New Technologies and Renaissance Studies II (Volume 4) (New Technologies in Medieval and Renaissance Studies) [1 ed.] 0866985158, 9780866985154

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New Technologies and Renaissance Studies II

New Technologies in Medieval and Renaissance Studies Volume 4 Series edited by

William R. Bowen and Raymond G. Siemens

Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies Volume 464

New Technologies and Renaissance Studies II Edited by

Tassie Gniady, Indiana University Kris McAbee, University of Arkansas at Little Rock Jessica Murphy, University of Texas at Dallas

Iter: Gateway to the Middle Ages and Renaissance Toronto, Ontario in collaboration with ACMRS (Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies) Tempe, Arizona

2014

© Copyright 2014 Iter Inc. and the Arizona Board of Regents for Arizona State University Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

ISBN 978-0-86698-515-4 (alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-86698-516-1 (online)

Contents Introduction

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Underpinnings of the Social Edition? A Brief Narrative, 2004–9, for the Renaissance English Knowledgebase (REKn) and Professional Reading Environment (PReE) Projects, and a Framework for Next Steps Ray Siemens et al. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 A Digital Research Community in Medieval and Renaissance Studies: The ARC Network for Early European Research, 2005–2010 Toby Burrows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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“A hawk from a handsaw”: Collating Possibilities with the Shakespeare Quartos Archive Jim Kuhn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Moving Early Modern Theatre Online: The Records of Early English Drama Introduces the Early Modern London Theatres Website Tanya Hagen, Sally-Beth MacLean and Michele Pasin . . . . . . . . 91 Sandrart.net: An Online Edition of a Seventeenth-Century Text Anna Schreurs, Carsten Blüm and Thorsten Wübbena . . . . .

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Virtual Restoration: The Art and Technology of “Recreating” Italian Renaissance Paintings Diane Cole Ahl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 Greensickness and HPV: A Comparative Analysis? Jessica C. Murphy, William H. Hsu, et al. . . . . .

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Resuscitability and “Excellent New” Early Modern Verse Kris McAbee . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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“Speak the Speech”: Dramatic Blank Verse As a New Medium on the English Stage Farrah Lehman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Broadside Love: A Comparison of Reading with Digital Tools versus Deep Knowledge in the Ballads of Samuel Pepys Tassie Gniady . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243 Emblematica Online: A Case Study in Humanities Research Projects Kathleen Marie Smith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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A Modest Proposal for Scholarly Publishing: 21st-Century Ideas for a 19th-Century System Shawn Martin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285 Contributors .



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Introduction In the fourth volume of this series, we have endeavored to bring together some of the best work from the NTMRS panels at the Renaissance Society of America (RSA) annual meetings for the years 2004–2009.  These essays demonstrate a dedication to grounding the use of “newest” practices in the theories of the period in which we work. The majority of the essays here, as they come from RSA presentations, are firmly rooted in the early modern period. At the same time, they are interested in the moment—the needs of scholars right now, the theories of media that inform our current understanding, and the tools we use to conduct studies today. (To say “the moment” is of course to date what we are claiming immediately. Technology changes rapidly enough that some of the tools these essays treat are no longer available. However, we have tried as editors to maintain a sense of theoretical importance even where the technological relevance might be slipping.) The essays contained in this volume are loosely connected in their order. We have chosen not to separate them into sections as the number of possible logical sections is so large as to be meaningless. Rather we hope to achieve a kind of progression. The essays that open the collection focus on digital editing—creating digital editions and making them useful to scholars. In “Underpinnings of the Social Edition?,” Ray Siemens and his team discuss the development of both REKn and PReE at the Electronic Textual Cultures Laboratory (ETCL) at the University of Victoria, through to their current iterations, concluding with a look to the future in terms of implementation and collaboration with other projects and partnerships. These projects aim to help Renaissance scholars be better users and theorizers of the tools that they use. Similarly, Toby Burrows looks at the ARC Network for Early European Research (NEER), which functions as a way to encourage collaboration among researchers and make their jobs easier via shared resources. In “From a Hawk to a Handsaw” Jim Kuhn looks at the tension between the digital edition as a scholarly tool and as a complete publication with Hamlet. The role of access is also highlighted as a barrier to those at institutions lacking the funds and infrastructure for those wishing to produce digital editions at the same time that the essay highlights the work done at the Folger library to make more of Shakespeare’s folios accessible. Similarly, “Moving the Early Modern Theatre Online” introduces Early Modern London Theatres Website (EMLot at http://www.emlot.kcl.ac.uk/) as a way to make more information available to researchers and educators via a database of Records of

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Early English Drama (REED). EMLot stands out for its blend of bibliographical and historiographical information. In Wübbena et al.’s “Sandrart,” the team discusses the ongoing work on a digital edition of Joachim von Sandrart’s “Teutsche Academie,” and, in the course of this discussion, talks about the issue of when to stop working on a digital edition, which can seem an endless task. In Diane Cole Ahl’s “Virtual Restoration,” Ahl discusses an exciting lesson with students who participate in the digital reconstruction of art. These students first engaged with pieces via traditional methods and then used digital tools to reconstruct pieces as they imagined them to have appeared in the Renaissance. In “Greensickness and HPV,” Jessica Murphy and her collaborators also use visualization techniques, but this time in an attempt to make two different historical moments speak to one another. Kris McAbee’s “Resuscitability and ‘Excellent New’ Early Modern Verse” discusses a different kind application of the “new” to the “old”: she uses new media theory to explain early modern forms such as sonnets and broadside ballads as undergoing similar cycles of renewability. Flipping this trope on its head, Farrah Lehman’s “Speak the Speech” thinks about Shakespeare’s blank verse as its own form of new media. Also in this vein, Tassie Gniady’s essay “Broadside Love” interrogates the use of digital tools as methods of sensemaking in cheap print and examines the balance between close and distant reading in the digital age. While tension will always exist between study and rendering of Renaissance object in a digital realm, Kathleen Marie Smith’s “Emblematica Online” reveals how some forms are particularly well-suited to “digital development.” Finally, the volume comes full circle as Shawn Martin’s “A Modest Proposal for Scholarly Publishing” proposes a solution to the crisis in publishing that may be considered as controversial as Swift’s claim in his Modest Proposal via turning current publishing practices on their head so as to engender more balanced access and foster discussion for future directions thereby avoiding the collapse of the scholarly publication system.

Underpinnings of the Social Edition? A Brief Narrative, 2004–9, for the Renaissance English Knowledgebase (REKn) and Professional Reading Environment (PReE) Projects, and a Framework for Next Steps1 Ray Siemens

University of Victoria [email protected]

Mike Elkink, Alastair McColl, Karin Armstrong, James Dixon, Angelsea Saby, Brett D. Hirsch and Cara Leitch, with Martin Holmes, Eric Haswell, Chris Gaudet, Paul Girn, Michael Joyce, Rachel Gold and Gerry Watson, and members of the PKP, Iter, TAPoR and INKE teams Introduction and overview The Renaissance English Knowledgebase (REKn) is a prototype research knowledgebase consisting of a large dynamic corpus of both primary (15,000 text, image, and audio objects) and secondary materials (some 100,000 articles, e-books, etc.). Each electronic document is stored in a database along with its associated metadata and, in the case of many text-based materials, a light encoding. The data is queried, analyzed, and examined through a standalone prototype document-centered reading client called the Professional Reading Environment (PReE). Recently, both projects have moved into new research developmental contexts, requiring some dramatic changes in direction from our earlier proof of concept. For the second iteration of PReE, our primary goal continues to be to translate it from a desktop environment to the Internet. By following a web-application paradigm, we are able to take advantage of superior flexibility in application deployment and maintenance, the ability to receive 1

This is an abridged version of a longer article, the full text of which can be found at . © 2014 Iter Inc. and the Arizona Board of Regents for Arizona State University. All rights reserved ISBN 978-0-86698-516-1 (online) ISBN 978-0-86698-515-4 (print) New Technologies in Medieval and Renaissance Studies 4 (2014) 3–49

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and disseminate user-generated content, and compatibility with a variety of computing environments. As for REKn, experimentation with the prototype has seen the binary and textual data transferred from the database into the file system, affording gains in manageability and scalability as well as the ability to deploy third-party index and search tools. This article offers a brief outline of the development of both REKn and PReE at the Electronic Textual Cultures Laboratory (ETCL) at the University of Victoria, from proof of concept through to their current iterations, concluding with a discussion about their future adaptations, implementations, and integrations with other projects and partnerships. This narrative situates REKn and PReE within the context of prototyping as a research activity, and documents the life cycle of a complex digital humanities research program that is itself part of larger, ongoing, iterative programs of research.2

Conceptual backgrounds The conceptual origins of REKn may be located in two fundamental shifts in literary studies in the 1980s—the emergence of New Historicism and the rise of the sociology of the text—and in the proliferation of large-scale textcorpus humanities computing projects in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

New Historicism New Historicism situated itself in opposition to earlier critical traditions that dismissed historical and cultural context as irrelevant to literary study, and proposed instead that “literature exists not in isolation from social questions but as a dynamic participant in the messy processes of cultural formation.” Thus, New Historicism eschewed the distinction between text and context, arguing that both “are equal partners in the production of culture” (Hall 2007, vii). In Renaissance studies, as elsewhere, this ideological shift challenged scholars to engage not only with the traditional canon of literary works but also with the whole corpus of primary materials at their disposal. As New Historicism blurred the lines between the literary and non-literary, its proponents were quick to illustrate that all cultural forms—literary and

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Much of the content of the present article has been presented in other forms elsewhere. See Appendix 1 for a list of addresses and presentations from which the present article is drawn. Appendix 1 can be found as part of the longer article, available online here:

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non-literary, textual and visual—could be freely and fruitfully “read” alongside and against one another.3 The sociology of text A concurrent paradigm shift in bibliographical circles was the rise of the social theory of text, exemplified in the works of Jerome J. McGann (1983) and D. F. McKenzie (1986). “If the work is not confined to the historically contingent and the particular,” the social theory of text posited, “it is nevertheless only in its expressive textual form that we encounter it, and material conditions determine meanings” (Sutherland 1997, 5). In addition to being “an argument against the notion that the physical book is the disposable container,” as Kathryn Sutherland has suggested, “it is also an argument in favor of the significance of the text as a situated act or event, and therefore, under the conditions of its reproduction, necessarily multiple” (1997, 6). In other words, the social theory of text rejected the notion of individual literary authority in favor of a model where social processes of production disperse that authority. According to this view, the literary “text” is not solely the product of authorial intention, but the result of interventions by many agents (such as copyists, printers, publishers) and material processes (such as revision, adaptation, publication). In practical terms, the social theory of text revised the role of the textual scholar and editor, who (no longer concerned with authorial intention) instead focused on recovering the “social history” of a text—that is, the multiple and variable forms of a text that emerge out of these various and varied processes of mediation, revision, and adaptation.4 Knowledgebases The proliferation of Renaissance text-corpus humanities computing projects in North America, Europe, and New Zealand during the late 1980s and early 1990s5 might be considered the inevitable result of the desire of Renaissance 3

It is outside the purview of this article to evaluate the claims of New Historicism. Interested readers are directed to the following early critical assessments of New Historicism: Erickson (1987), Howard (1986), and Pechter (1987). 4 As with New Historicism, it is outside the purview of this article to critically evaluate the claims of social textual theory. Interested readers are directed to critical assessments by Tanselle (1991) and Greetham (1999, 397–418). 5 Representative examples include: the Women Writers Project; the Century of Prose Corpus; the Early Modern English Dictionaries Database; the Michigan Early Modern

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scholars, spurred on by the project of New Historicism, to engage with a vast body of primary and secondary materials in addition to the traditional canon of literary works; the rise of the sociology of text in bibliographical circles; and the growing realization that textual analysis, interpretation, and synthesis might be pursued with greater ease and accuracy through the use of an integrated electronic database. A group of scholars involved in such projects, recognizing the value of collaboration and centralized coordination, engaged in a planning meeting towards the creation of a Renaissance Knowledge Base (RKB).6 Consisting of “the major texts and reference materials […] recognized as critical to Renaissance scholarship,”7 the RKB hoped to “deliver unedited primary texts,” to “allow users to search a variety of primary and secondary materials simultaneously,” and to stimulate “interpretations by making connections among many kinds of texts” (Richardson and Neuman 1990, 1–2). Addressing the question of “Who needs RKB?” the application offered the following response: Lexicographers [need the RKB] in order to revise historical dictionaries (the Oxford English Dictionary, for example, is based on citation slips, not on the original texts). Literary critics need it, because the RKB will reveal connections among Renaissance works, new characteristics, and nuances of meaning that only a lifetime of directed reading could hope to provide. Historians need the RKB, because it will let them move easily, for example, from biography to textual information. The same may be said of scholars in linguistics, Reformation theology, humanistic philosophy, rhetoric, and socio-cultural studies, among others. (1990, 2) English Materials; the Oxford Text Archive; the Riverside STC Project; Shakespeare Database Project; and, the Textbase of Early Tudor English. 6 Richardson and Neuman 1990. In addition to the authors of the application itself, other investigators involved with the group included David A. Bank, Jonquil Bevan, Lou Burnard, Thomas N. Corns, Michael Crump, R. J. Fehrenback, Alistair Fox, Roy Flannagan, S. K. Heniger Jr., Arthur F. Kinney, Ian Lancashire, George M. Logan, Willard McCarty, Louis T. Milic, Barbara Mowat, Joachim Neuhaus, Michael Neuman, Henry Snyder, Frank Tompa, and Greg Waite. 7 As outlined in the application, the materials intended for inclusion and integration in the RKB were “old-spelling texts of major authors (Sidney, Marlowe, Spenser, Shakespeare, Jonson, Donne, Milton, etc.), the Short-Title Catalogue (1475–1640), the Dictionary of National Biography, period dictionaries (Florio, Elyot, Cotgrave, etc.), and the Oxford English Dictionary” (Richardson and Neuman 1990, 2).

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The need for such a knowledgebase was (and is) clear. Since each of its individual components was deemed “critical to Renaissance scholarship,” and because the RKB intended to “permit each potentially to shed light on all the others,” the group behind the RKB felt that “the whole” was “likely to be far greater than the sum of its already-important parts” (1990, 2). Recommendations following the initiative’s proposal suggested a positive path, drawing attention to the merit of the approach and suggesting further ways to bring about the creation of this resource to meet the research needs of an even larger group of Renaissance scholars. Many of the scholars involved persevered, organizing an open meeting on the RKB at the 1991 ACH/ALLC Conference in Tempe to determine the next course of action. Also present at that session were Eric Calaluca (Chadwyck-Healey), Mark Rooks (InteLex), and Patricia Murphy, all of whom proposed to digitize large quantities of primary materials from the English Renaissance. From here, the RKB project as originally conceived took new (and largely unforeseen) directions. Chadwyck-Healey was to transcribe books from the Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature and publish various full-text databases now combined as Literature Online. InteLex was to publish its Past Masters series of full-text humanities databases, first on floppy disk and CD-ROM and now web-based. Murphy’s project to scan and transcribe large numbers of books in the Short-Title Catalogue to machine-readable form was taken up by Early English Books Online and later the Text Creation Partnership. In the decade since the scholars behind the RKB project first identified the need for a knowledgebase of Renaissance materials, its essential components and methodology have been outlined (Lancashire 1992). Moreover, considerable related work was soon to follow, some by the principals of the RKB project and much by those beyond it, such as R. S. Bear (Renascence Editions), Michael Best (Internet Shakespeare Editions), Gregory Crane (Perseus Digital Library), Patricia Fumerton (English Broadside Ballad Archive), Ian Lancashire (Lexicons of Early Modern English), and Greg Waite (Textbase of Early Tudor English); by commercial publishers such as Adam Matthew Digital (Defining Gender, 1450–1910; Empire Online; Leeds Literary Manuscripts; Perdita Manuscripts; Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice, 1490–2007; Virginia Company Archives), Chadwyck-Healey (Literature Online), and Gale (British Literary Manuscripts Online, c.1660–c.1900; State Papers Online, 1509–1714), and by consortia such as Early English Books Online–Text Creation Partnership (University of Michigan, Oxford University, the Council of Library and Information Resources, and ProQuest) and Orlando (Cambridge University Press and University of Alberta).

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As part of the shift from print to electronic publication and archiving, work on digitizing necessary secondary research materials has been handled chiefly, but not exclusively, by academic and commercial publishers. Among others, these include Blackwell (Synergy), Cambridge University Press, Duke University Press (eDuke), eBook Library (EBL), EBSCO (EBSCOhost), Gale (Shakespeare Collection), Google (Google Book Search), Ingenta, JSTOR, netLibrary, Oxford University Press, Project MUSE, ProQuest (Periodicals Archive Online), Taylor & Francis, and University of California Press (Caliber). Secondary research materials are also being provided in the form of (1) open access databases, such as the Database of Early English Playbooks (Alan B. Farmer and Zachary Lesser), the English Short Title Catalogue (British Library, Bibliographical Society, and the Modern Language Association of America), and the REED Patrons and Performance Web Site (Records of Early English Drama and the University of Toronto); (2) open access scholarly journals, such as those involved in the Public Knowledge Project or others listed on the Directory of Open Access Journals; and (3) printed books actively digitized by libraries, independently and in collaboration with organizations such as Google (Google Book Search) or the Internet Archive (Open Access Text Archive). Even with this sizeable amount of work on primary and secondary materials accomplished or underway, a compendium of such materials is currently unavailable, and, even if it were available, there is no system in place to facilitate navigation of and dynamic interaction with these materials by the user (much as one might query a database) and by machine (with the query process automated or semi-automated for the user). There are, undoubtedly, benefits in bringing all of these disparate materials together with an integrated knowledgebase approach. Doing so would facilitate more efficient professional engagement with these materials, offering scholars a more convenient, faster, and deeper handling of research resources. A knowledgebase approach would remove the need to search across multiple databases and listings, enable searching across primary and secondary materials simultaneously, and allow deeper, full-text searching of all records, rather than relying on indexing information alone—which is often not generated by someone with field-specific knowledge. An integrated knowledgebase—whether that integration were actual (all files stored in a single repository) or virtual (access through a portal that searches the distributed files)—would also encourage new insights, allowing researchers new ways to consider relations between texts and materials and their professional, analytical contexts. This is accomplished by facilitating conceptual and thematic searches across all pertinent materials, via the incorporation of advanced computing search

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and analysis tools that assist in capturing connections between the original objects of contemplation (primary materials) and the professional literature about them (secondary materials).

Critical contexts Knowledge representation Other important critical contexts within which REKn is situated arise out of theories and methodologies associated with the emerging field of digital humanities. When considering a definition of the field, Willard McCarty warns that we cannot “rest content with the comfortably simple definition of humanities computing as the application of the computer to the disciplines of the humanities,” for to do so “fails us by deleting the agent-scholar from the scene” and “by overlooking the mediation of thought that his or her use of the computer implies” (1998, n. pag.). After McCarty, Ray Siemens and Christian Vandendorpe suggest that digital humanities or “humanities computing” as a research area “is best defined loosely, as the intersection of computational methods and humanities scholarship” (2006, xii).8 A foundation for current work in humanities computing is knowledge representation, which John Unsworth has described as an “interdisciplinary methodology that combines logic and ontology to produce models of human understanding that are tractable to computation” (2001, n. pag.). While fundamentally based on digital algorithms, as Unsworth has noted, knowledge representation privileges traditionally held values associated with the liberal arts and humanities, namely: general intelligence about human pursuits and the human social/societal environment; adaptable, creative, analytical thinking; critical reasoning, argument, and logic; and the employment and conveyance of these in and through human communicative processes (verbal and non-verbal communication) and other processes native to the humanities (publication, presentation, dissemination). With respect to the activities of the computing humanist, Siemens and Vandendorpe suggest that knowledge representation “manifests itself in issues related to archival representation and textual editing, high-level interpretive theory and criticism, and protocols of knowledge transfer—all as modeled with computational techniques” (2006, xii).

