关系：在计算机工具出现之前，不可能收集、操纵和查询如此多的信息。这一分析的结果将以完整的数字版本以及在会谈和印刷文章中提出。电子版将以DVD-ROM和在线形式发布（包括免费发布的成绩单），将展示所有成绩单、校勘和我们的分析，以及用于进行分析的关键工具。读者将能够在七个手稿中的任何一个手稿中阅读全文（直接从图像或转录）；他们将能够看到七个版本和两个版本在任何一个词上的不同；他们将能够评估任何阅读背后的权重，并查看我们对不同阅读的分析和解释，并使用数字版本中包含的工具来检查我们提供的分析，以进行自己的分析。他们还将能够查看所有手稿的所有页面的图像（根据图书馆的协议），看到最早的读者看到的文本。这种版本已经有相当多的模型，以罗宾逊的《米勒的故事》光盘（2004年出版）和萧伯纳的《君主论》（2006年出版）的形式出现。这个电子版本将允许读者看到如何最早的文本的喜剧与这些文本的最新学术版本。它将开启新一代喜剧文本研究，其特点是接触和理解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.