DEMMR - March 2016 Workshop

A Digital Editing Workshop with Beinecke MS 410 and Osborn MS a14

Author: Natalie Whitaker

Possible things to mark up – Natalie

Possible things to markup:

In the MS 410 section (no text, illustration of Child holding cross):

  1. Border illustrations – It will be important to demarcate these since they do shift for the different membrane (and may hold different meanings?) and this section is the beginning of the third shift.
  2. The Child has some interesting (I think… but I am not an art historian so I do not know the right terminology) attributes. From his head are these lines that look like an attempt at a halo/crown but kind of also look like sprouts which considering the natural tone of this scene (the birds, trees, the darkened sky with the dark blue flying figures that are probably birds, the cross digging into the circles of the earth – which may be a subtle threat and representative of the  idea of Jerusalem being over hell, considering that this is an indulgence text that might be possible? But that is probably me reading too much into this).
  3. In the right hand corner of this scene, beside the bottom of the cross, is a flower (or a thistle?) that to me looks like the coloring reaches beneath the border line and connects to the beginning of the border illustration. It almost looks like the same coloring as the root of the vine that is in the border but it could just be a discoloring from time that is making it appear connected. It may be notable?

In the MS Osborn a14 section:

  1. Missing Text – Most notably there is missing (illegible words) from 5.3-4 that need to be noted.
  2. Verse Brackets – Need to be marked especially since it might aid in figuring out the missing text in line 5.3
  3. Key Words – I think that with this document’s subject matter that using such terms as “reigned” and related words to kingship would be important to markup.
  4. There is a line in my verse where it appears that the scribe wrote in something above the word (5.5)

Natalie’s Pre Workshop Reflection

What I gathered most from the Gailey and Burnard readings is how encoding and digital markups are a cultural reflection. Burnard first mentions this when he states: “Canonicity itself, the desire to catch the whole of some class of valued cultural phenomena, often defined by exclusion, seems inescapable.” I think that this also ties in with what Gailey mentions about the issue of Harris when it comes to being published online or having digitized versions. While some people do find the text racist and abhorrent, others view it nostalgically. Based on these readings, what is commonly an issue that will be dealt with when digitizing and publishing “new” texts to the internet (and thus the world) is how will a teacher, scholar, and researcher make them applicable through their tagging to the wider, timeless, culture, and to the current culture. Gailey shows a difference between two tagging forms and while they are both more concerned with format, I think that by consistent effort we can keep pushing these tags to develop not only a cultural community for digital humanities but also tools, applications, and programs in the digital humanities that celebrate (and at times bring light to the negatives of) both past and future cultures.

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