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See also Rockwell (1999).

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Professional reading and modeling A primary protocol of knowledge transfer in the field of the humanities is reading. However, there is a substantial difference between the reading practices of humanists and those readers outside of academe—put simply, humanists are professional readers. As John Guillory has suggested, there are four characteristics of professional reading that distinguish it from the practice of lay reading: First of all, it is a kind of work, a labor requiring large amounts of time and resources. This labor is compensated as such, by a salary. Second, it is a disciplinary activity, that is, it is governed by conventions of interpretation and protocols of research developed over many decades. These techniques take years to acquire; otherwise we would not award higher degrees to those who succeed in mastering them. Third, professional reading is vigilant; it stands back from the experience of pleasure in reading […] so that the experience of reading does not begin and end in the pleasure of consumption, but gives rise to a certain sustained reflection. And fourth, this reading is a communal practice. Even when the scholar reads in privacy, this act of reading is connected in numerous ways to communal scenes; and it is often dedicated to the end of a public and publishable “reading” (2000, 31–32). Much recent work in the digital humanities has focused on modeling professional reading and other activities associated with conducting and disseminating humanities research.9 Modeling the activities of the humanist (and the output of humanistic achievement) with the assistance of the computer has identified the exemplary tasks associated with humanities computing: the representation of archival materials; analysis or critical inquiry originating in those materials; and the communication of the results of these tasks.10 As computing humanists, we assume that all of these elements are inseparable and interrelated, and that all processes can be facilitated electronically. Each of the tasks noted above will be described in turn. In reverse order, the communication of results involves the electronic dissemination of, and electronically facilitated interaction about the product of, archival 9

On the importance of reading as an object of interest to humanities computing practitioners and a brief discussion of representative examples, see Warwick (2004). For a discussion of professional reading tools, see Siemens et al. (2006 and 2009b). 10 On modeling in the humanities, see McCarty (2004). On modeling as it pertains to literary studies in particular, see McCarty (2008).

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representation and critical inquiry, as well as the digitization of materials previously stored in other archival forms.11 Communication of results takes place via codified professional interaction, and is traditionally held to include all contributions to a discipline-centered body of knowledge—that is, all activities that are captured in the scholarly record associated with the shared pursuits of a particular field. In addition to those academic and commercial publishers and publication amalgamator services delivering content electronically, pertinent examples of projects concerned with the communication of results include the Open Journal Systems and Open Monograph Press (Public Knowledge Project) and Collex (NINES), as well as services provided by Synergies and the Canadian Research Knowledge Network / Réseau canadien de documentation pour la recherche (CRKN/RCDR). Critical inquiry involves the application of algorithmically facilitated search, retrieval, and critical processes that, although originating in humanitiesbased work, have been demonstrated to have application far beyond.12 Associated with critical theory, this area is typified by interpretive studies that assist in our intellectual and aesthetic understanding of humanistic works, and it involves the application (and applicability) of critical and interpretive tools and analytic algorithms on digitally represented texts and artifacts. Pertinent examples include applications such as Juxta (NINES), as well as tools developed by the Text Analysis Portal for Research (TAPoR) project, the Metadata Offer New Knowledge (MONK) project, the Software Environment for the Advancement of Scholarly Research (SEASR), and by Many Eyes (IBM). Archival representation involves the use of computer-assisted means to describe and express print-, visual-, and audio-based material in tagged and searchable electronic form. Associated as it is with the critical methodologies that govern our representation of original artifacts, archival representation is chiefly bibliographical in nature and often involves the reproduction of primary materials such as in the preparation of an electronic edition or digital facsimile.13 Key issues in archival representation include considerations

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See Miall (2001). Representative examples include Lancashire (1995) and Fortier (1993–94). 13 For a detailed discussion of electronic archival forms, see Hockey (2000). In addition to the projects mentioned above (such as the English Broadside Ballad Archive) and others, pertinent examples of projects concerned with archival representation include digitization projects undertaken by the Internet Archive and Google, and by libraries, museums, and similar institutions. 12

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of the modeling of objects and processes, the impact of social theories of text on the role and goal of the editor, and the “death of distance.” Ideally, object modeling for archival representation should simulate the original object-artifact, both in terms of basic representation (e.g. a scanned image of a printed page) and functionality (such as the ability to “turn” or otherwise “physically” manipulate the page). However, object modeling need not simply be limited to simulating the original. Although “a play script is a poor substitute for a live performance,” Martin Mueller has shown that “however paltry a surrogate the printed text may be, for some purposes it is superior to the ‘original’ that it replaces” (2005, 61). The next level of simulation beyond the printed surrogate, namely the “digital surrogate,” would similarly offer further enhancements to the original. These enhancements might include greater flexibility in the basic representation of the object (such as magnification and otherwise altering its appearance) or its functionality (such as fast and accurate search functions, embedded multimedia, etc.). Archival representation might then involve modeling the process of interaction between the user and the object-artifact. Simulating the process affords a better understanding of the relationships between the object and the user, particularly as that relationship reveals the user’s disciplinary practices—discovering, annotating, comparing, referring, sampling, illustrating, representing.14 The scholarly edition The recent convergence of social theories of text and the rise of the electronic medium has had a significant impact on both the function of the scholarly edition and the role of the textual scholar. As Susan Schreibman has argued, “the release from the spatial restrictions of the codex form has profoundly changed the focus of the textual scholar’s work,” from “publishing a single text with apparatus which has been synthesized and summarized to accommodate to codex’s spatial limitations” to creating “large assemblages of textual and non-textual lexia, presented to readers with as little traditional editorial intervention as possible” (2002, 284). In addition to acknowledging the value of the electronic medium to editing and the edition, such “assemblages” also recognize the critical practice of “unediting,” whereby the reader is exposed to the various layers of editorial mediation of a given text,15 14

See Unsworth (2000). On this sense of “unediting,” see Marcus (1996); on “unediting” as the rejection of critical editions in preference to the unmediated study of originals or facsimiles, see McLeod (1982).

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as well as an increased awareness of the “materiality” of the text-object under consideration.16 Perfectly adaptable to, and properly enabling of, social theories of text and the role of editing, the electronic medium has brought us closer to the textual objects of our contemplation, even though we remain at the same physical distance from them. Like other enabling communicative and representative technologies that came before it, the electronic medium has brought about a “death of distance.” This notion of a “death of distance,” as discussed by Paul Delany, comes from a world made smaller by travel and communication systems, a world in which we have “the ability to do more things without being physically present at the point of impact” (1997, 50). The textual scholar, accumulating an “assemblage” of textual materials, does so for those materials to be, in turn, re-presented to those who are interested in those materials. More and more, though, it is not only primary materials—textual witnesses, for example—that are being accumulated and re-presented. The “death of distance” applies also to objects that have the potential to shape and inform further our contemplation of those direct objects of our contemplation, namely, the primary materials.17 We understand, almost intuitively, the end-product of the traditional scholarly edition in its print codex form: how material is presented, what the scope of that material is, how that material is being related to us and, internally, how the material presented by the edition relates to itself and to materials beyond those directly presented—secondary texts, contextual material, and so forth. Our understanding of these things as they relate to the electronic scholarly edition, however, is only just being formed. We are at a critical juncture for the scholarly edition in electronic form, where the “assemblages” and accumulation of textual archival materials associated with social theories of text and the role of editing meet their natural home in the electronic scholarly edition; and such large collections of primary materials in electronic form meet their equivalent in volume in the world of secondary materials, that ever-growing body of scholarship (Siemens 2001, 426). To date, two models of the electronic scholarly edition have prevailed. One is the notion of the “dynamic text,” which consists of an electronic text and integrated advanced textual analysis software. In essence, the dynamic text presents a text that indexes and concords itself and allows the reader 16

On the materiality of the Renaissance text, see De Grazia and Stallybrass (1993) and Sutherland (1998). 17 See also Siemens (2001).

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to interact with it in a dynamic fashion, enacting text analysis procedures upon it as it is read.18 The other, often referred to as the “hypertextual edition,” exploits the ability of encoded hypertextual organization to facilitate a reader’s interaction with the apparatus (textual, critical, contextual, and so forth) that traditionally accompanies scholarly editions, as well as with relevant external textual and graphical resources, critical materials, and so forth.19 Advances over the past decade have made it clear that electronic scholarly editions can in fact enjoy the best of both worlds, incorporating elements from the “dynamic text” model—namely, dynamic interaction with the text and its related materials—while at the same time reaping the benefits of the fixed hypertextual links characteristically found in “hypertextual editions.”20 At present, there is no extant exemplary implementation of this new dynamic edition, an edition that transfers the principles of interaction afforded by a dynamic text to the realm of the full edition, comprising of that text and all of its extra- and para-textual materials—textual apparatus, commentary, and beyond.21 Prototyping as a research activity In addition to the aforementioned critical contexts, it is equally important to situate the development of REKn and PReE within a methodological context of prototyping as a research activity. The process of prototyping in the context of our work involves constructing a functional computational model that embodies the results of our research, and, as an object of further study itself, undergoes iterative modification in response to research and testing. A prototype in this context is an interface or visualization that embodies the theoretical foundations our work establishes, so that the theory informing the creation of the prototype can itself be tested by having people use it.22 18

Lancashire (1989). See also the exemplary illumination of three early “dynamic text” Shakespeare editions in Bolton (1990). 19 The elements of the hypertextual edition were rightly anticipated in Faulhaber (1991). 20 Indeed, scholarly consensus is that the level of dynamic interaction in an electronic edition itself—if facilitated via text analysis in the style of the “dynamic text”—could replace much of the interaction that one typically has with a text and its accompanying materials via explicit hypertextual links in a hypertextual edition. 21 See the discussion of these issues in Siemens (2005). 22 For example, see Sinclair and Rockwell (2007); see also the discussion of modeling in this context in McCarty (2004, 2008).

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Research prototypes, such as those we set out to develop, are distinct from prototypes designed as part of a production system in that the research prototype focuses chiefly on providing limited but research-pertinent functionality within a larger framework of assumed operation.23 Production systems, on the other hand, require full functionality and are often derived from multiple prototyping processes.

The proof of concept REKn was originally conceived as part of a wider research project to develop a prototype textual environment for a dynamic edition: an electronic scholarly edition that models disciplinary interaction in the humanities, specifically in the areas of archival representation, critical inquiry, and the communication of results. Centered on a highly encoded electronic text, this environment facilitates interaction with the text, with primary and secondary materials related to it, and with scholars who have a professional engagement with those materials. This ongoing research requires (1) the adaptation of an exemplary, highly encoded, and properly imaged electronic base text for the edition; (2) the establishment of an extensive knowledgebase to exist in relation to that exemplary base text, composed of primary and secondary materials pertinent to an understanding of the base text and its literary, historical, cultural, and critical contexts;24 and (3) the development of a system to facilitate navigation and dynamic interaction with and between materials in the edition and in the knowledgebase, incorporating professional reading and analytical tools; to allow those materials to be updated; and to 23

An example of a prototypical tool that performs an integral function in a larger digital reading environment is the Dynamic Table of Contexts, an experimental interface that draws on interpretive document encoding to combine the conventional table of contents with an interactive index. Readers use the Dynamic Table of Contexts as a tool for browsing the document by selecting an entry from the index and seeing where it is placed in the table of contents. Each item also serves as a link to the appropriate point in the file. See Ruecker (2005); Ruecker et al. (2007); and Brown et al. (2007). 24 An important distinction between REKn and the earlier RKB project is the scope of the primary and secondary materials contained. While RKB set out to include “oldspelling texts of major authors (Sidney, Marlowe, Spenser, Shakespeare, Jonson, Donne, Milton, etc.), the Short-Title Catalogue (1475–1640), the Dictionary of National Biography, period dictionaries (Florio, Elyot, Cotgrave, etc.), and the Oxford English Dictionary” (Richardson and Neuman 1990, 2), REKn is not limited to “major authors” but seeks to include all canonical works (in print and manuscript) and most extracanonical works (in print) of the period.

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implement communicative tools to facilitate computer-assisted interaction between users engaging with the materials. The electronic base-text selected to act as the initial focal point for the prototype was drawn from Ray Siemens’ SSHRC-funded electronic scholarly edition of the Devonshire Manuscript (BL MS Add. 17492). Characterized as a “courtly anthology” (Southall 1964) and as an “informal volume” (Remley 1994, 48), the Devonshire Manuscript is a poetic miscellany consisting of 114 original leaves, housing some 185 items of verse (complete poems, fragments, extracts from larger extant works, and scribal annotations). Historically privileged in literary history as a key witness of Thomas Wyatt’s poetry, the manuscript has received new and significant attention of late, in large part because of the way in which its contents reflect the interactions of poetry and power in early Renaissance England and, more significantly, because it offers one of the earliest examples of the explicit and direct participation of women in the type of literary and political-poetic discourses found in the document.25 Developing REKn began while editing the Devonshire Manuscript as the base text was underway. This initial REKn work included mapping the data structure in relation to the functional requirements of the project, selecting appropriate tools and platforms, and outlining three objectives: to gather and assemble a corpus of primary and secondary texts to make up the knowledgebase; to develop automated methods for data collection; and to develop software tools to facilitate dynamic interaction between the user(s) and the knowledgebase. Data structure and functional requirements We felt that the database should include tables to store relations between documents; that is, if a document includes a reference to another document, whether explicitly (such as in a reference or citation) or implicitly (such as in keywords and metadata), the fact of that reference or relation should be stored. Thus, the document-to-document relationship will be a many-tomany relationship. In addition to a web service for public access to the database, it was proposed that there should be a stand-alone data entry and maintenance application to allow the user(s) to create, update, and delete database records manually. This application should include tools for filtering markup tags and other formatting characters from documents; allow for automating the data entry 25

On the editing of the Devonshire Manuscript in terms of modeling and knowledge representation, see Siemens and Leitch (2008). See also Siemens et al. (2009a).

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of groups of documents; and allow for automating the data entry of documents where they are available from web services, or by querying electronic academic publication amalgamator services (such as EBSCOhost). Finally, a scholarly research application to query the database in read-only mode and display documents—along with metadata where available (such as author, title, publisher)—was to be developed. The appearance and operation of the application should model the processes of scholarly research, with many related documents visible at the same time, easily moved and grouped by the researcher. The application should display the document in as many different forms as are available—plain text, marked-up text, scanned images, audio clips, and so forth. Users should also be able to easily navigate between related documents; to easily search for documents that have similar words, phrases, or word patterns; and to perform text analysis on the document(s)— word list, word frequency, word collocation, word concordance—and display the results.26 Gathering primary and secondary materials The gathering of primary materials for the knowledgebase was initially accomplished by harvesting content from open-access archives of Renaissance texts, and by requesting materials from various partnerships (researchers, publishers, scholarly centers) interested in the project. These materials included a total of some 12,830 texts in the public domain or otherwise generously donated.27 The harvesting and initial integration of these materials took a year, during which time various file formats were standardized into the same format. The bulk of the primary material was so substantial that harvesting the secondary materials manually would be an extremely onerous task. Clearly, automated methods were desirable and would allow for continual and ongoing 26

‘Tools and Platforms’ are discussed in the larger article by Siemens et al. (2010). The texts discussed here were donated by the following organizations: EEBO-TCP (9,533), Chadwyck-Healey (1,820), Text Analysis Computing Tools (311), the Early and Middle English Collections from the University of Virginia Electronic Text Centre (273 and 27 respectively), the Brown Women Writers Project (241), the Oxford Text Archive (241), the Early Tudor Textbase (180), Renascence Editions (162), the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (65), Elizabethan Authors (21), the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (8), the Richard III Society (5), the University of Nebraska School of Music (4), Project Bartleby (2), and Project Gutenberg (2). A master list of the primary text titles and their sources is included in the longer article as Appendix 2. It can be accessed at the following URL: .

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harvesting of new materials as they became available. Ideally, these methods should be general enough in nature so that they can be applied to other types of literature, requiring minimal modification for reuse in other fields. This emphasis on transportability and scalability would ensure that the form and structure of the knowledgebase could be used in other fields of scholarly research. Initially, the strategy was to assemble a sample database of secondary materials in partnership with the University of Victoria Libraries, gathering materials harvested automatically from electronic academic publication amalgamator services (such as EBSCOhost). An automated process was developed to retrieve relevant documents and store them in a purpose-built database. This process enabled us to search a number of remote databases, weed out erroneous and duplicate entries, separate metadata from text, and store both in a database. The utility of our harvesting methods would then be demonstrated to the amalgamators and other publishers with the intent of fostering partnerships with them. Building a Professional Reading Environment At this stage REKn contained roughly 80 gigabytes of text data, consisting of some 12,830 primary text documents and an ongoing collection of secondary texts in excess of 80,000 documents. Text data in the knowledgebase was roughly 80 gigabytes; text and image data combined was estimated to be in the two to three terabyte range. Given its immense scale, development of a document viewer with analytical and communicative functionality to interact with REKn was a pressing issue. The inability of existing tools to accurately search, navigate, and read large collections of data in many formats, later coupled with the findings of our research into professional reading, led to the development of a Professional Reading Environment (PReE) to meet these needs. The first proof of concept included a number of useful features. Individual users were able to log in, open as many separate instances of the graphical user interface (GUI) as they desired, and perform search, reading, analytical, composition, and communication functions. These functions were drawn on our modeling of professional reading and other activities associated with conducting and disseminating humanities research. Searches could be conducted on document metadata and citations (by author, title, and keyword) for both primary and secondary materials (Figure 1). A selected word or phrase could also spawn a search of documents within the knowledgebase, as well as a search of other Internet resources (such as the Oxford English

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Dictionary Online and Lexicons of Early Modern English) from within PReE. Similarly, the user could use TAPoR Tools to perform analyses on the current text or selected words and phrases in PReE (Figure 2).

Figure 1. Metadata search and search results

Figure 2. Spawned search and analytical functions

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The proof-of-concept build could display text data in a variety of forms (plain-text, HTML, and PDF) and display images of various formats (Figures 3 and 4). Users could zoom in and out when viewing images, and scale the display when viewing texts (Figure 5). If REKn contained different versions of an object—such as images, transcriptions, translations—they were linked together in PReE, allowing users to view an image and corresponding text data side-by-side (Figure 6).

Figure 3. Reading text data This initial version of PReE also offered composition and communication functions, such as the ability for a user to select a portion of an image or text and to save this to a workflow, or the capacity to create and store notes for later use. Users were also able to track their own usage and document views, which could then be saved to the workflow for later use. Similarly, administrators were able to track user access and use of the knowledgebase materials, which might be of interest to content partners (such as academic and commercial publishers) wishing to use the data for statistical analysis. A demonstration of REKn/PReE proof of concept is available as Movie 1 in the longer version of this article. To view it, go to the following URL: http:// cnx.org/content/m34335/latest/#movie1.

