A Corpus of Renaissance Correspondence: The Letters of Elizabeth Talbot (c.1527-1608, known as 'Bess of Hardwick')

该项目将开辟新的天地，使这一重要但几乎未经编辑的文艺复兴时期信件语料库能够在线访问。利用在线版本的研究将被记录在共同撰写的专著、会议论文和播客中。因此，该项目将大大增加我们对文件和所涉通信的了解，从而更广泛地了解文艺复兴时期的信件。不屈不挠的伊丽莎白王朝女族长和什鲁斯伯爵夫人伊丽莎白·塔尔博特(公元1527-1608年，被称为哈德威克的贝丝)的信件，提供了无与伦比的历史资源。她的200多封信(其中70多封是伊丽莎白·塔尔博特写的，主要是她自己写的)包括60多名通讯员，时间跨度近60年。除了伊丽莎白一世之外，没有其他16世纪的女性留下了如此多的信件。这本语料库不仅在规模上无与伦比，而且在其范围、社会交往的广度、相关活动的范围和书信风格的多样性方面都是无与伦比的。有对仆人的指示和对建筑工人的命令；夫妻之间的感情表达，以及激烈的婚姻纠纷；来自宫廷的八卦；新闻和情报；对女王和她的议员的恳求；法律请愿和干预；对她的子女的建议和战略婚姻谈判。它们从微观上丰富地展示了16世纪书信活动的范围和信件所发挥的功能。此外，他们还表明，文艺复兴时期写信并不只是男性或精英的活动，因为伊丽莎白的许多通讯员都在贵族和绅士阶层之下，四分之一是女性。都铎传记作家和历史学家挖掘信件，以获取有关政治、社会和家庭生活的宝贵信息，以及与哈德威克大厅和查茨沃斯庄园建筑有关的细节。但它们尚未作为文字艺术品或其语言信息进行充分检查。这种分析的起点必须是信件的一个版本。从来没有人试图编辑完整的信件，也没有信件任何部分的现代版本。考虑到伊丽莎白·塔尔博特的生平和信件的重要性以及信件的内在吸引力，这种缺失似乎令人震惊。信件以不同的手写和文字书写，质量和破译难度各不相同，分散在英国和美国的不同档案中。这两个因素--笔迹和分发--意味着这些信件目前远远超出了那个时期的大多数学生和学者的承受能力。该项目将提供所有信件的在线抄本，按照现代编辑标准，以可搜索、可下载和便于印刷的版本提供，并附有关于手稿特点和演示文稿的学术说明和评论。除了版本的创建和开发，还将分析这些字母的文本化关系的方式，利用创建的声音和人物形象的版本，并使用视觉和物质特征来传达含义。这些分析的结果将作为一项重要研究发表。总而言之，编辑和研究将首次让我们听到伊丽莎白·塔尔博特为自己说话。这些信件将由格拉斯哥大学英语系的项目团队编辑和分析。该版本将由伦敦大学玛丽女王生活和信件编辑中心主办。这些文本将被添加到赫尔辛基大学早期英语函电语料库中，这将扩大另一组用户-历史社会语言学家和语料库语言学家-未来进行分析的可能性。六个播客将为学院以外的更广泛的观众提供进入收藏的路线。

The project will break new ground by making accessible online this important, yet virtually unedited, corpus of Renaissance letters. Research utilising the online edition will be captured in a co-authored monograph, conference papers, and podcasts. The project will thus massively increase our understanding of the documents and the correspondents involved, and therefore of Renaissance letters more generally. The letters of the indomitable Elizabethan matriarch and dynast Elizabeth Talbot, Countess of Shrewsbury (c.1527-1608, known as 'Bess of Hardwick'), provide an unparalleled historical resource. Her more than 200 letters (over 70 of which are from Elizabeth Talbot, mainly written in her own hand) include over 60 correspondents and span a period of almost 60 years. No other 16th-century woman left such a large number of letters, with the possible exception of Elizabeth I. The corpus is unrivalled not only in terms of its size, but also for its scope, breadth of social contacts, range of activities related, and variety of epistolary styles employed. There are instructions to servants and orders to builders; expressions of affection between husband and wife, as well as bitter marital disputes; gossip from court; news and intelligence; entreaties to the queen and her councillors; legal petitions and interventions; advice to her children and strategic marriage negotiations. They richly illustrate, in microcosm, the spectrum of 16th-century letter-writing activities and the functions that letters performed. Moreover, they show that Renaissance letter-writing was not an exclusively male or elite activity as many of Elizabeth's correspondents were below the ranks of the nobility and gentry, and a quarter were women.The letters have been mined by Tudor biographers and historians for nuggets of information about political, social, and domestic life, and details relating to the building of Hardwick Hall and Chatsworth House. But they have yet to be fully examined as textual artefacts or for their linguistic information. The starting point for such analysis must be an edition of the letters. There has never been any attempt to edit the complete correspondence and there is no modern edition of any part of the letters. This lack seems staggering, given the widely acknowledged importance of the life and letters of Elizabeth Talbot, as well as the letters' intrinsic appeal.The letters are written in a variety of hands and scripts, of varying quality and levels of difficulty of decipherment, and are scattered throughout different archives in the UK and US. These two factors - handwriting and distribution - means the letters are currently well beyond the reach of most students and scholars of the period. The project will provide online transcripts of the all letters, presented according to modern editorial standards, in searchable, downloadable, and print-friendly versions, accompanied by scholarly notes and commentaries on manuscript features and presentation. Alongside the creation and development of the edition, the letters will be analysed for the way they textualise relationships, draw on created versions of voice and personae, and use visual and material features to communicate meaning. The findings of these analyses will be published as a major study. Together, the edition and study, for the first time, will allow us to hear Elizabeth Talbot speak for herself.The letters will be edited and analysed by the project team in the English Language Department, University of Glasgow. The edition will be hosted by the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters, Queen Mary, University of London. The texts will be added to the Corpus of Early English Correspondence, University of Helsinki, which will extend the possibilities for future analysis by another set of users - historical sociolinguists and corpus linguists. Six podcasts will provide routes into the collection for a wider audience, beyond the academy.