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Figure 4. PDF display

Figure 5. Zoom and pan images

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Figure 6. Side-by-side display of texts and images

Research prototypes: Challenges and experiments After the success of our proof of concept, we set out to imagine the next steps of modeling as part of our research program. Indeed, growing interest amongst knowledge providers in applying the concept of a professional reading environment to their databases and similar resources brought us to consider how to expand PReE beyond the confines of REKn. After evaluating our progress to date, we realized that we needed to take what we had learned from the proof of concept and apply that knowledge to new challenges and requirements. Our key focus would be on issues of scalability, functionality, and maintainability. Challenge: Scalable data storage In the proof-of-concept build, all REKn data was stored in a database. While this approach had the benefit of keeping all of the data in one easily accessible place, it raised a number of concerns—most pressingly, the issue of scalability. Dealing with several hundred gigabytes is manageable with local infrastructure and ordinary tools. However, we realized that we had to reconsider the tools when dealing in the range of several terabytes. Careful consideration would also have to be given to indexing and other operations

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which might require exponentially longer processing times as the database increased in size. Even with a good infrastructure, practical limitations on database content are still an important consideration, especially were we to include large corpora (the larger datasets of the Canadian Research Knowledge Network were discussed, for example) or significant sections of the Internet. Setting practical limitations required us to consider what was essential and what needed to be stored—for example, did we have to store an entire document, or could it be simply a URL? Storing all REKn data in a database during the proof-of-concept stage posed additional concerns. Incremental backups of the database required more complicated programming to identify new data that had been added since the previous backup. Full backups would require exporting all of the data in the database, a server-intensive process. This, of course, could present performance issues should the total database size reach the terabyte range. Indexing full text in a relational database does not give optimum performance or results: in fact, the performance degradation could be described as exponential in relation to the size of the database. Keeping both advantages and disadvantages in mind, it was proposed that all REKn data be stored in a file system rather than in the database. File systems are designed to store files, whereas the database is designed to store information about the relationships between files. To mix the two approaches defeats the advantages of each. Moreover, in testing the proof of concept, users found speed to be a significant issue. Many were unwilling to wait five minutes between operations. In its proof-of-concept iteration, the computing interaction simply could not keep pace with the cognitive functions it was intended to augment and assist. We recognized that this issue could be resolved in the future by recourse to high-performance computing techniques. In the meantime, we decided to reduce the REKn data to a subset, which would allow us to imagine and work on functionality at a smaller scale. Challenge: Document harvesting The question of how to go about harvesting data for REKn, or indeed any content-specific knowledgebase, turned out to be a question of negotiating with the suppliers of document collections for permission to copy the documents. Since each of these suppliers (such as the academic and commercial publishers and the publication amalgamator service providers) has structured access to the documents differently, harvesting those documents would

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require tailored programming for each supplier. Designing an automated process for harvesting documents from suppliers could be accomplished by combining all of these program variations together with a mechanism for automatically detecting the custom access requirements in a given case and customizing the program accordingly. Experiment: Shakespeare’s Sonnets As outlined above, to facilitate faster prototyping and development of both REKn and PReE it was proposed that REKn should be reduced to a limited dataset. Work was already underway on an electronic edition of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, so limiting REKn data to materials related to the Sonnets would offer a more manageable dataset. Modern print editions of the Sonnets admirably serve the needs of lay readers. For professional readers, however, print editions simply cannot hope to offer an exhaustive and authoritative engagement with the critical literature surrounding the Sonnets, a body of scholarship that is continually growing. Even with the considerable assistance provided by such tools as the World Shakespeare Bibliography and the MLA International Bibliography, the sheer volume of scholarship published on Shakespeare and his works is difficult to navigate. Indeed, existing databases such as these only allow the user to search for criticism related to the Sonnets through a limited set of metadata, selected and presented in each database according to different editorial priorities, and often by those without domain-specific expertise. Moreover, while select bibliographies such as these have often helped to organize specific areas of inquiry, the last attempt to compile a comprehensive bibliography of scholarly material on Shakespeare’s Sonnets was produced by Tetsumaro Hayashi in 1972. Although it remains an invaluable resource in indicating the volume and broad outlines of Sonnet criticism, Hayashi’s bibliography is unable to provide the particularity and responsiveness of a tool that accesses the entire text of the critical materials it seeks to organize. Without the restrictions of print, an electronic edition of Shakespeare’s Sonnets could be both responsive to the evolution of the field, updating itself periodically to incorporate new research, and more flexible in the ways in which it allows users to navigate and explore this accumulated knowledge. Incorporating the research already undertaken toward an edition of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, we sought to create a prototype knowledgebase of critical materials reflecting the scholarly engagement with Shakespeare’s Sonnets from 1972 to the present day.

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The first step required the acquisition of materials to add to the knowledgebase. A master list of materials was compiled through consultation with existing electronic bibliographies (such as the MLA International Bibliography and the World Shakespeare Bibliography) and standard print resources (such as the Year’s Work in English Studies). Criteria were established to dictate which materials were to be included in the knowledgebase. To limit the scope of the experiment, materials published before 1972 (and thus considered already in Hayashi’s bibliography) were excluded. It was also decided to exclude works pertaining to translations of the Sonnets, performances of the Sonnets, and non-academic discussions of the Sonnets. Monograph-length discussions of the Sonnets were also excluded on the basis that they were too unwieldy for the purposes of an experiment. The next step was to gather the materials itemized on the master list. Although a large number of these materials were available in electronic form, and therefore much easier to collect, the various academic and commercial publishers and publication amalgamator service providers delivered the materials in different file formats. A workable standard would be required, and it was decided that regularizing all of the data into Rich Text format would preserve text formatting and relative location, and allow for any illustrations included to be embedded. Articles available only in image formats were fed through an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) application and saved in Rich Text format. Materials unavailable in electronic form were collected, photocopied, and scanned. The images were then processed through an OCR application and saved in Rich Text format. The next step will involve applying a light common encoding structure on all of the Rich Text files and importing them into REKn. The resulting knowledgebase will be responsive to full-text electronic searches, allowing the user to uncover swiftly, for example, all references to a particular sonnet. License agreements and copyright restrictions will not allow us to make access to the knowledgebase public. However, we will be exploring a number of possible output formats that could be shared with the larger research community. Possibilities might include the use of the Sonnet knowledgebase to generate indices, concordances, or even an exhaustive annotated bibliography. For example, a dynamic index could be developed to query the full-text database and return results in the form of bibliographical citations. Since many users will come from institutions with online access to some or most of the journals, and with library access to others, these indices will serve as a valuable resource for further research.

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Ideally, such endeavors will mean the reassessment of the initial exclusion criteria for knowledgebase materials. The increasing number of books published and republished in electronic format, for example, means that the inclusion of monograph-length studies of the Sonnets is no longer a task so onerous as to be prohibitive. Indeed, large-scale digitization projects such as Google Books and the Internet Archive are also making a growing number of books, both old and new, available in digital form. That said, pertinent issues are, at the moment, considerably nuanced. Experiment: The REKn Crawler We recognized that the next stages of our work would be predicated on the ability to create topic- or domain-specific knowledgebases from electronic materials. The work, then, pointed to the need for a better Internet resource discovery system, one that allowed topic-specific harvesting of Internetbased data, returning results pertinent to targeted knowledge domains, and that integrated with existing collections of materials (such as REKn) operating in existing reading systems (such as PReE), in order to take advantage of the functionality of existing tools in relation to the results. To investigate this further, we collaborated with Iter, a not-for-profit partnership created to develop and support electronic resources to assist scholars studying European culture from 400 to 1700 CE.28

Premises We thought we could use existing technologies, such as Nutch, combined with models from more complex harvesters (such as DataFountains and the Nalanda iVia Focused Crawler)29 to create something that would suit our purposes and be freely distributable and transportable among our several partners and their work. In using such technologies, we hoped also to explore how best to exploit representations of ontological structures found in bibliographic databases to ensure that the material returned via Internet searches was reliably on-topic.

Method The underlying method for the prototype REKn Crawler is quite straightforward. An Iter search returns bibliographic (MARC) records, which in turn 28

On the mandate, history, and development of Iter, see Bowen (2000, 2008). For a more detailed report on this collaborative experiment, see Siemens et al. (2006). 29 See also Mitchell (2006).

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provide the metadata (such as author, title, subject) to conduct a web search, the results of which are returned to the knowledgebase. In the end, the original corpus is complemented by a collection of pages from the web that are related to the same subject. While all of these web materials may not be directly relevant, they may still be useful. The method ensures accuracy, scalability, and utility. Accuracy is ensured insofar as the results are disambiguated by comparison against Iter’s bibliographic records—that is, via a process of domain-specific ontological structures. Scalability is ensured in that individual searches can be automatically sequenced, drawing bibliographic records from Iter one at a time to ensure that the harvester covers all parts of an identified knowledge domain. Utility is ensured because the resultant materials are drawn into the reading system and bibliographic records are created. The method described above is illustrated in the following example: A user views a document in PReE; for instance, Edelgard E. Dubruck, “Changes of Taste and Audience Expectation in Fifteenth-Century Religious Drama.”30 Viewing this document triggers the Crawler, which begins processing the document’s Iter MARC metadata (record number, keywords, author, title, subject headings). Search strings are then generated from this data.31 The Crawler conducts searches with these strings and stores them for the later process of weeding out erroneous returns. In the example given above, which took under an hour, the Crawler generated 291 unique results to add to the knowledgebase relating to the article and its subject matter. In our current development environment, the Crawler is able to harvest approximately 35,000 unique web pages in a day. We are currently experimenting with a larger seed set of 10,000 MARC records, which still amounts to only 1% of Iter’s available bibliographical data. The use of the REKn Crawler in conjunction with both REKn and PReE suggests some interesting applications, such as: increasing the scope and size of the knowledgebase; being able to analyze the results of the Crawler’s 30

DuBruck (1983). In this particular instance the search strings will include: DuBruck, Edelgard E.; DuBruck, Edelgard E. Changes of Taste and Audience Expectation in Fifteenth-Century Religious Drama; DuBruck, Edelgard E. Religious drama, French; DuBruck, Edelgard E. Religious drama, French, History and criticism; Changes of Taste and Audience Expectation in Fifteenth-Century Religious Drama; Religious drama, French; Religious drama, French, History and criticism.

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harvesting to discover document metadata and document ontology; and harvesting blogs and wikis for community knowledge on any given topic, and well beyond.

Moving into full prototype development: New directions Rebuilding Our rebuilding process was primarily driven by the goal of addressing problems or issues that arose during the proof of concept stage. The proof of concept pointed us toward a web-based user interface to meet the needs of the research community. Building human knowledge into our application also becomes more feasible with a web environment, since we can depend on a centralized storage system and an ability to easily share information. The proof of concept also suggested that we rethink our document storage framework, since exponential decline of full-text searching speed quickly renders the tool dysfunctional in environments with millions of documents. For long-term scalability a new approach was needed. We decided to focus on moving toward a web-based environment for the tool. This approach will allow us, among other things, to add new features via “plug-ins” that can be layered on top of the existing infrastructure (rather than requiring us to rebuild again). In this way, we will have the agility to respond to emerging ideas and visions, such as “Web 2.0” and social networking tools.32 New directions: Social networking Users are beginning to expect more from web applications than ever before. Social networking tools and the “Web 2.0” pattern of design has given web application developers many new ways of building knowledge into their applications. By adopting a web-application model for PReE, we could tie into existing social networking tools and begin to innovate with the creation of new tools designed specifically for the professional reader. The decision to include social networking capabilities in the PReE design was based on research conducted by the Public Knowledge Project (PKP) into the reading 32

The decision to move PReE to a web-based environment was followed by a survey of the relevant applications, platforms, and technologies in terms of their applicability, functionality, and limitations. The results of that survey can be found in Appendix 3 in the longer version of this paper, and is available at .

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strategies of domain-expert readers (a subset of professional readers).33 Like PReE, the goal for the reading tools developed by PKP was to provide access to research and scholarship and to support critical engagement with those materials. During interviews conducted by PKP and ETCL researchers, expert readers identified the ability to communicate with other researchers as an important benefit of an online reading environment. These readers also expressed interest in contextual information that would help them judge the value of an author’s work. From these observations, researchers concluded that future online reading environments would need to provide the kind of communication and profile-management features currently offered by social networking tools. Before adding social networking components to the PReE features list, we researched existing social networking tools and their use by expert readers (Leitch et al. 2008). Based on evidence gathered during the PKP study we determined that as expert readers became adept at using online tools, they would demand a higher level of sophistication from an online reading environment. In order to respond to this increasing awareness of the potential of social networking tools for scholarly research, a successful online reading environment should integrate social networking tools in such a way that it extends the readers’ existing research strategies. We identified three key strategies that readers used as part of their research: evaluating, communicating, and managing. Our survey found that no single social networking tool supported all three of these strategies. An environment able to facilitate all three strategies would be of immense value to the expert reader, who would not be forced to use a variety of disjointed social networking tools. Instead, he or she would be able to perform the same tasks from within the reading environment. How could we incorporate these findings into PReE? In answering that question we were effectively reconceptualizing PReE as social software, “loosely defined” by Tom Coates as software that “supports, extends, or derives added value from, human social behaviour” (2005, n. pag.). If we could outline the common elements of the social networking tools we wished to incorporate, the task of combining them could be more streamlined. For Ralph Gross and Alessandro Acquisti, the feature common to all social networking applications is the ability to create a user-generated identity (or “profile”) for other users to peruse “with the intention of contacting or being contacted by others” (2005, 71). Acknowledging the importance of identity, Judith Donath 33

See Siemens et al. (2006 and 2009b).

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and danah boyd have proposed that “a core set of assumptions” underlie all social networking applications, all of which emphasize the notion of making connections, that “there is a need for people to make more connections, that using a network of existing connections is the best way to do so, and that making this easy to do is a great benefit” (2004, 71).

Identity and evaluation The “Digital Footprints” report prepared by the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that “one in ten internet users have a job that requires them to self-promote or market their name online,” and that “voluntarily posted text, images, audio, and video has become a cornerstone of engagement with Web 2.0 applications” to the point that “being ‘findable and knowable’ online is often considered an asset in participatory culture where one’s personal reputation is increasingly influenced by information others encounter online” (Madden et al. 2007, iii, 4). Similar assertions have been made by other scholars: Andreas Girgensohn and Alison Lee suggest that one of the benefits of creating and maintaining a profile on a social networking site is the opportunity to create a “persistent and verifiable identity” (2002, 137), whereas danah boyd and Nicole B. Ellison note that “what makes social network sites unique is not that they allow individuals to meet strangers, but rather that they enable users to articulate and make visible their social networks” (2007, n. pag.). Given the importance expert readers place on markers of authority such as credentials and past publications, it is in the individual’s best interest to exert some control over his or her online identity. The ability to create and maintain an online profile as part of PReE allows users to include the kind of information expert readers look for when evaluating the value of research material.

Connections and communication Expert readers learn about new ideas and develop existing ones by engaging in scholarly communication with their peers and colleagues. Online, these readers participate in discussion forums, and mailing lists, and use commenting tools on blogs and other social networking sites. As Kathleen Fitzpatrick observes: Scholars operate in a range of conversations, from classroom conversations with students to conference conversations with colleagues; scholars need to have available to them not simply the library model

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of texts circulating amongst individual readers but also the coffee house model of public reading and debate. This interconnection of individual nodes into a collective fabric is, of course, the strength of the network, which not only physically binds individual machines but also has the ability to bring together the users of those machines, at their separate workstations, into one communal whole. (2007, n. pag.) Likewise, Christopher M. Hoadley and Peter G. Kilner have asserted that conversation is the method by which information becomes knowledge, suggesting that “knowledge-building communities are a particular kind of community of practice focused on learning,” where the “explicit goal [is] the development of individual and collective understanding” (2005, 32). Adopting this definition, PReE models a knowledge-building community of practice by combining content with communication through the use of social networking tools.

User and content management Searching, retrieving, classifying, and organizing research material is a primary activity of professional readers. Expert readers employ a variety of strategies ranging from simple filing systems to elaborate systems of classification and storage. Reference management tools allow users to find, store, and organize research materials online. The use of folksonomy tagging in reference management tools can improve on a reader’s existing research strategies by providing him or her with a flexible and easily accessible way of organizing research according to his or her own criteria.34 These tools also allow users to share research collections with colleagues and find material relevant to their interests in other collections. Moreover, as Bryan Alexander has observed, social bookmarking functions in a higher education context as a tool for “collaborative information discovery” (2006, 36). As Alexander suggests, “finding people with related interests” through social bookmarking “can magnify one’s work by learning from others or by leading to new collaborations,” and that “the practice of user-created tagging can offer new perspectives on one’s research, as clusters of tags reveal patterns (or absences) not immediately visible” (2006, 36). User incentives for tagging include the ability to quickly retrieve research material, to share relevant material with colleagues, and to express an opinion or make a public statement about one’s 34

For the origin of the term folksonomy and its use to describe the practice of socially derived content tagging, see Vander Wal (2007).

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interests (Marlow et al. 2006, 34–35); this has been proven very effectively by tools such as Zotero. The planned inclusion of similar tools in PReE extends expert readers’ existing management strategies by simplifying the organization process and creating new opportunities for collaborative categorization. Designing the PReE interface When the original interface was designed for the proof of concept of REKn, very little consideration was given to further use of the code. The focus was solely on producing a “down-and-dirty” prototype. The decision to translate PReE from a desktop application to a web application promised a whole host of new benefits: superior flexibility in application deployment and maintenance, the ability to receive and disseminate user-generated content, and multi-platform compatibility. These new benefits, however, came with new challenges. Migrating the application from desktop to Internet also offered us an opportunity to completely rethink the appearance and functionality of the interface. This gave us the chance to consult with prominent researchers working in the field of professional reading and designing such interfaces, as well as the opportunity to conduct our own usability surveys in order to better accommodate professional readers of various disciplinary backgrounds and levels of expertise.

User needs: Analyzing the audience Before embarking on a new interface design, it was pertinent to identify the features and functions that users would expect and desire from PReE. Surveys and interviews were conducted, and the results led to our distinguishing between users of PReE in terms of their backgrounds, goals, and needs. Of course, it was recognized that the usefulness of these user profiles was limited, particularly with respect to the needs of interdisciplinary users and users from less text-centric disciplines (such as Fine Arts). These limitations notwithstanding, this initial discussion allowed us to identify three general user profiles: graduate students (“students”), teaching professors (“teachers”), and research professors (“researchers”). “Student” users were characterized as coming from potentially broad disciplinary backgrounds. Their goals were to conduct self-directed research for the purposes of acquiring a thorough knowledge of a particular field; to complete their doctoral or master’s theses; and to build their scholarly reputations. Needs and desires dictated by these goals included access to citations

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and bibliographies; a way of assessing the impact factor of a given article, topic, or researcher in a particular field; and a system to facilitate both formal and informal peer review of their research. “Teacher” users were characterized as potentially belonging to broad disciplinary backgrounds (such as history) and/or specific fields (such as late medieval English military history). Their goals included recommending readings to students, undertaking self-directed research for the purpose of compiling knowledge-area bibliographies (often annotated), and writing and delivering lectures. These goals required access to citations and surveys of new and recent research in their particular field(s). “Researcher” users were similarly characterized as potentially coming from a broad field and/or a more specific field of research expertise. Their goals included self-directed research for the purpose of building knowledge-area bibliographies (often annotated), writing and presenting conference papers, writing and delivering lectures, engaging in scholarly publication, and building and maintaining their scholarly reputations. As a whole, these results suggested three key user requirements: the facilitation of high-level research, the facilitation of collaboration, and the achievement of recognition in their field of study. Although additional features were suggested, meeting these key requirements would be the driving force behind the design of the new PReE interface.

Design principles, processes, and prototypes A series of design principles were also agreed upon, which dictated that the interface design should focus on providing efficient ways to complete tasks (efficiency), on managing higher and lower priority objects (visual balance), on testing usability (prototyping), and on the ability to rapidly execute tasks in an agile work environment (flexibility). These principles suggested a design process of four steps. The first step was to conduct environmental scans in order to survey successful features offered by other web applications and assess their applicability for our present needs. The next step was to construct workflow sketches. The third step was to develop simple prototypes, and the fourth, to develop initial designs.

Design processes of the PReE user interface Environmental scans focusing on the search and display functions of existing web applications highlighted a number of useful user features. A useful

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feature of some applications is the suggestion of search terms to the user, either by way of a drop-down list or by auto-completion of the search string. Other applications offer “bookshelves” of saved search items, allowing their users to group items together and to tag, rate, and comment on them (Figure 7). The survey of reader and display functions similarly suggested useful features that we could implement in the PReE user interface. As outlined in more detail above (see 5.2), there is growing interest in the research application of social annotations and annotation tools (Figure 8).35 Other web applications enrich their content through the inclusion of user-contributed data, such as comments, tags, links, ratings, and other media (Figure 9). As in the original proof of concept, the capacity for viewing images and texts side by side was also expected to be included (Figure 10). In the longer version of this article, Movie 2 (available at the URL ) illustrates the features of PReE. As indicated in the movie, all of these features were included in the PReE workflow sketches, simple prototypes, and initial designs of the user interface.

Figure 7. Interface design: Bookshelves

35

For a useful survey and assessment of existing annotation tools and their implementation in electronic editions of literary texts, see Boot (2009).

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Figure 8. Interface design: Annotations and bookmarks

Figure 9. Interface design: Annotations, bookmarks, and user comments

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Figure 10. Interface design: Side by side text and image display

New insights and next steps Research insights and the humanities model of dissemination While we have learned much about humanistic engagement with the technologies under consideration, we recognize also that we have gained significant experience and understanding about the nature of the work itself from a disciplinary perspective. One unexpected insight involved the shifting research focus during the stages of this endeavor. Our original approach to the project was to work toward a reading environment that suited the needs of professional readers, with the belief that we understood our own needs best and could therefore contribute to the development of professional reading tools through our active participation in pertinent research processes. Conceptualizing and theorizing the foundations of and rationales for humanist tools and their features was an important part of our role, as was modeling the features and functions computationally so that it was clear that what we wished to do could be done. Indeed, we had particular success in amalgamating previously unconnected (but research-pertinent) database contents so that a researcher could speed workflow by not having to enter search terms across several

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unconnected databases and interfaces. By modeling these processes we were better able to understand the problems and to suggest possible solutions. From our perspective as researchers, developing the prototype that proved the concept was our primary goal—anything beyond this was more production- than research-oriented, and it was unclear to us whether production was part of our endeavor. In the second instance, we found that the most valuable point of impact for our research work manifested in ways that our humanities disciplines could not readily understand, evaluate, and appreciate. Our research-related successes often involved (1) the identification of a key area of intervention pertaining to our larger program of research; (2) understanding this area and modeling it with the computer; (3) testing and refining the model until we achieved acceptable functionality in proof of concept; (4) delivering a conference paper on this as quickly as possible (because computational fields, their tools, and the possibilities they enable advance rapidly) and engaging in further discussions with those who were interested in carrying this work further; and either (5a) working with a partner who was interested in putting our research into production within their own work; (5b) watching others involved in adjacent programs of research implement similar features in their own work and advancing our own research in that way; or (5c) noting the adoption of our procedures without our involvement by other area stakeholders. As a progression from idea to point of impact, this is ideal in every way except one: our home disciplines in the humanities find it difficult to document this impact in professional terms. It simply does not fit the article- and book-focused publication and dissemination model favored by humanities scholarship, and most digital humanities venues do not integrate conference presentation and publication in a way that provides immediate publication on presentation (as is common in the sciences). As a result, work related to this project has, for the most part, been disseminated without publication, and is therefore largely unquantifiable in humanities disciplinary terms. Partnerships and collaborations The second phase of our development of both REKn and PReE is at a crossroads. Over the course of some five years, we have been working on REKn and PReE in various ways. During this time we have presented our findings at conferences and discussed our methodology of modeling and prototyping with other research groups. The professional and pedagogical exercise of this work has been immense, driven at its core by a consistent aim to explore

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document-centered reading environments, and to work toward the production of a functional tool for a variety of professional readers. As with any project of this nature, our research experience has been (and continues to be) attended by successes and fraught with apparent dead ends. However, as the preceding project narrative has made clear, even these seemingly inconclusive pursuits are in fact evidence of an active pedagogical process and a professional evolution in design and implementation—something privileged in all academic pursuit—where each step has led to a better understanding of how our overall research goals could be accomplished. In light of the insights gained and lessons learned, our next steps are firmer and more secure, and we bring our experience to a series of very fruitful partnerships in which elements of our research are being extended in ways not initially considered. Moreover, we are incorporating our research experience into a large collaborative initiative, Implementing New Knowledge Environments (INKE), sponsored by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada MCRI program, as well as contributing to further developments associated with the Text Analysis Portal for Research (TAPoR). Our research on interfaces, annotation, social interaction, and documentcentered reading environments has also been incorporated into more focused research partnerships with groups like the Public Knowledge Project (PKP) and Synergies. Our collaboration with PKP has seen work toward the integration of professional reading tools into the PKP Open Journal Systems (OJS). As outlined briefly above, our partnership began with conducting user experience surveys to identify and assess elements of users’ engagement with texts and the OJS interface.36 Work was then undertaken towards the identification of basic principles for an OJS interface redesign to respond to needs identified by the study; the carrying out of more precise user analysis and profiling; the design of wireframes (sketch prototypes) to emulate workflows; and consultation about technological facilitation for interaction that was imagined (including the integration of social networking technologies). These processes led to iterative computational modeling and testing, aimed at the creation of a proof-of-concept prototype. This prototype was presented to PKP in early 2008, in order that they might consider integrating it into their current development cycle—and also in more traditional research dissemination.37 The next step of this conjoint research program is to build 36

The results of this process have been published in Siemens et al. (2006 and 2009b) and presented at a number of conferences and symposia. 37 See the list of presentations delivered in 2008 in Appendix 1 (available at

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on earlier work carried out toward provision of a knowledgebase approach to speed professional readers’ workflow through better access to pertinent critical textual resources. In turn, this new work draws on earlier and ongoing work with Iter, another of our research partners, to further develop the concept of enriched domain-specific knowledgebases, as well as research as part of a collaboration with the Transliteracies and BlueSky working groups at the University of California, Santa Barbara, towards the prototyping of an interface with document-centered professional reading tools and advanced social networking capabilities. Conclusion, in progress, and a framework for next steps Any next steps for this project, in tangible terms, necessarily take place within the context of such partnerships and collaborations, and disciplinespecific modes of accountability and engagement as well as those more often associated with the digital humanities. It is clear that our strengths lie less in the role of those who produce tools for our own use and that of our colleagues, and more in the role of those who can best conceptualize and theorize the foundations of and rationales for humanistic tools, and their features—modeling them computationally so that we could understand the objects and processes of our professional focus much more clearly and, further, present such computational prototypes as part of larger argumentative strategies reflecting the value of humanistic pursuit. With this in mind, the research team that undertook the work with REKn and PReE has, more recently, turned its attention to such modeling in relation to the electronic scholarly edition, which appears the most appropriate framework in which to consider pertinent next steps.38

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Dana Wheeles, and Michael Pickard. Houston: Rice University Press. Web. http://cnx.org/content/m34335/. 26 November 2011. __________, Karin Armstrong, Barbara Bond, Constance Crompton, Terra Dickson, Johanne Paquette, Jonathan Podracky, Ingrid Weber, Cara Leitch, Melanie Chernyk, Bret D. Hirtsch, Daniel Powell, Chris Gaudet, Eric Haswell, Arianna Ciula, Daniel Starza-Smith, James Cummings, with Martin Holmes, Greg Newton, Jonathan Gibson, Paul Remley, Erik Kwakkel, and Aimie Shirkie. 2011. A social edition of the Devonshire MS (BL Add. 17,492). Iter and Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies: Toronto and Tempe. 495 pp + source texts. [available via http:// web.uvic.ca/~siemens/#publications; current social texts at http:// en.wikibooks.org/wiki/The_Devonshire_Manuscript]. __________, Meagan Timney, Cara Leitch, Corina Koolen, and Alex Garnett, and with the ETCL, INKE, and PKP Research Groups. 2012. “Toward modeling the social edition: An approach to understanding the electronic scholarly edition in the context of new and emerging social media.” Literary and Linguistic Computing 27.4: 445-61. Sinclair, Stéfan, and Geoffrey Rockwell. 2007. “Reading tools, or text analysis tools as objects of interpretation.” Digital humanities 2007. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois. June 2007. Address. Solr. Apache Software Foundation. Web. http://lucene.apache.org/solr/. 24 Apr. 2009. Southall, Raymond. 1964a. The courtly maker: An essay on the poetry of Wyatt and his contemporaries. Oxford: Blackwell. __________ 1964b. “The Devonshire Manuscript collection of early Tudor poetry, 1532–41.” Review of English studies, new series 15: 142–50. Sutherland, Kathryn. 1997. “Introduction.” In Electronic text: Investigations in method and theory, ed. Kathryn Sutherland, 1–18. Oxford: Oxford University Press. __________ 1998. “Revised relations? Material text, immaterial text, and the electronic environment.” Text 11: 17–30. Synergies. Web. http://www.synergiescanada.org/. 24 Apr. 2009.

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Tanselle, G. Thomas. 1991. “Textual criticism and literary sociology.” Studies in bibliography 44: 83–143. TAPoR Tools. Text Analysis Portal for Research (TAPoR) Project. Web. http:// portal.tapor.ca/. 24 Apr. 2009. Textbase of Early Tudor English. Eds. Alistair Fox and Greg Waite. University of Otago. Web. http://www.hlm.co.nz/tudortexts/. 24 Apr. 2009. Unsworth, John. 1997. “Documenting the reinvention of text: The importance of failure.” Journal of electronic publishing 3.2: n. pag. Web. http:// http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/3336451.0003.201. 24 Apr. 2009. __________ “Scholarly primitives.” Humanities computing: Formal methods, experimental practice. King’s College, London. Address. May 2000. Web. http://www.iath.virginia.edu/~jmu2m/Kings.5-00/primitives. html. 24 Apr. 2009. __________ “Knowledge representation in humanities computing.” eHumanities NEH Lecture Series on Technology and the Humanities. Washington. Address. Apr. 2001. Web. http://www.iath.virginia. edu/~jmu2m/KR/KRinHC.html. 24 Apr. 2009. Vander Wal, Thomas. “Folksonomy: coinage and definition.” Off the Top. 2 Feb. 2007. Web. http://www.vanderwal.net/folksonomy.html. 24 Apr. 2009. Warwick, Claire. 2004. “Print scholarship and digital resources.” In A Companion to Digital Humanities, eds. Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens, and John Unsworth, 366–82. Malden: Blackwell. Women Writers Project. Women Writers Project. Brown University. Web. http://www.wwp.brown.edu/. 24 Apr. 2009. Zotero. Center for History and New Media, George Mason University. Web. http://www.zotero.org/. 24 Apr. 2009.

A Digital Research Community in Medieval and Renaissance Studies: The ARC Network for Early European Research, 2005–2010 Toby Burrows

School of Humanities, University of Western Australia [email protected]

Introduction In the middle of the first decade of the twenty-first century, academic research in the humanities was being fundamentally changed by two major imperatives. In the first place, it operated increasingly within an interdisciplinary and international framework. Research teams were tending more and more to be composed of temporary groupings of researchers from a range of disciplines, brought together to address a specific problem. The complexity and scale of these research problems required the assembling of expertise from different disciplinary perspectives as well as from different institutions and organizations. While this kind of change had occurred first in the sciences, humanities researchers were also being encouraged to follow suit and to define and tackle large-scale questions in this way. Closely allied to this was a second trend: the growing centrality of information technologies to the ways in which research was done. Various reports and investigations had highlighted the importance of this change, beginning with the Atkins Report to the US National Science Foundation in 2003 (Atkins et al. 2003), which coined the term “cyberinfrastructure” to describe the way in which software platforms could be interlinked to manage the deluge of scientific data, enabling researchers around the world to tap into an international grid of digital research. Among the numerous investigations which followed was one sponsored by the American Council of Learned Societies into cyberinfrastructure for the humanities and social sciences (American Council of Learned Societies 2006). The main government funding body for research in higher education institutions in Australia, the Australian Research Council (ARC), responded to the changing research landscape by establishing a Research Networks program © 2014 Iter Inc. and the Arizona Board of Regents for Arizona State University. All rights reserved ISBN 978-0-86698-516-1 (online) ISBN 978-0-86698-515-4 (print) New Technologies in Medieval and Renaissance Studies 4 (2014) 51–66

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in 2004. Its purpose was to build large-scale groups of researchers and encourage them to collaborate across institutional and disciplinary boundaries. It went beyond the ARC’s existing support for smaller-scale collaboration, and was modeled on the European Commission’s Networks of Excellence program, launched in 2002. In all, twenty-four research networks were funded under this program, with a total of AU$42 million being allocated over the five-year period beginning in 2005. One of the key areas in which the ARC envisaged that the networks would be active was the development of shared information technologies and knowledge management tools, new databases, and new technologies for communication and interaction. These activities were seen as part of the essential e-Research infrastructure that would be needed to underpin collaborative research in a national setting.

The Network for Early European Research The Network for Early European Research (NEER) was one of only two ARC research networks in the humanities to be funded (Trigg 2006). It was based at the University of Western Australia, where its executive and secretariat were located, but most of its academic activities (conferences, seminars, and workshops) took place three thousand kilometers away on the eastern side of Australia. The Network’s membership was a mixture of individual researchers and institutions. Its individual participants included researchers in most of Australia’s thirty-nine universities, ranging from eminent academics through to postgraduate students and early career researchers. More than three hundred and fifty individuals registered as Network participants. Their research covered all aspects of the culture and history of Europe in the medieval and early modern period, extending up to the initial European contacts with Australia in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. For the purposes of NEER, this period was referred to as “Early European”. The Network also had a range of institutional members, including several of the larger Australian universities such as Melbourne and Sydney that made a financial contribution to the Network. There were a number of industry partners, including commercial publishers like Brepols, ProQuest, and the University of Western Australia Press; public collecting institutions like the State Library of New South Wales, the State Library of Victoria, and the Western Australian Museum; and community groups like the Perth Medieval and Renaissance Group, Australians Studying Abroad, and the Woodside Valley Foundation.

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The Network was organized around five main research themes: Cultural Memory; Social Fabric; Intellectual Formations: Science, Medicine and the Environment; Religion and Spirituality; and Early European/Australasian Connections. Each of these had an academic leader whose role was to coordinate Network activities and communication between researchers with an interest in the specific research area. Many of the activities of the Network were focused around these five themes, with each area organizing and supporting conferences, seminars, workshops, and meetings to develop their research agenda and prepare collaborative grant applications. The Network funded a total of fourteen Research Clusters—smaller groupings of researchers assembled to address specific research topics, ranging from the British Enlightenment to “Latin’s long histories.” The Network also implemented a range of specific strategies for encouraging participation by postgraduate students and early-career researchers, including national Postgraduate Advanced Training Seminars, a mentoring program, internships and work placements, and subsidies for attending Network events. The Network actively pursued formal links with international research groups in the Early European field. In particular, it was closely involved in the formation of CARMEN, a new umbrella group for medieval research in Europe, and co-hosted its first major meeting in Prato, Italy, in 2007. CARMEN has subsequently been a vehicle for the development of grant applications across the European Union, and now contains a number of thematic sub-groups.

A digital environment for the Research Network In response to the ARC’s emphasis on the use of information technologies within its Research Networks, NEER developed its own digital agenda as an integral part of its initial vision (Burrows 2005). The goals embodied in this agenda were to provide resources for the Network’s participants, to enable them to communicate and collaborate more effectively, and to promote the Network’s research and achievements. A digital environment was seen as an important way of building the kind of research community sought by the ARC—one that went beyond face-to-face activities like conferences, meetings, and training programs, and did not rely purely on e-mail contact. Developing a continuing sense of shared research activity across the Australian continent required the existence of a wide-ranging digital environment that covered different aspects of the research process.

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It is important to consider the historical context in which NEER’s plans for its digital services were developed. In 2005, scientific research communities were just beginning to develop integrated software-driven Web environments based on extensive modeling of research processes (Coles et al. 2006; Ludäscher et al. 2006; Oinn et al. 2006). But little work had been done on any formal modeling of this kind for the humanities, apart from John Unsworth’s attempt to identify and define “scholarly primitives” at a generic and abstract level (Unsworth 2000). There were numerous—and rapidly proliferating—collections of digitized primary source materials, as well as a growing number of specialized software tools (for text analysis in particular), but the first experiments in building “Virtual Research Environments” (VREs) in the humanities were only just getting under way (Kirkham 2007). In the absence of a suitable existing framework (and without any funding for software development), NEER’s digital environment was based around three main components likely to be of value to humanities researchers. These components were a space for Web-based collaboration, a service for the publication and storage of research outputs, and a service for sharing information about Australian cultural collections relevant to this research. The space for collaboration—Confluence—enabled Network participants to communicate with each other and the international community, to document and promote their work in progress, and to develop grant applications, research projects, and publications collaboratively. The service for managing research outputs—PioNEER—enabled researchers to deposit and promote their published work. The third component was a database—Europa Inventa—for identifying Early European objects, artworks, and manuscripts in Australian collections.

NEER Confluence: Collaborative workspaces on the Web Confluence was the first of the services to be implemented, reflecting the crucial role of shared communication in building a sense of community. Launched in February 2007, it eventually contained separate spaces for each of the fourteen Research Clusters funded by NEER, as well as general spaces for postgraduates, the digital projects, and the NEER Management Committee. Within each space there was a mixture of Web pages, comments, and attached files (including documents and images). Each NEER participant also had their own personal space, where they could promote their research, record their work in progress, and manage their access to other Web sites and blogs. Each space also had a “News” function similar to a blog. An individual

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user could keep up to date with changes and additions to the Confluence site through e-mail alerts (triggered by setting a “watch” on specific spaces or pages) or through a customized RSS feed. Each user belonged to one or more user groups, depending on their roles within the Network. Each of these user groups had a mixture of view, edit, and comment permissions in one or more spaces. Developed by Australian company Atlassian, Confluence is marketed as “enterprise Wiki” software and is now used by more than three thousand academic, public sector and commercial organizations. Although Confluence is a proprietary product, it uses a range of Open Source components, has an open API, is freely available for use by Open Source projects, and has an active developer community writing plug-ins. One of the important features of Confluence from NEER’s point of view was its approach to security and permissions. Network participants were particularly concerned about inappropriate access to their documents and to their work-in-progress activities. NEER needed to be able to control access to specific spaces and pages, and to limit who could do what within the site, in a fine-grained way. Much of the material on Confluence was made freely available on the Web, but some areas were restricted to NEER participants or to specific groups within NEER such as the Research Clusters or the Management Committee. Authors could also decide whether to restrict individual pages, and to whom. Confluence enabled people to add comments to pages, but this feature could also be limited to particular groups for different spaces or pages. It was particularly important that NEER Confluence be available over the Web. The Network included more than three hundred and fifty participants across Australia, as well as internationally, who used many different types of software and computers. A Web-based site made it possible to overcome these local variations; Confluence supported all the main varieties of Web browsers and did not require the installation of a desktop client. Some training was provided for NEER participants—over the Web, via the Access Grid, and in person—but Confluence was offered mostly on a “teach-yourself” basis, supplemented by a range of “help” pages. Promotion of the service was mainly through e-mail announcements and conference presentations. The primary purpose of Confluence was to encourage communication among NEER participants, and to enable them to find researchers with similar interests. It also provided a way of keeping up-to-date and staying in contact. Confluence was particularly intended to support the work of smaller research groups such as the Research Clusters, especially in planning their activities,

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sharing ideas, and preparing grant applications. Confluence was also seen as an important means of promoting the work of NEER to a wider audience, both internationally and in Australia, and much of the content was opened to indexing by search engines like Google. The service was used extensively by the NEER Management Committee for discussions and documentation, and by a majority of the Research Clusters for sharing plans and ideas. A number of individual participants worked on developing and extending their personal spaces. Most of these were postgraduates and early-career researchers, who saw Confluence as a way of promoting their work and getting themselves known. But the majority of NEER participants did not actively contribute content to Confluence. Several explanations for this are possible: Confluence was too different from the existing approaches preferred by and familiar to researchers in the humanities; the service was not promoted or supported actively enough; there were insufficient incentives for researchers to contribute; and other platforms for international collaboration and communication were developing in parallel. These explanations are speculative rather than empirical; the survey of NEER participants reported on by Genoni, Merrick and Willson (2009) took place in 2006, before Confluence had been implemented, and a projected follow-up survey by the same team was never carried out. In the final twelve months of the Network’s formal existence (July 2009 to June 2010), almost 12,500 people visited the Confluence site. They made a total of nearly 16,000 visits and viewed more than 38,000 pages. But many of these visitors (78%) were new users, and most of them (79%) arrived as the result of searches, presumably through Google. Since then, Confluence has remained available but the addition of new content has steadily declined, and the level of use has continued to fall—visitors in 2012 were less than half as many as in 2010, and page views were about a quarter of the previous level.

PioNEER: Building an interdisciplinary research repository One of the major goals for NEER’s digital services program was to promote and disseminate the research and achievements of the Network’s participants. This led to the development of a digital repository of research outputs, known as PioNEER, in partnership with the University of Western Australia Library. The Library was responsible for installing and managing the hardware and software, while NEER took responsibility for acquiring and loading content, determining standards, monitoring quality, handling copyright issues, and setting access permissions.

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The University of Western Australia did not already have an institutional repository at the start of the PioNEER project, which meant that selection, acquisition, installation, and configuration of suitable software formed one of the project’s first major tasks. A range of software packages was evaluated jointly by the Library and NEER against a detailed list of functional requirements. Working through the Library affected the project in several fundamental ways. Evaluating the relative merits of the available software products had to take into account the Library’s preferred approach to supporting major software platforms, which favored commercial products over Open Source. The software eventually selected was a commercial product, the DigiTool digital asset management system from the Ex Libris software company, used at various Australian and overseas institutions, including Leiden University and the University of Melbourne. The project also had to wait its turn in the Library’s queue for implementing major new services. As a result, PioNEER was not actually launched until 2009. When NEER started work on this project, digital research repositories had already been the focus of considerable activity in universities, most of which had been directed towards building institutional repositories for housing copies of research publications. A number of successful discipline-based e-prints archives had also been developed, notably the ArXiv service for physics researchers and SSRN for social scientists. These archives served mainly as an informal method for rapid dissemination of new work and were not necessarily linked to a specific disciplinary body or organization. Initially, at least, institutional repositories emerged from the e-prints movement as a means for individual academic institutions to make their research output available freely to the scholarly community. The assumption was that researchers would be prepared to deposit copies of their publications in this kind of institutional repository, and that self-archiving would become a widespread practice. This proved not to be the case, and most institutional repositories had found it hard to attract content voluntarily. In 2007, two-thirds of the twenty-one Australian university repositories contained fewer than a thousand items (Kingsley 2007). The only notable exception was the Queensland University of Technology, where depositing copies of papers had been made mandatory. It was clear from a range of studies that most academic researchers were reluctant to deposit their research outputs in institutional repositories (Rieh et al. 2007). There were various reasons for this, including lack of awareness, concerns about copyright and quality, and lack of time. Discussions with NEER participants revealed the same concerns. While senior researchers

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could see the merits of having a single location where they could get access to the output of their colleagues, they saw less incentive for depositing and promoting their own publications. They felt that any benefits were likely to be outweighed by the time and effort required to collect and deposit material. Postgraduate students and early-career researchers, who had often been overlooked in the process of building institutional repositories, were rather more enthusiastic about using PioNEER to promote their own work. In this climate, it was still seen as important for NEER to test the use of a research repository as a major element in building its national research community. The aim was to build a repository linked specifically to the Research Network as the sponsoring body, and reflecting the disciplinary areas covered by NEER participants. The primary aim of this repository was not rapid dissemination or communication within the Network; instead, PioNEER was intended to provide a record of the research output of NEER participants, as well as a body of retrospective material previously produced by this group of researchers. It was also intended to promote and record the work of NEER as a whole, as well as of its component research clusters and of its individual participants. The PioNEER service was something of a hybrid, neither an institutional repository nor a self-organizing, discipline-based archive. It contained outputs—articles, conference papers, theses, monographs—from an Australiawide “virtual organization” which was called into being by a government grant. The issues which arose in the planning and development stages of the PioNEER project were partly those derived from the unique circumstances of this project and partly those already identified as common to institutional repositories (Henty 2007). The relationship between PioNEER and existing institutional repositories was the subject of careful consideration. NEER encouraged its participants to give priority to their university’s repository when deciding where to deposit a publication. PioNEER could link to digital objects already stored in institutional repositories, thus providing a “virtual view” of NEER’s research output. But an initial informal survey by NEER staff revealed that comparatively little material from NEER participants (or of interest to them) was actually available in Australian repositories at the time. NEER staff took the initiative in collecting and depositing material, and in identifying and linking to objects already available in institutional repositories or on the Web. They liaised with researchers to obtain publication

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lists from them or from their Web sites, and worked through the processes of obtaining electronic copies, checking copyright, creating metadata, and submitting the items to the repository. PioNEER was also made available for direct deposit of material by participants, particularly those who were not eligible to deposit material in an institutional repository—or whose institution did not have a generally available repository. While the initial focus was on published articles, the repository also included some monographs and theses. Although PioNEER remains available on the Web, no new content has been added since NEER’s operations ceased in the first half of 2010. NEER had not succeeded in encouraging researchers to deposit copies of their own publications as a matter of course, and NEER staff are no longer available to deposit material on behalf of researchers. There are other avenues now for researchers to share their publications openly, especially through general profiling services like academia.edu and ResearchGate. While the content of institutional repositories has continued to expand, copyright and Open Access continue to be controversial and difficult issues. The practice of sharing pre-prints of journal articles remains untypical in the field of medieval and Renaissance studies.

Europa Inventa Australia’s libraries, galleries, and museums hold thousands of rare and irreplaceable European items which predate the era of European settlement in the late eighteenth century. The range of objects is extensive: manuscripts, books, maps, artworks of all kinds, furniture, fabrics, ceramics, glassware, silverware, scientific instruments—a record of European culture and history stretching across hundreds of years. Many of these are unique items, which will never be digitized or catalogued as part of any collections in Europe itself. They are of great value to researchers in Australia, as well as of considerable potential interest to colleagues in Europe and North America. While there had been studies of specific Australian collections and collectors (such as Hay and Bean 1986 on the New Norcia Abbey Library, and Manion 2005 on the Felton Bequest to the National Gallery of Victoria), researchers found it difficult to identify these Early European objects in Australia as a coherent group. In addition to the logistical difficulties of getting access to materials scattered across the continent, researchers did not have access to good quality, easily accessible facsimiles. Selected pages of a small number

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of illuminated manuscripts had been made available in print or online, but most manuscripts remained invisible outside their repository. A major difficulty was the lack of easily accessible, systematic information about these objects. For medieval manuscripts, the available printed catalogues (particularly Sinclair 1968) were out of date. These catalogues were very variable in the quality and depth of the information they provide, and some were limited to a specific type of manuscript (Manion and Vines 1984). The best list of pre-1800 paintings in Australia was a summary catalogue produced in the 1980s (Gaston and Tomory 1989), which contained only minimal information about each work and did not reflect subsequent re-attributions. Nor did it contain the additional acquisitions of the last thirty years. The online catalogues and databases containing information about these materials varied greatly in their quality, coverage, and accessibility—and some were not available on the Web at all, particularly in the gallery and museum sectors. The national database of library holdings, Libraries Australia, was not designed to identify relevant groups of items effectively or easily. Its coverage was still not comprehensive for manuscripts or early printed books, despite two major early imprints projects in the 1980s and 1990s (Harvey 1994). The coverage of Australian holdings in international databases of early printed books—such as the Incunabula Short Title Catalogue (British Library) and the Hand Press Book database (Consortium of European Research Libraries)—was also far from comprehensive, and Australian holdings of medieval manuscripts were poorly represented in international services like the CERL Portal. As its third major digital initiative, NEER established a database of Early European objects which collected information about nearly two thousand artworks and four hundred medieval manuscripts, drawn from the major Australian libraries, galleries, and museums. Known as Europa Inventa, the NEER database provided descriptive information about the objects, with consistent and normalized metadata based on the Getty Categories for the Description of Works of Arts (CDWA Lite) and the Text Encoding Initiative’s Guidelines for Manuscript Description. Simply by making the database available on the Web, Europa Inventa provided the first unified access to information about materials of this kind in Australia. It also increased the international exposure of Early European items in Australian public collections.

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Where possible, NEER avoided duplication of work already done by the cultural heritage institutions themselves, and reused metadata from their catalogues. The same principle applied to the digital objects identified through the resource discovery service. Europa Inventa was not intended to serve as a store for digital versions of Early European objects. It simply pointed to such files on the server of the appropriate institution, when they existed. A subsequent grant from the Australian Research Council has enabled a team of researchers from the University of Melbourne, the State Library of Victoria, and the University of Western Australia to build on work done by NEER’s “Medieval Manuscript” Research Cluster and Europa Inventa. This project has been preparing thoroughly revised descriptions of all the medieval manuscripts held in the State of Victoria, and is also producing fully digitized versions of many of these manuscripts. The new descriptions are feeding through into Europa Inventa, while the digital images are forming the basis for a new medieval manuscripts service from the State Library of Victoria. A longer-term goal for Europa Inventa was to develop methods of crosslinking with European and North American databases that contain records for similar types of material. In 2012, manuscript descriptions from Europa Inventa were contributed to a new British service known as Manuscripts Online, which aims to provide federated searching across a range of different datasets related to medieval manuscripts. NEER was also closely involved in the work of the CARMEN Medieval Manuscripts Research Group, which examined the application of Semantic Web technologies to medieval manuscript research. A European Science Foundation Exploratory Workshop on this topic, held at the University of Birmingham (U.K.) in April 2009, resulted in the development of a Road Map to guide future plans and funding applications (Scase 2009; Burrows 2010). These developments were inspired by several innovative European projects working on the application of the Semantic Web to cultural heritage collections, notably MuseumFinland and MultimediaN e-Culture (Hyvönen 2005; Hyvönen et al. 2009; Van Ossenbruggen et al. 2007; Schreiber et al. 2008). These projects also laid much of the groundwork for the Europeana Digital Library, which began a medieval studies initiative in 2012 as part of the European Union’s CENDARI project.

Lessons learned and life after NEER Funding for NEER ended in June 2010, after the Australian Research Council decided not to extend its Research Networks Program beyond the initial five years. NEER’s digital assets are still available on the Web, but their long-term

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survival is not guaranteed. PioNEER continues to be hosted by the University of Western Australia, but there is no mechanism (or funding) for encouraging or supporting the deposit of new material. Europa Inventa also continues to be hosted at the University of Western Australia, and is being used to contribute Australian content to international services. A small amount of funding is available for work on updating and revision. Confluence is still available and active, though usage and new content have both been declining. The Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies (ANZAMEMS), the main scholarly body in this field in Australasia, has agreed in principle to maintain Confluence as a vehicle for communication and collaboration between its members, but the details of this arrangement remain to be worked out and implemented. Funding for Confluence is currently provided by the ARC Centre for the History of Emotions, a national centre of excellence based at the University of Western Australia. NEER aimed to test innovative technologies for scholarly communication and e-research in the humanities, within the framework of a new governmental approach to funding academic research communities and across a community of more than three hundred and fifty scholars in medieval and Renaissance studies in Australia. The specific services which NEER implemented were designed and developed in the period around 2005 and largely reflect what was feasible at that time. Much has changed in the technological landscape since then. Collaborative frameworks, in particular, have changed dramatically. The life of NEER coincided with the rise and rise of services like Facebook, which was first opened to international academic users in October 2005—and seven years later has one billion monthly active users. Twitter was launched in July 2006, and now has more than 500 million active users. There are numerous international academic and professional social networks like academia.edu, ResearchGate and LinkedIn. In medieval and Renaissance studies specifically, the key organizations have recently moved to set up their own online communities. The Medieval Academy of America and the Renaissance Society of America have both redeveloped their Web sites in the last two years to incorporate a collaborative space for members to contact each other and promote their own work. The Iter Community, based around the Iter gateway to digital resources in medieval and Renaissance studies, also offers a platform for collaboration between groups and individual researchers. Methods for collecting and disseminating research publications have also changed. The relationship between discipline-based repositories and

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institutional repositories is still a matter of considerable debate. The discussion around Open Access is more complex than ever, with large commercial publishers, national governments, and research funding agencies all getting directly involved. Access to research data sets is also becoming a major area of interest. Standards and approaches for publishing and sharing information about manuscripts, artworks, and other objects have been changing significantly as well. The Linked Data framework, which emerged from the idea of a Semantic Web, offers exciting new possibilities for integrating the flow of information across research workflows and processes (Burrows 2011). These technologies are already being used to develop a national “virtual laboratory” for the humanities in Australia (Burrows 2012), and the CENDARI project is beginning to apply them to medieval studies in Europe. The challenge facing the Australian research community in medieval and Renaissance studies is to ensure that the knowledge acquired in building NEER’s digital assets is not lost, and to use this as a catalyst for encouraging further innovation. What is the best approach for enabling collaboration and communication between Australian researchers? What is the best way to identify, collect, and promote Australian research publications and related materials? How can medieval and Renaissance objects in Australian collections best be described and made available for international scholarship? The answers are likely to be very different now from what they were in 2005, but the questions remain the same.

WORKS CITED American Council of Learned Societies. 2006. Our cultural commonwealth: the report of the American Council of Learned Societies Commission on Cyberinfrastructure for the Humanities and Social Sciences. New York: American Council of Learned Societies. Atkins, D.E., K.K. Droegemeier, S.I. Feldman, H. Garcia-Molina, M.L. Klein, D.G. Messerschmitt, P. Messina, J.P. Ostriker, and M.H. Wright, 2003. Revolutionizing science and engineering through cyberinfrastructure: report of the National Science Foundation Blue-Ribbon Advisory Panel on Cyberinfrastructure. Arlington: National Science Foundation.

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Burrows, Toby. 2005. “Reinventing the humanities in a networked environment: the Australian Network for Early European Research.” In Humanities, computers and cultural heritage: proceedings of the XVI International Conference of the Association for History and Computing, 95– 99. Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. __________ 2010. “Applying semantic web technologies to medieval manuscript research.” In Kodikologie und paläographie im digitalen zeitalter 2—Codicology and palaeography in the digital age 2, ed. F. Fischer, C. Fritze, and G. Vogeler, 117–31. (Schriften des Instituts für Dokumentologie und Editorik 3). Norderstedt: Books on Demand. __________ 2011. “Sharing humanities data for e-research: conceptual and technical issues.” In Sustainable data from digital research ed. Nick Thieberger, 177–92. Melbourne: PARADISEC. Accessed 28 Oct. 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/7938 __________ 2012. “Designing a national ‘virtual laboratory’ for the humanities: the Australian HuNI project.” In Digital humanities 2012: conference abstracts, University of Hamburg, July 16–22, ed. Jan Christoph Meyer, 139–41. Hamburg: University of Hamburg. Coles, S.J., J.G. Frey, M.B. Hursthouse, M.E. Light, A.J. Milsted, L.A. Carr, D. DeRoure, C.J. Gutteridge, H.R. Mills, K.E. Meacham, M. Surridge, E. Lyon, R. Heery, M. Duke, and M. Day. 2006. “An e-Science environment for service crystallography—from submission to dissemination.” Journal of chemical information and modeling 46 (3): 1006–16. Genoni, Paul, Helen Merrick, and Michelle Willson. 2009. “e-research and scholarly community in the humanities.” In e-Research: transformation in scholarly practice, ed. Nicholas W. Jankowski, 91–108. New York: Routledge. Harvey, Ross. 1994. “Australia’s Book Heritage Resources Project: final report, 25 August 1994.” BSANZ Bulletin 18 (4): 225–30. Hay, John, and David Bean. 1986. The early imprints at New Norcia: a bibliographical study of pre-1801 books in the Benedictine Monastery Library at New Norcia, Western Australia. Perth: The Library, Western Australian Institute of Technology.

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Henty, Margaret. 2007. “Ten major issues in providing a repository service in Australian universities.” D-Lib Magazine 13 (5/6). 28 Oct. 2012. Web. http://www.dlib.org/dlib/may07/henty/05henty.html. 4 Dec. 2012. Hyvönen, Eero. 2005. “MuseumFinland—Finnish museums on the semantic web.” Journal of web semantics 3(2): 224–41. Hyvönen, Eero, Eetu Mäkelä, Tomi Kauppinen, Olli Alm, Jussi Kurki, Tuukka Ruotsalo, Katri Seppälä, Joeli Takala, Kimmo Puputti, Heini Kuittinen, Kim Viljanen, Jouni Tuominen, Tuomas Palonen, Matias Frosterus, Reetta Sinkkilä, Panu Paakkarinen, Joonas Laitio, and Katariina Nyberg. 2009. “CultureSampo: A national publication system of cultural heritage on the semantic web 2.0.” In The semantic web: research and applications, ed. Lora Aroyo, Paolo Traverso, Fabio Ciravegna, Philipp Cimiano, Tom Heath, Eero Hyvönen, Riichiro Mizoguchi, Eyal Oren, Marta Sabou, and Elena Simperl, 851–56. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 5554. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. Kingsley, Danny. 2007. “The one that got away?: Institutional reporting changes and open access in Australia.” 28 Oct. 2012. http://dspace. anu.edu.au/handle/1885/45158. 4 Dec. 2012. Kirkham, Ruth. 2007. Building a virtual research environment for the humanities: JISC final report. 28 Oct. 2012. http://bvreh.humanities.ox.ac.uk/files/ Microsoft%20Word%20-%20JISC_Final_Report_Web.pdf. 4 Dec. 2012. Ludäscher, B., I. Altintas, C. Berkley, D. Higgins, E. Jaeger, M. Jones, E.A. Lee, J. Tao, and Y. Zhao. 2006. “Scientific workflow management and the Kepler system.” Concurrency and computation: practice and experience 18 (10): 1039–65. Manion, Margaret M. 2005. The Felton Illuminated Manuscripts in the National Gallery of Victoria. Melbourne: Macmillan Art Publishing. __________ and Vera F. Vines. 1984. Medieval and renaissance illuminated manuscripts in Australian collections. Melbourne: Thames and Hudson. Oinn, T., M. Greenwood, M. Addis, M.D. Alpdemir, J. Ferris, K. Glover, C. Goble, A. Goderis, D. Hull, D. Marvin, P. Li, P. Lord, M.R. Pocock, M. Senger, R. Stevens, A. Wipat, and C. Wroe. 2006. “Taverna: lessons in creating a workflow environment for the life sciences.” Concurrency and computation: practice and experience 18 (10): 1067–1100.

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Scase, Wendy. 2009. Applying semantic web technologies to medieval manuscript research: European Science Foundation Exploratory Workshop report. Strasbourg: European Science Foundation. Schreiber, G., A. Amin, L. Aroyo, M. van Assem, V. de Boer, L. Hardman, M. Hildebrand, B. Omelayenko, J. van Ossenbruggen, A. Tordai, J. Wielemaker, and B. Wielinga. 2008. “Semantic annotation and search of cultural-heritage collections: the MultimediaN E-Culture Demonstrator.” Journal of Web Semantics 6(4): 243–49. Sinclair, Keith V. 1968. Descriptive catalogue of medieval and renaissance western manuscripts in Australia. Sydney: Sydney University Press. Tomory, Peter, and Robert Gaston. 1989. European paintings before 1800 in Australian and New Zealand public collections: summary catalogue. Sydney: Beagle Press. Trigg, S. J. 2006. “ ‘Medieval literature’ or ‘Early Europe’? How to win grants and change the course of scholarship.” Literature Compass 3 (3): 318–30. Unsworth, John. 2000. “Scholarly primitives: what methods do humanities researchers have in common, and how might our tools reflect this?” In Proceedings of Humanities Computing: Formal Methods, Experimental Practice, London: May 2000. 28 Oct. 2012. Web. http://www3.isrl.illinois. edu/~unsworth//Kings.5-00/primitives.html. 4 Dec 2012. Van Ossenbruggen, J., A. Amin, L. Hardman, M. Hildebrand, M. van Assem, B. Omelayenko, G. Schreiber, A. Tordai, V. de Boer, B. Wielinga, J. Wielemaker, M. de Niet, J. Taekema, M.-F. van Orsouw, and A. Teesing. 2007. “Searching and annotating virtual heritage collections with semantic-web techniques.” In Museums and the web 2007, April 11–14, 2007. 28 Oct. 2012. http://www.archimuse.com/mw2007/papers/ ossenbruggen/ossenbruggen.html. 4 Dec. 2012.

“A hawk from a handsaw”: Collating Possibilities with the Shakespeare Quartos Archive1 Jim Kuhn

University of Rochester [email protected] collate, v. 1. … 2. To bring together for comparison; to compare carefully and exactly, in order to ascertain points of agreement and difference. 3. a. esp. To compare critically (a copy of a text) with other copies or with the original, in order to correct and emend it. b. To compare a copy of a legal document with the original, and duly verify its correctness. 4. Printing and Bookbinding. To examine the sheets of a printed book by the signatures, so as to ascertain that they are perfect and in correct order (OED Online 2011). One may negotiate all this, and yet find the work not even half-done. The more complete one’s collation, the more information one has to digest. The editor is adrift on a sea of variants, flowing in columns

1

This essay is a revised and expanded version of a presentation given as part of the third New Technologies and Renaissance Studies session of the Renaissance Society of America conference, Università Ca’ Foscari (Venice, Italy, April 8, 2010). The title is from Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2, lines 402–403: “I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw” (Shakespeare 1992, 107). Barbara Mowat and Paul Werstine gloss this as “a proverb that means ‘I can distinguish between things that do not resemble each other’ ” (Shakespeare 1992, 106n403). The work discussed in this paper was made possible with the generous support of the National Endowment for the Humanities (United States) and the Joint Information Systems Committee (United Kingdom), and was conducted while the author was Head of Collection Information Services at the Folger Shakespeare Library. © 2014 Iter Inc. and the Arizona Board of Regents for Arizona State University. All rights reserved ISBN 978-0-86698-516-1 (online) ISBN 978-0-86698-515-4 (print) New Technologies in Medieval and Renaissance Studies 4 (2014) 67–90

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across vast sheets of paper, bursting from piles of index cards (Robinson 1994, 80). The Shakespeare Quartos Archive (SQA) launched publicly in November 2009 at http://quartos.org. Funding for the one-year pilot project was provided by a JISC/NEH Transatlantic Digitization Collaboration Grant, one of five such projects funded in 2008, the first year these grants were awarded (NEH 2009). Our aim was to both demonstrate how early printed quarto editions of the plays of William Shakespeare could be compared and analyzed if fully transcribed and presented through a single user interface, and to create a single online collection of page images for at least one copy from every pre-1642 edition of the plays. The British Library’s predecessor site Treasures in Full: Shakespeare in Quarto (SIQ) was launched in 2004 with page images for each pre-1642 quarto edition of Shakespeare’s plays owned by the British Library (BBC 2004). As part of the SQA project, SIQ was updated to include at least one image set per edition of each Shakespeare play printed in quarto before the closing of the theatres in 1642 (British Library, home page). Digital images of the additional quartos were provided by the Bodleian Library (University of Oxford, UK), the University of Edinburgh Library, the Folger Shakespeare Library, and the National Library of Scotland (British Library, partners page). As a result, SIQ now includes copies of every edition of the plays printed in quarto before 1642. The SQA demonstration project at present includes thirty-two image sets and transcriptions of the five pre-1642 editions of Hamlet. The site includes copies owned by the Bodleian Library (University of Oxford, UK), the British Library, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Huntington Library, the National Library of Scotland, and the University of Edinburgh Library. Hamlet texts are presented in a prototype user interface designed by the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities, University of Maryland (MITH). Transcription in TEI P5 was overseen by staff at the Oxford Digital Library (Bodleian Library), with help from Folger and British Library staff and interns.2 We had help in evaluation and planning from many Folger staff, readers, teachers, 2

P5, the current version of the TEI Guidelines, was released in 2007. “The Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) is a consortium which collectively develops and maintains a standard for the representation of texts in digital form. Its chief deliverable is a set of Guidelines which specify encoding methods for machine-readable texts, chiefly in the humanities, social sciences and linguistics” (TEI 2007).

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and friends, but also from academics and students at the Shakespeare Institute of the University of Birmingham, and via a third-party observed usability test conducted under contract of The British Library. More details about planning, management, evaluation, and interface development can be found in the NEH proposal and final NEH report (Folger, MITH, Oxford 2007; Folger and MITH 2009). The Hamlet-based demonstration project is the topic of this essay; more specifically, the available collation toolsets. This perhaps somewhat narrow discussion of functionality is also used here as a jumping-off point for additional discussion of a problem-space in digital editing and digital humanities: the middle ground between development of individual tools for off-line scholarly work versus full-fledged development of scholarly editions accessible as more or less finished digital publications—the liminal space between digitization as a tool for extending raw access to primary source material and the interventions required for edition creation.

Why the Shakespeare Quartos Archive? A wide variety of online sources exist for access to digital facsimiles, full transcriptions, and openly-available edited editions of early printed impressions of the works of Shakespeare.3 In addition, some others have been made available in recent years by Octavo Editions through digital facsimile and full-text transcription in CD-Rom format.4 Octavo has made page images of these commercial products available for free at a site called Rare Book Room. In fact, page images of most of the items in SQA and in SIQ are also available at Rare Book Room, albeit “in medium to medium-high resolution,” and without transcription (Octavo Editions, rare book room quartos home page). Print facsimiles, facsimiles aimed at use by actors, and recent modern-spelling 3

Focusing just on sources for early printing, the current list includes the following freely-accessible resources: the Folger Digital Image Collection; Penn’s Furness Collection; the University of Victoria’s Internet Shakespeare Editions; Octavo Editions’ Rare Book Room; the British Library’s Shakespeare in Quarto; and MIT’s Shakespeare Electronic Archive. 4 Octavo Editions has issued ca. 400 high-resolution, zoomable, searchable texts in PDF on CD-ROM, including a First Folio (Folger shelfmark STC 22273 Fo.1 no.05); a copy of the 1640 Poems (in the private library of John Warnock); and a 1609 Sonnets (from the Grenville Library, British Library shelfmark G.11181). More details about additional CD-ROM products are available online (Octavo Editions, home page), and the pioneering products and work of this no-longer-active firm are well documented (Geser 2002; Mayfield 2001; Waters 1998).

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editions round out what might thereby seem a fairly saturated arena for scholarly editing, study, teaching, and acting.5 Given the apparent easy availability of text and image for those interested in the earliest printed work of the Bard, and for those interested in comparing and collating these works, why SQA? One response is to point to the interactive toolsets available for users of SQA (about which more below in Section 2). Another response, as documented by Oxford Digital Library Digital Editors Judith Siefring and Pip Willcox, points to the TEI P5 choices made to encode not just the printed text of the quartos, but also such physical characteristics as manuscript annotations, damage, bindings, bookplates, and so on. These choices were made in recognition that documenting this text itself cannot be done without explicitly acknowledging the cultural legacy of these early printed editions, whose physical characteristics embody their reception, use, past study (including collations), provenance, and in no small part the care that has been taken to see that they have survived (Siefring and Willcox, 2012). Probably the first response relates to the intersection between open access and completeness. The earliest quartos are over four hundred years old and are the rarest, most fragile body of printed literature available to Shakespeare scholars. Generally sold unbound, they are among the rarest books of the age and survive in relatively low numbers. There are an estimated 777 extant quartos, of which about 442 have been digitized to date, largely by Octavo Editions, and by staff of the Folger Shakespeare Library.6 It isn’t much of a stretch to suggest that collation of textual and typographical variants, on the basis of a complete and openly-accessible “set” of all extant quartos, cannot but help elucidate the range of available variant readings. Or, at the risk of sounding unfashionably New Bibliography-ish: what Shakespeare wrote.7 5

Including the Norton facsimile (Shakespeare [1623] 1996), a series of modern-spelling editions of the quarto playtexts put out by Cambridge University Press (Shakespeare 1996-2011), a recent parallel text edition comparing the 1st and 2nd Quartos of Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare [1597, 1599] 2008), the Globe Folios series of playtexts, each of which is an “actual-size facsimile reproduction … taken from an original copy of the First Folio in the British Library” (Shakespeare [1623] 2008, 6); and so on. 6 These figures come from a working census of existing quartos citing known digitization, submitted as Appendix Two of the joint grant application to JISC and NEH. 7 The question of whether collation will lead us back to the “True Originall Copies” (as is claimed on the Folio title page), or merely to various versions in production at various times is well-trodden—not to say occasionally perilous—ground that, as a

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Meanwhile expanding the universe of possible interlocutors and examinants beyond the traditional academy is not at all a bad thing. In Jerome McGann’s words, “Scholarship, as traditionally conceived, has maintained its prestige partly through its privileged relation to the protection and retrieval of scarce resources. Now, however, millions of people who cannot or do not want to go to the archives are accessing them in digital form. And digital information has profoundly undermined an academic elite’s control over the circulation of knowledge” (McGann 2007, 1590). To which I would respond, with Peter M.W. Robinson, that especially in this field of inquiry where collation of source texts is at question, we are nearing a point where: “Crucially, readers will be able to test the scholars’ answers with a convenience never before available. Nothing will ever have to be taken on trust. Rather, scholars can earn the reader’s trust, for if they have done their work properly the readers will find their own investigations corroborate the scholars’ suggestions” (Robinson 1994, 94). So put it this way: How would the working conditions and output of current and future readers, students, teachers, editors, and actors of Shakespeare differ if open and interactive access was available to images and diplomatic transcriptions of every extant copy and impression of every printed edition of each play and poem published before 1642? Along with open access to the guidelines which informed transcription practices and online presentation, and open access to the source code which served them up? How might things be different if readers taking notes on these earliest printings of Shakespeare had open access to each other’s annotations or saved desktop states created as collational and editorial work proceeded? Answers to these questions help situate the promise of a site like SQA squarely in the middle of a continuum from, on the one hand, the ability visually to compare a limited number of copies or editions using page images (in Shakespeare in Quarto from the University of Pennsylvania’s SCETI, in the Folger Digital Image Collection, and so on), to, on the other hand, the ability to closely study peer-reviewed editions of the early printings in the online Internet Shakespeare Editions or in the printed The New Cambridge Shakespeare: the Early Quartos.8 These questions also help clarify how the strategies put to work in the SQA demonstration librarian but not a textual editor, I will not attempt to cover in this essay. 8 Although his 1994 essay primarily addresses manuscript collation, Robinson fairly well describes the SQA situation in asserting that “Certainly there will be a place for ‘editions’ which are nothing more than compilations of materials, together with various tools for their exploration, just as there is now for series of facsimiles of manuscripts and for printed concordances” (Robinson 1994, 93).

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project relate to the ongoing digital humanities discussion over providing scholars with independent toolsets they can use in the comfort of their own virtual or actual workspaces, versus the creation and maintenance of online desktops or shared workstations with embedded toolsets. Suffice it to say that the ability for complete collations, or even competing collations that can be independently evaluated, does not yet exist for the earliest extant printed works of Shakespeare. The real significance of a completed SQA may be as simple as this: evidence, and what counts as evidence.9 Gregory Crane recently made the point well: “The most brilliant hypotheses and argumentation only assume their full value insofar as any human being can drill down behind the exposition and into the evidence” (Crane 2010). Our one-year SQA demonstration project is intended to point towards what might be required in order to be able to back up editorial and reading decisions with such evidence.

What is the Shakespeare Quartos Archive? The conditions for collation of the sort aspired to by SQA go beyond toolsets for careful comparison of two or more impressions or editions against each other, although experimenting with these tools was a central focus of the interface design conducted under the leadership of MITH. Specific collation tools will be discussed below in Section 3, but first it is worth spending a bit of time on the design of the site, and in particular the benefits (and hazards) of gathering source materials together onto a single virtual desktop or common interface. This section of the article outlines aspects of SQA that support 9

McKenzie’s “spaced-out comps” provide a useful illustration of the difficulty in deciding what can count as evidence for evaluating theories purporting to explain the differences between early printed texts (McKenzie 1984). In McKenzie’s words: “The pressure to prove our theories (again, that is, to test them rigorously) by what is historically knowable must in no way slacken. A theory which collapses from book to book, like a chain with broken links, is nowhere sound. In the present instance, the forms of two theories (rarely I confess so nakedly exposed) have been stripped and shown as impotent to explain what actually happened in printing just one book used to test them: spacing as a compositorial practice, and founts as a compositorial trace. Even their skeletons are uninformative. Statistics merely compound the errors. And, most damning of all, it is perfectly clear as a matter of fact and of logic that, far from one theory assisting the other where either is weak, the two theories in this case are mutually exclusive” (McKenzie 1984, 117–18). I am grateful to Gabriel Egan of the SQA advisory board for pointing out the relevance of this argument in our discussions about the SQA.

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collation, including: gathering disparate materials together; establishing appropriate guidelines for transcription based on TEI P5; provision of a common interface; and providing open access to source materials, including the ability to work with them offline under Creative Commons licensing. Gathering source materials Production of high-resolution digital images of the holdings of six institutions would not have been possible within the scope of this one-year project. The importance therefore can’t be overstated of the digitization work done by Octavo Editions in extending access to early printed Shakespeare quartos. This project owes its existence to the work of that staff from the mid-1990s through the early 2000s, work that resulted in Hamlet digitization being complete at four of the six holding institutions prior to start-up. The Folger and the Huntington Library proceeded within the grant period to digitize all quartos approved for photography by conservators (in the case of the Folger), and the six in-scope Hamlets, including one of only two surviving copies of the 1603 first quarto (in the case of the Huntington).10 Gathering all image sets together and aggregating and versioning encoded transcriptions required liberal use of ftp, email attachments, shipped and personally-couriered hard drives and DVDs, and multiple staging servers at both the University of Maryland and the University of Oxford. Readers with an interest in the mundane yet crucial issues of file transfer (among, it should be noted, partner institutions with heterogeneous bandwidths, file formats, and local storage circumstances) are encouraged to refer to the final NEH grant report where the logistics of collaboration are addressed in some detail (Folger and MITH 2009). Transcription A key area of tension in our application of TEI P5 guidelines to the creation of diplomatic transcriptions was how to appropriately integrate description 10

The Folger Shakespeare Library holds 218 quartos (including fragments and apocrypha). At the time of writing, all but the following seven have been approved for digitization by conservators: King Henry IV, Part 1, 1632 (Folger shelfmark STC 22286 copy 2 bd.w. STC 4619); King Henry IV, Part 2, 1600 (Folger shelfmark STC 22288); Othello, 1630 (Folger shelfmark STC 22306 copy 3); King Richard III, 1629 (Folger shelfmark STC 22320 copy 3 bd.w. STC 4619); Poems, 1640 (Folger shelfmark STC 22344 copies 2 and 3), Troublesome raigne of King John (Folger shelfmark STC 14647 copy 6). Although none of these are unique copies, this illustrates just how difficult it may be to reach the goal of completeness in scope.

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and transcription of para-textual and copy-specific elements with transcription of printed text. In the words of Siefring and Willcox, … arguably the most significant aspect of the individual quarto copies, which most differentiates any one from the others, is the physical evidence of what happened to each post-print, the material manifestation of their transmission history: what brought these low-status printed plays to their current richly-covered, prized status? Their different bindings and the paste-ins and library stamps reveal much about this, as do the varying sorts of damage and repair they have sustained, but the most compelling evidence of their individual histories is the handwritten annotations that have been added to the pages (Siefring and Willcox 2012, 98). Collating Shakespeare’s texts is hardly a new task, as revealed in SQA by the work of such famed former owners as John Philip Kemble, who marked many of his own copies on the first page of text with a note, e.g. “Collated & Perfect J.P.K. 1814;” or Edmond Malone’s collation via marginal annotation with a 2nd quarto his copy of the 4th.11 Decisions about how to render appropriately such physical evidence of previous handling and study of these objects has been publicly posted in a page of “Encoding Documentation” (Shakespeare Quartos Archive, encoding page). Prior to the start of work, an invitational Advisory Forum was hosted in June 2008 by the Bodleian Library’s Oxford Digital Library, to help define the potential uses of the resource and to inform early editorial decisions. Early modern scholars and editors, creative practitioners and educational specialists, librarians and digital humanists participated in round table and small group discussions, addressing direct questions as well as engaging in open conversation. Initial encoding decisions and ongoing encoding deliberations were informed in large part by documented recommendations made by participants in these meetings (Shakespeare Quartos Archive 6 June 2008). A common interface Design and programming for the SQA user interface was led by MITH, with frequent user testing along the way conducted at the Folger Shakespeare 11

Kemble’s title page note in Folger Shakespeare Library copy 3 of the 3rd quarto (Folger shelfmark STC 22277 Copy 3, B1r) can be viewed at quartos.org, as can Malone’s collation of the 4th quarto line “it might bee hangers” with the 2nd quarto “it be hangers” in Act 5, Scene 2 in Bodleian Library’s copy of the 4th quarto (Bodleian shelfmark Arch. G d.41 (3), M4v).

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Library, the Shakespeare Institute of the University of Birmingham, and the Web Usability Partnership (London). One constraint we faced late in the process was programming for renderability in multiple browsers and browser versions. As we stated in our final NEH report, We had originally intended that the prototype would be full-tested only on Firefox as it is open source and available on all major operating systems. However, late in the development process, members of the development team pointed out that their own institutions had only Internet Explorer 6.0 installed in the public labs and reading rooms. As a result, in the last two months of the grant all development was focused on making the interface functional on this browser as well as more modern ones (Folger and MITH 2009). As browsers have modernized and standardized such concerns may be less likely to occur in future, but this highlights just one critical component of collaboratively defining a “common” interface. This experience bore out the recommendations of Daniel Pitti that “[i]nterface design should not be deferred to the end of the design process. Creating prototypes and mockups of the interface, including designing the visual and textual apparatus to be used in querying, rendering, and navigating the collection and its parts, will inform the analysis of the artifacts and related objects to be digitally collected, and the encoding systems used in representing them” (Pitti 2004). Open access All content is downloadable, usable and re-usable under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (cc by-nc) licensing, and without relying on the digital toolset and workspace of SQA. Licensing differs depending on the country from which source material has been provided (Shakespeare Quartos Archive, terms page). The code behind the user interface is similarly licensed and available for re-use, and has been published in the MITH subversion repository.12 As Doug Reside has described this SQA strategy, We worked to separate our content (image files and TEI documents) from the application in order to make the content reusable by other (non-MITH) interfaces, and also to develop an interface that could 12

At the time of writing, this code has been prototyped for the “Digital Palimpsest” user interface, a site that provides access to multispectral images of the Archimedes Palimpsest, a thirteenth-century Byzantine prayer book containing erased tenth-century texts by Archimedes (Archimedes Palimpsest).

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be used for other (non-Shakespearean) content. To this end we published the raw images, tiles for deep zoom, and TEI-XML files at stable URIs on our homepage so they could be used outside of the interface we designed (Reside 8 June 2010). The site links to free and open-source toolsets that are useful for text and image manipulation, for those users who will prefer to pull the items they desire to study into their own chosen work environments.13 Meanwhile, usergenerated image crops and annotation sets all have static URLs that may be embedded in other online environments in order to deep-link back to details, enabling sharing and re-contextualizing in other systems. Annotation, exhibition, and other interactive tools Registered users can “cut out” bits of page images, from any number of quartos, to arrange in their own online workspace. Users can also annotate page images of each quarto, saving these annotations into sets that can be kept private, or made available publicly to other registered users. Users can also create “labels” for on-screen captioning of crops and other images. Partner institutions can moderate user-supplied data. Finally, registered users can create “exhibits” (a saved desktop state of the interface) which might contain panels positioned at particular positions relative to each other, cutout pieces of pages, or labels captioning particular pieces of interest. These exhibits, as well as annotation sets, can be shared with other users. Boyd and Ellison have defined social networking sites as “web-based services that allow individuals (1) to construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system” (Boyd and Ellison 2007). SQA’s combination of a free registration system, ability to annotate (publicly or privately), and ability to create exhibits based on saved desktop states almost, but not entirely, meets Boyd’s and Ellison’s definition. Among features identified during development and user evaluation that would enhance the social networking features, and in particular the usefulness of these features to teaching applications are: 13

Among tools linked to from quartos.org are Irfanview (a freeware graphics viewer), Juxta (an open-source tool for comparing and collating multiple witnesses to a single textual work), TAPoR (an online environment and portal for textual analysis), and Wordle (a word and tag cloud generator).

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• the ability to engage in threaded discussions; • a method for inviting others into your “set” of annotations, with invitees’ content private to the world but public to the inviter (a feature that would permit an instructor to set up a single set for classroom use, or two scholars to engage in confidential collaboration); • a method for assigning searchable keywords to user-generated annotations. These tools would also help to engage a wider circle of potential collators, and would assist in shared and collaborative evaluation of existing and future editions and readings. Would such a site better exhibit characteristics of an “articulated social network” as described by Boyd and Ellison? Perhaps. More to the point, it may well begin to exhibit characteristics of the kind of editions that digital humanities reaches for and that Crane describes this way: “Once we shift from publications that are static in form and unchanging by legal restrictions and into a world of versioned, dynamic linguistic data, then our textual sources become living entities that can evolve. Their current state is only a single datapoint. An edition that provides demonstrably superior information today is strategically inferior to an edition that can improve over time. If members of the community feel that the editions need to be improved, they can create their own versions and/or annotate those that exist” (Crane 2010).

SQA collation and comparison tools A variety of collation and comparison tools are available native to SQA. Some are better suited to horizontal collation (that is, comparison of impressions within an edition), including the “Opacity” tool permitting superimposition of either image or text. Others are well suited to vertical collation (that is, comparison of impressions across editions). As proof of concept, together these toolsets get us part of the way towards the goal of an interactive workspace for collation of Shakespeare’s plays in quarto.14 At the time of writing, all of the available tools in the demonstration project require at least a bit of tweaking to fulfill their promise, as discussed 14

Manual and machine-based optical collation has a history dating back at least to the Victorian period (Zalewski 1997). For more about the history and developments of various techniques for optical collation, see also Cream et al. (2010), Lindstrand (1971), Metzger (1999), Robinson (1994), Smith (2000), Smith (2002), Stringer and Vilberg (1987).

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below. To that end, in the following discussion I will interrogate the resource’s tools—for visually collating image sets and text, and for Diff-based textual collation—on the basis of Diana Kichuk’s discussion of “the impact of filters and limits of remediation” (Kichuk 2007, 291). Although her focus is in particular on the presentation of early printed books in the Early English Books series of microfilm and electronic products, the question of the limits of such re-presentation (which she calls “remediation” after Bolter and Grusin [1999]) is particularly acute for a resource such as SQA that hopes and intends to provide access and toolsets to the earliest available texts for Shakespeare’s works. In Kichuk’s words: “However earnest the effort and advanced the technology, the migration from original to copy, and from one medium to another results in mutation. Remediation launches a new artifact: a ‘point of view’ copy essentially transformed through its migration to a new medium” (Kichuk 2007, 297). Some of the tools used in SQA to provide access to text and image introduce analogous “remediating” filters and digital artifacts that the would-be collator should be aware of; these will be discussed in the following discussion of tools. Visual collation of image sets Users of the SQA workspace can open any number of windows, each of which will contain a quarto open to the title page, when present; or open to the first printed page of text, if no title page is present. Navigation is available via a dropdown which includes both image “numbers” (referring to the ordering of double-page openings) and original signatures (to aid in navigation within quartos and in locating identical openings for comparison with multiple windows open).15 Side-by-side comparison is available, as can be done in a variety of other sites providing access to early printed Shakespeare texts, one difference here being the unified workspace (many other sites rely on a separate browser window to display each item). An “opacity” tool permits more careful visual collation of image sets, as depicted in Figure 1.

15

A signature is “a small capital letter or numeral usually placed by the compositor in the white line (tail margin) immediately below the text of the first page of each section of a book. Letters or numerals are assigned in sequence … “ (Glaister 1996, 445).

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Figure 1. Superimposition with reduced opacity: Page images from Hamlet 1604 (Huntington Library copy: “… it be hangers till … ”) and 1605 (British Library copy: “… it be might hangers till …”) Here a user selects multiple items (Huntington Library’s copy of the 1604–5 2nd Quarto, and British Library’s copy of the 1604–5 2nd Quarto variant state), navigates to the appropriate opening in each, selects a zoom level that provides similar text size, and reduces the “opacity” of the top level to enable superimposition. Here the user can see a textual difference: the presence of the word “might” in one, but not the other, of these versions of Act 5, Scene 2, line 173.16 Enhancements to this tool that would make it more useful include: modifications to the “deep zoom” function to permit finer granularity would help with better establishment of registration (the British Library text is here just a smidge larger than the Huntington); a “nudge” tool to permit rotation by degrees, especially when examining copies like this Huntington 1604 that have been trimmed and inlaid into larger leaves (a slight rotation counter-clockwise of the Huntington text here would also help). Visual collation of text A toggle button labeled “View IMG/TXT” will permit users to “flip” each displayed quarto from the digital image of the page spread to a full-text version of the page, generated in HTML through the application of stylesheets to XML transcription files. This is depicted in Figure 2, showing the same 16

As lineated in the New Folger Library Shakespeare edition (Shakespeare 1992, 269). For a treatment of the varying ways this can (and has been) collated recently, see Egan et al. (2008, 343).

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passage, with mis-registration perhaps a bit more clear to the eye than in the case of the digital image collation.

Figure 2. Superimposition with reduced opacity: HTML text from Hamlet 1604 (Huntington Library copy: “… it be hangers till … ”) and 1605 (British Library copy: “… it be might hangers till …”) Obstacles to easy use of this tool for horizontal collation include the following. Transcription of marginal manuscript annotations and markings display in the TXT view as blue type. But regardless of color, their presence will interfere with establishing adequate registration of printed text. A toggle permitting “hiding” of transcription of physical characteristics on the basis of encoding would help. A further example is the representation of manuscript underlining, which is sometimes encoded using and sometimes using tags with (Shakespeare Quartos Archive, encoding page). Representation in HTML of in particular is problematic, as is representation of other encoded elements that may overlap hierarchical levels in the TEI encoding. One final example relates to use of the “place” attribute in tags, which indicate location on the page of manuscript additions: an attribute which is necessarily ignored in the eyereadable HTML version. These issues are related in part to CSS and XSL-based transformation of XMLencoded texts and in part to representing non-hierarchically-structured texts using the explicitly hierarchical structure of TEI encoding. These examples illustrate both Kichuk’s point about the filters of remediation in EEBO

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that the “materiality of the microfilm and virtuality of the digitized object introduce new and conflicting layers of scholarly evidence related to remediation,” and might also be taken as confirmation of D. Schmidt’s more recent arguments critiquing markup, that “[o]nce embedded, markup obscures and biases what a new scholar, who didn’t carry out the initial markup, can see” (Kichuk 2007, 297; Schmidt 2010, 13). That said, the remediating “point of view” effects of scripted processing are mitigated while working in the user interface: a quick flip to the digital image can be used to spot-check transcriptions along the way for disambiguation of potential mis-matches during collation. An important feature, because Kichuk is correct: “… substitution is not equivalence. Neither the microfilm nor the digital facsimile is equivalent to the original physical book, despite the enthusiastic descriptions of the publisher and scholars to the contrary” (Kichuk 2007, 296). Diff-based collation of text A tool embedded in the site outside of the user interface and depicted in Figure 3 permits comparison of HTML transcriptions, highlighting of differences, and clickable navigation to zones or points of difference. Developed by MITH staff, this tool makes use of a modification of the Juxta engine to create a series of HTML files with the differences between any two texts highlighted. Unlike the SQA tools already discussed, which permit userconducted horizontal collation, this tool uses the popular Diff algorithm to collate every transcript in our set to every other, enabling users to examine these machine-collations through an interface that highlights all of the differences between any two copies of the five pre-1642 editions of Hamlet: a tool that provides both horizontal and vertical collations. The same caveats apply to this tool as to the visual collation of text described above: a risk of the introduction of digital artifacts when creating HTML eye-readable texts via the application of style-sheets to XML-based texts encoded in TEI.

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Figure 3. A machine-generated collation based on Juxta: HTML text from Hamlet 1604 (Huntington Library copy) and 1605 (British Library copy) World enough and time, we would have resolved some of the tool-set-related questions and needed enhancements discussed above. Such is often the fate of a one-year grant period. Useful confirmation that such enhancements would in fact make this tool far more reliable for collation came during a workshop at the Shakespeare Association of American 2011 conference, where Carter Hailey presented 3rd quarto collations done manually using a Comet, where SQA and Juxta-based collations of the same impositions were accompanied by numerous digital artifacts.17

17

This April 8, 2011 SQA workshop included discussions and demonstration projects conducted by Michael Best, Nichole Dewall, Jeremy Ehrlich, Carter Hailey, Brett Hirsch, Jim Kuhn, Katherine Rowe, Jessica Slights, and Sarah Werner. Hailey and Kuhn jointly presented “ ‘Ain’t one hammer in this tunnel / That rings like mine’ (… with apologies to Doc Watson and John Henry).” Carter’s COMET-based hand-collation of a Q3 I.ii passage clearly worked far more reliably than this author’s computer-aided visual and textual collation using the SQA, and using the non-SQA tool Juxta. Real-world examinations like this of prototype digital humanities projects can be extraordinarily valuable for establishing current usefulness and future needs.

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Conclusion: What should the future of the Shakespeare Quartos Archive look like? As a demonstration project, we count SQA as a success in collaboration, and in advancing scholarly toolspaces, and in extending access to early printings of Hamlet. In the words of one review, “these new tools facilitate comparative research in a way previously impossible, since the physical quartos are spread across six libraries in the United States and the United Kingdom. They also imagine new forms of scholarship that treat research as an open and ongoing process of interpretation, rather than the closed product of a single mind” (Trettien 2010, 398). And yet the current site is clearly only part-way there. What should the future hold for SQA, and for other projects aimed at comparison and collation of text? Beyond the obvious constraints of funding, there are a variety of possible ways forward. One key goal of this project has been recently well articulated by Crane: “We need editors—lots of them”; that is, a comprehensive SQA will succeed through enabling more, and better-grounded, editions (Crane 2010). However, in the context of discussing tools for close comparison of exemplars of early printing a more preliminary call might be: “Give us collators!” rather than Crane’s “Give us editors!” At this point, however, although the site is ready and available for Hamlet editors and collators, the fact remains that rather than asking “Give us editors,” or “Give us collators”; we might first have to begin even more fundamentally: “Give us more texts!” For SQA to fulfill its promise, then, we must at a minimum gather image sets and transcriptions for a larger subset of the admittedly-finite universe of Shakespeare quartos: perhaps at bare minimum, the other extant Hamlet 2nd Quartos?18 Or, at a more broadly useful extreme, the other 442 available already-digitized quarto editions? Or, for full effect: all of the circa 777 surviving quartos, in their entirety? Regardless, the way forward is going to involve infrastructure—and sustainable infrastructure, at that. To that end, an instructive model may be Doug Reside’s “four-layer model for image-based editions.” As Reside describes the problem: Centuries of experimentation with the production and preservation of paper have generated physical artifacts that, although fragile, 18

Huth copy, Elizabethan Club, Yale University (shelfmark Eliz 168); Capell copy, Trinity College, Cambridge University (shelfmark Capell S.31[2]); University of Wrocław (Poland) copy (Chwalewik 1960; Notes and comments 1960).

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can be placed in specially controlled environments and more or less ignored until a researcher wants to see them. On the other hand, only the most rudimentary procedures exist for preserving digital artifacts, and most require regular care by specialists who must convert, transfer, and update the formats to those readable by new technologies that are not usually backwards compatible. A new model is required (Reside 3 Feb. 2010). As depicted in Figure 4, Reside’s mutli-layered model is designed to encourage sustainable digital work by clearly defining the responsibilities of libraries, editors, digital humanities centers, and university presses in developing and maintaining electronic editions. The model is built out of four distinct layers: content, metadata, interface, and user-generated data, with each layer dependent only on those below it and potentially agnostic of those above it.19

Figure 4. Doug Reside’s Four-Layer Model for Image-Based Editions

19

For a more fulsome overview of Reside’s modular and layers proposal, see his HASTAC video podcast (Reside 16 April 2010).

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Such an approach holds promise, particularly for projects that draw on the resources of collecting institutions of disparate types, sizes, and mandates. As Kenneth Price puts it in his discussion of the difficulties facing digital editors and editing: “For a very large portion of the academic community—those working at small colleges, for example, or at underfunded universities—the possibility of active participation in digital scholarship is blocked or at least severely limited by infrastructure limitations—often as much a lack of human infrastructure as of hardware and software” (Price 2010, 10). This is certainly true for many members (like the Folger) of the Independent Research Libraries Association, cultural memory institutions with strong collections but which may lack the benefit of Internet II bandwidth, or enterprise-level digital storage facilities. And yet, the wind seems southerly: there is work to be done, but we may yet be able, with Prince Hamlet, to know a hawk from a handsaw.

WORKS CITED Archimedes Palimpsest Project. The digital palimpsest. Home page. 16 Dec. 2011. Web. http://www.archimedespalimpsest.org/. 16 Dec. 2011. BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation).“Shakespearean text lives online.” BBC NEWS: Technology 10 Sept. 2004. Web. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/ hi/technology/3641880.stm. 16 Dec. 2011. Bolter, Jay David, and Richard Grusin. 1999. Remediation: understanding new media. Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Boyd, Dana M., and Nicole B. Ellison. 2007. “Social network sites: definition, history and scholarship.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13 (1): article 11. 16 Dec. 2011. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/ doi/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00393.x/abstract. 20 May 2014. British Library. “Partners—Shakespeare in quarto.” Treasures in Full: Shakespeare in Quarto. 16 Dec. 2011. Web. http://www.bl.uk/treasures/ shakespeare/partners.html. 16 Dec. 2011. __________ “William Shakespeare in quarto: view 21 of Shakespeare’s plays online.” Treasures in Full: Shakespeare in Quarto. Home page. 16 Dec. 2011. Web. http://www.bl.uk/treasures/shakespeare/homepage. html. 16 Dec. 2011.

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Chwalewik, Witold. 1960. “Hamlet (Q.2) w Zbiorach Biblioteki Uniwersyteckiej we Wrocławiu [Hamlet (Q2) in the collections of the University Library at Wrocław],” Kwartalnik Neofilologiczny 7: 104. Crane, Gregory. 2010. “Give us editors! Re-inventing the edition and rethinking the humanities.” Connexions 14 May 2010. http://cnx.org/ content/m34316/1.2/. Web. 16 Dec. 2011. Cream, Randall et al. 4 Aug. 2010. “The Sapheos Project.” University of South Carolina Center for Digital Humanities and Department of Computer Science. Accessed 16 Dec. 2011. Egan, Gabriel, et al. 2008. “Shakespeare.” The Year’s Work in English Studies 87 (1): 336–506. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ywes/man016. 20 May 2014. Folger Shakespeare Library. Digital image collection. 16 Dec. 2011. Web. http:// www.folger.edu/Content/Collection/Digital-Image-Collection/. 16 Dec. 2011. Folger Shakespeare Library, Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (University of Maryland). 2009. Transatlantic digitization collaboration: Shakespeare Quartos Archive final report and white paper to the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Accessed 16 Dec. 2011. Folger Shakespeare Library, Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (University of Maryland), and University of Oxford. 2007. Shakespeare Quartos Archive: joint application to the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) Transatlantic Digitization Collaboration. 16 Dec. 2011. Web. http://www. neh.gov/grants/guidelines/pdf/JISC_NEH_Folger.pdf. 16 Dec. 2011. Geser, Guntram. 2002. “Case study: Octavo—bringing the capabilities of advanced digital media to rare books and manuscripts.” Digicult Thematic Issue 2: 27–32.   Glaister, Geoffrey Ashall. 1996. Encyclopedia of the Book. 2nd ed. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press. Irfanview. Home page. 16 Dec. 2011. Web. http://www.irfanview.com/. 16 Dec. 2011. Juxta: collation software for scholars. Home page. 16 Dec. 2011. Web. http:// www.juxtasoftware.org/. Dec. 2011.

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Kichuk, Diana. 2007. “Metamorphosis: remediation in Early English Books Online (EEBO).” Literary and Linguistic Computing 22 (3): 291–303. doi:10.1093/llc/fqm018. 2 Dec. 2010. Kuhn, Jim and Carter Hailey, workshop leaders. “The Shakespeare Quartos Archive.” Workshop presented at the Annual Meeting of the Shakespeare Association of America, Bellevue, WA, April 2011. Lindstrand, Gordon. 1971. “Mechanized textual collation and recent designs.” Studies in Bibliography 24: 204–14. 16 Dec. 2011. Web. http://www.jstor. org/stable/pdfplus/40371543.pdf. 16 Dec. 2011. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “The Shakespeare Electronic Archive.” MIT Shakespeare Project. 16 Dec. 2011. Web. http://shea.mit. edu/shakespeare/htdocs/main/index.htm.16 Dec. 2011. Mayfield, Kendra. “Out of print but into digital.” Wired. 3 May 2001. Web. http://archive.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2001/05/43330?curr entPage=all. 20 May 2014. McGann, Jerome. 2007. “Database, interface, and archival fever.” PMLA 122, no. 5 (10): 1588–92. http://www.mlajournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1632/ pmla.2007.122.5.1580. 20 May 2014. Metzger, Philip A. 1999. “Bibliographical mirrors.” Lehigh University Information Resources Special Collections Flyer no. 10. NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities). “JISC/NEH Transatlantic Digitization Grants.” 12 Jan. 2009. Web. Accessed 16 Dec. 2011. “Notes and comments: A new copy of Hamlet Q2.” 1960. Shakespeare Quarterly 11 (4): 497. 16 Dec. 2011. Web. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2867508. 16 Dec. 2011. Octavo Editions. Octavo Digital Rare Books. Home page. 16 Dec. 2011. Web. http://www.octavo.com/index.html. 16 Dec. 2011. __________ “The quartos of William Shakespeare.” Rare Book Room. 16 Dec. 2011. Web. http://www.rarebookroom.org/sindex.html. 16 Dec. 2011. OED Online. “Collate, v. ”. Oxford University Press. Dec. 2011. Web. http:// www.oed.com/viewdictionaryentry/Entry/36233. 16 Dec. 2011.

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Pitti, Daniel V. 2004. “Designing sustainable projects and publications.” In A Companion to Digital Humanities, eds. Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens, and John Unsworth, 473–87. Oxford: Blackwell. Price, Kenneth. 2010. “Civil War Washington, the Walt Whitman Archive, and Some Present Editorial Challenges and Future Possibilities.” Connexions. 14 May 2010. Web. http://cnx.org/content/m34306/1.2/. 16 Dec. 2011. Reside, Doug. “A four layer model for image-based editions.” TILE: Text-Image Linking Environment 3 Feb. 2010. Web. http://mith. umd.edu/tile/2010/02/03/a-four-layer-model-for-image-basededitions/. 20 May 2014. __________ “A technical framework for publishing electronic editions.” video podcast at HASTAC 2010: Grand Challenges and Global Innovations Conference 16 April 2010. Web. Accessed 16 Dec. 2011. __________ “Publishing stacks of images and text.” TILE: Text-Image Linking Environment 8 June 2010. Web. http://mith.umd.edu/tile/2010/06/08/ publishing-stacks-of-images-and-text/. 20 May 2014. Robinson, Peter M. W. 1994. “Collation, textual criticism, publication, and the computer.” Text 7: 77–94. 16 Dec. 2011. Web. http://www.jstor.org/ stable/pdfplus/30227694.pdf. 16 Dec. 2011. Schmidt, Desmond. 2010. “The inadequacy of embedded markup for cultural heritage.” Literary and Linguistic Computing 25, no. 3 (4): 337–56. 2 Dec. 2011. Web. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqq007. 20 May 2014. Shakespeare, William. 1992. The tragedy of Hamlet, prince of Denmark. Eds. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine. The New Folger Library Shakespeare. New York: Washington Square Press. __________ (1623) 1996. The First Folio of Shakespeare. Prepared by Charlton Hinman. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton. __________ 1996–2011. The new Cambridge Shakespeare: the early quartos. Series eds. Brian Gibbons and A.R. Braunmuller. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. __________ (1597, 1599) 2008. Romeo and Juliet: parallel texts of quarto 1 (1597) and quarto 2 (1599), ed. Jay L. Halio. Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press.

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__________ (1623) 2008. The tragedie of Romeo and Juliet: a facsimile from the first folio. London: Shakespeare’s Globe. Shakespeare Quartos Archive. Advisory forum 6 June 2008. 16 Dec. 2011. Web. http://quartos.org/info/files/SQAAdvisoryForum.pdf. 16 Dec. 2011. __________ Encoding documentation. 16 Dec. 2011. Web. http://quartos.org/ info/encoding.html. 16 Dec. 2011. __________ Home page. 16 Dec. 2011. Web. http://quartos.org/. 16 Dec. 2011. __________ Terms of use. 16 Dec. 2011. Web. http://quartos.org/info/ termsofuse.html. 16 Dec. 2011. Siefring, Judith, and Pip Willcox. 2012. “More than was dreamt of in our philosophy: encoding Hamlet for the Shakespeare Quartos Archive.” In Digitizing Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture, eds. Brent Nelson and Melissa Terras, 83–111. Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Smith, Steven Escar. 2000. “ ‘The eternal verities verified’: Charlton Hinman and the roots of mechanical collation.” Studies in Bibliography 53: 129– 61. 16 Dec. 2011. Web. http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/40372096. pdf. 16 Dec. 2011. __________ 2002. “ ‘Armadillos of invention’: a census of mechanical collators.” Studies in Bibliography 55: 133–70. 16 Dec. 2011. Web. http:// www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/40372237.pdf. 16 Dec. 2011. Stringer, Gary A., and William R. Vilberg. 1987. “The Donne Variorum Textual Collation Program.” Computers and the Humanities 21 (2): 83–89. 16 Dec. 2011. Web. http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/30200075.pdf. 16 Dec. 2011. TAPoR: text analysis portal for research. Home page. 16 Dec. 2011. Web. http:// portal.tapor.ca/portal/portal. 16 Dec. 2011. TEI (Text Encoding Initiative). TEI: P5 guidelines 1 Nov. 2007. Web. http:// www.tei-c.org/Guidelines/P5/. 16 Dec. 2011. Trettien, Whitney Anne. 2010. “Disciplining Digital Humanities, 2010: Shakespeare’s Staging, XMAS, Shakespeare Performance in Asia, Shakespeare Quartos Archive, and BardBox.” Shakespeare Quarterly

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61 (3): 391–400. 16 Dec. 2011. Web. doi:10.1353/shq.2010.0003. 16 Dec. 2011. University of Pennsylvania, Schoenberg Center for Electronic Text and Image. SCETI: Horace Howard Furness Shakespeare collection. Home page. 16 Dec. 2011. Web. http://sceti.library.upenn.edu/sceti/furness/ index.cfm. 16 Dec. 2011. University of Victoria. Internet Shakespeare editions. Home page. 16 Dec. 2011. Web. http://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/. 16 Dec. 2011. Waters, John. 1998. “A modern original.” Biblio 3 (12): 26–32. Wordle. Home page. 16 Dec. 2011. Web. http://www.wordle.net/. 16 Dec. 2011. Zalewski, Daniel. 1997. “Field notes: through the looking glass.” Lingua franca. June 1997. Web. http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/9706/ fieldnotes.html. 16 Dec. 2011.

Moving Early Modern Theatre Online: The Records of Early English Drama Introduces the Early Modern London Theatres Website Tanya Hagen Sally-Beth MacLean Records of Early English Drama University of Toronto [email protected]

Records of Early English Drama University of Toronto [email protected]

Michele Pasin

Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London [email protected]

The context The Records of Early English Drama project is an interdisciplinary research and editorial project based at the University of Toronto. REED was founded in 1976, its primary purpose being to find, transcribe, and edit for publication surviving records of drama, music, and popular mimetic entertainment before 1642, when the Puritans closed the public theatres in London. Thanks to the efforts of a dedicated staff and determined editors in Canada, the US, and the UK, the project is still going after all these years, a hardy veteran of collaborative humanities scholarship. The list of print publications now totals twenty-seven collections in thirty-three volumes, with a landmark collection for the Inns of Court published in 2011, the second of several for the historic city of London and its neighbouring counties. Our first steps to move REED online were taken over ten years ago, when dedicated funding made possible the development of our first research and educational web site, Patrons and Performances (http://link.library.utoronto. ca/reed/). The site results from a long-standing wish on the part of early theatre historians to trace the activities of professional performers of all kinds who toured to the towns, monasteries, and private residences of provincial England. Indeed, this wish was a major motive behind the founding of REED and the extension of its time frame beyond the suppression of biblical cycle drama in the 1570s into the early seventeenth century. © 2014 Iter Inc. and the Arizona Board of Regents for Arizona State University. All rights reserved ISBN 978-0-86698-516-1 (online) ISBN 978-0-86698-515-4 (print) New Technologies in Medieval and Renaissance Studies 4 (2014) 91–114

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Nine years into the life of the project, Toronto staff began systematically to assemble information about the patrons under whose names many of these performers traveled. Some of the questions that drove our research were: Who were they? When and where were they born, and where did they live? Who were their families, titles, connections, spheres of influence? Where did their entertainers travel and perform? How much did the performers earn and whom did they please or offend? Out of the need to organize and maintain this host of details, the REED Patrons database was born, primitively in Basic, then migrated into dBASE II and IV, and eventually into ACCESS. These programs were never user-friendly, and although we made diplomatic noises about opening the resource to other scholars if they visited the office, little use was actually made of the data in this form. In 1998 Sally-Beth MacLean and Alan Somerset envisioned a more accessible future for these REED data, as an adjunct to what most members of REED’s Executive Board viewed as the project’s core activities. So long as we did not encroach upon the actual—or even potential— funding sources for production of the print volumes, we could engage in our digital play. Grants from the University of Toronto, the University of Western Ontario, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada made possible the research and educational site that has been freely available on the web since 2003. Another significant gift-in-kind came with the offer of help from our now longstanding partner Sian Meikle, digital services librarian in the Information Technology Services wing of the University of Toronto Library. Her technical skills contributed to the transformation of our database entry process, expansion of our research possibilities, and migration of the data onto the web in the standard open-source relational database management platform, MySQL. Another key collaborator has been Byron Moldofsky, chief cartographer in the Department of Geography at the University of Toronto. The Geographic Information System (GIS) map of England and Wales on the web site resulting from this partnership demonstrates at a glance the many medieval and Renaissance performance locations identified by REED researchers, together with major routes they might have traveled and the rivers and other topographical features that could have influenced their choice of itinerary.1 Linked with the patrons, troupes, and performance events databases, it

1

The historical and cartographic sources of evidence researched by Sally-Beth MacLean for the Interactive Map are listed individually in the online bibliography.

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serves as a visual springboard for exploring performance venues and other locations associated with patrons’ office titles. A development team in Toronto led by Jason Boyd has uploaded all the data from volumes published before 2005, the year when patrons and performances data began to be made available on the web site simultaneously with the publication of each volume. Travel grants have also enabled an entirely new database packed with fresh architectural research and images of hitherto unacknowledged performance venues across the kingdom—what we call the alternative theatres of the provinces.2 Storage is in the hands of the University of Toronto Library, where the databases, middleware, and web site are maintained on a Library production server. REED has been assured of the Library’s long-term commitment to maintain, back up, and regularly upgrade software and hardware as appropriate, another crucial contribution to our digital projects. We are currently moving in deliberate steps towards revolutionizing our production and publication processes in order to deliver forthcoming collections as fully searchable, hypertextual editions. REED, having been a pioneer of complex publication in print, now aims to be a pioneer of complex publication on the web. The integration of born-digital REED collections with other online REED resources, both current and projected, will create a unique interdisciplinary research and educational resource. We have a credible calling card on the web with Patrons and Performances as described above, but the source line entries on the Events and Venues pages to REED volumes are merely interim, beckoning to future links with REED electronic texts. It has been clear for some time that the long-term future of the series must be on the web as well as in print. The cost of the volumes as set initially by the University of Toronto Press has proved too high for most individuals and for many libraries. As we develop research and educational tools to widen our audience and bring our discoveries to the attention of teachers, students, and the general public, we intend to make available the collections themselves as fully searchable digital editions. REED editions have always been interactive, but clumsily so in their print form. Anyone using the historical Records text presently has to remember to look to the bottom of the page for a textual or collation note; flip backward to the relevant source document description, or forward to 2

The Patrons and Performances Web Site development and design is more fully described in MacLean’s essay with Alan Somerset (2008).

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the translation, endnote, glossary entries, or index, sometimes in a separate volume. A digital format offers infinitely better possibilities for hyperlinks within each collection as well as subject searches across the series. Enhanced flexibility for the edited texts could enable, for example, the option of resorting records from their usual chronological organization into individual manuscript order or by institution. Dynamic mapping of the edited data will become feasible, connecting not only with individual county and city maps in each collection but also with the GIS map on the Patrons and Performances Web Site. Links with other open access websites can be projected: for example, the separate Names Index for members of the Inns of Court could be linked with the online Inner Temple Admissions Database (http://www.innertemple. org.uk/archive/itad/index.asp). Several years ago we welcomed a fleeting opportunity to have the first twenty-four volumes in the series scanned and uploaded on the Internet Archive web site (http://www.archive.org/). We were able to take this step only because in the mid-‘90s we negotiated with our publisher to retain our electronic rights to the volumes. At this time the pdf versions of provincial volumes from York (1979) through to Lincolnshire (2009) can be viewed online, but with only limited search capability. One of our immediate goals is to move toward print and web publication of forthcoming collections in the series, with Staffordshire as our pilot. As always, we are dependent on further funding both to maintain production but also to raise our processes to a new level. The first step has been taken. In 2007 Alan Nelson, editor of Inns of Court, was awarded an eighteen-month Digital Humanities Startup Grant from the National Endowment for Humanities to work with us in partnership with the Library and the electronic publications coordinator at the University of Toronto Press. As an outcome, we have pilot Inns of Court text files converted from REED’s standard editorial ASCII-coded markup into TEI-conformant XML populating the new SQL database designed to enable single-source editorial content for REED to generate two distinct products: prepress-ready text suitable for print publication and dynamic digital publication.3 The database is housed and maintained on a Library server. Next to come will be a generalized scholarly editing interface to implement the specific editorial and production practices of REED, ensuring continuity for the project and enabling new ways of working with

3

The deliverables can be downloaded from the REED project website (http://www. reed.utoronto.ca/downloads.html) and used under the conditions of a MIT license.

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the records. Full launch of the first online publication will require interface development, design, and testing, as well as editorial and scholarly review. The principal subject of this essay, however, is a second major research and educational database launched in its first phase in February 2011. In 2007, a research and development team based in England received an Arts and Humanities Research Council grant to fund record office research for primary documents relating to the eight Elizabethan and Jacobean theatres north of the Thames, and to create and design an annotated bibliographic database then known as the London Theatres Bibliography (LTB) for delivery on the web as an open access resource for wider public use.4 Michele Pasin, at the Department of Digital Humanities (formerly known as Centre for Computing in the Humanities), King’s College, London has brought his expertise to the technical aspects of our international partnership: for example, by migrating bibliographic data from Endnote into a newly designed database and building user-friendly interfaces to support editorial work. In Toronto REED’s bibliographer, Tanya Hagen, is leading the bibliographic research team on content development for the open access web resource now titled Early Modern London Theatres, . In the following sections we will give a more detailed description of both the intellectual and technical challenges this new digital humanities project has brought about.5

What is the Early Modern London Theatres? Early Modern London Theatres aspires to provide its users with a major encyclopedic resource on the early London stage, as well as a comprehensive historiographical survey of the field. In compiling EMLoT, we aim to identify, record, and assess transcriptions from primary-source materials relating to the early London stage, as found in secondary-source print and manuscript documents. Our main criterion in distinguishing between a primary- and secondary-source document is chronological: EMLoT’s purview stops with the REED volumes (and the closing of the theatres) at 1642. Under this rubric, a primary source is a document produced before 1642, and a secondary source is one produced after 1642. There are, of course, some exceptions here. We make allowances for works known to have existed in some form before 1642, but for which the earliest surviving witness is a post-1642 document. 4

The AHRC project was led by Professor John McGavin (University of Southampton), with co-investigator John Bradley (Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College, London), in partnership with Sally-Beth MacLean (REED, Toronto). 5 The order of authorship for the three sections of this essay is as follows: 1. Sally-Beth MacLean; 2. Tanya Hagen; 3. Michele Pasin.

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This applies primarily to play texts: many of Thomas Middleton’s and James Shirley’s works, for example, did not see publication for the first time until the 1650s. There are also a few instances in which later manuscript sources provide us with valuable contemporary evidence concerning the pre-1642 stage. A petition by Elizabeth Heton, William Wintersall, and Mary Young to the Earl of Dorset, filed c 1657–8, speaks of a lease entered into some thirty years ago with the Earl’s father for an old barn standing in Salisbury Court (Wickham, Ingram, and Berry 2007, 654). In such an instance, where the substance of the record clearly relates to an event that took place before 1642 (e.g., the construction of the Salisbury Court theatre) and provides evidence of major import to the history of the early London stage, we have chosen to relax our chronological parameters. Within the discrete groupings of pre-1642 primary- and post-1642 secondary-source documents, we maintain the broadest possible selection criteria. Any document, in manuscript or print, may qualify as a primary source, as long as it contains matter relating in some way to early London’s theatrical scene: court book, parish register, miscellany, religious polemic, broadside, jestbook, play text, title page. We also maintain a generous interpretation of relevant content. A document need not refer directly to a performance, venue, or person associated with the professional theatre to qualify for interest. Biographical records of family members of known theatre professionals found in parish registers, for example, may prove useful in building a demographic profile of London’s entertainment community. Land surveys and court records can supply valuable evidence regarding the sites on which theatres were constructed. Similarly, any document—manuscript or print, scholarly or popular—may qualify as a secondary source, as long as it supplies a fresh transcription from a relevant primary source. We are interested only in direct transcriptions: there must be evidence that the editor or author of the secondary source is a witness to the original document. We do not collect allusions, paraphrases, or quotations from earlier edited sources. Distinctions here may not always be obvious: a fresh transcription may have been modernized, while many sources will reprint documents in old spelling from earlier editions. Recent scholarly works, accompanied by a standard apparatus of notes, present the fewest problems here. Earlier and popular works can be more challenging: editors and authors working before the professionalization—or beyond the parameters—of the academy are less consistent or reliable in identifying the source of transcribed material. Printed primary sources tend to generate the most problems, as editors and authors generally are less rigorous in handling

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such material: it is frequently unclear whether a transcription derives from an original, a facsimile, or an edited copy. Our policy on material of uncertain provenance has been to err on the side of inclusiveness, identify records based on questionable transcriptions as such, and cull only when we have established a solid case for exclusion. Coupled with a broad mandate on source material, our interest in ephemeral and obscure authorities will, we believe, distinguish EMLoT as a particularly original resource. Two classes of material are noteworthy in this respect: (1) late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century published works either largely unknown outside the realm of eighteenth-century literary and historical studies, or no longer consulted as authorities, and (2) the unpublished papers and research of noted theatre historians. Under the first class of material, Sir William Sanderson’s A Compleat History of the Lives and Reigns of Mary Queen of Scotland &c (1656) provides our earliest record from a non-dramatic secondary source: a transcription of an unidentified document that records the cost of the “Lord’s Mask” at the marriage of Princess Elizabeth. James Wright’s pro-theatrical polemic Historia Histrionica (1698) cites voluminously from John Stow’s Annals in support of the ancient and royally sanctioned tradition of theatre in England, while Luigi Riccoboni’s almost completely unknown An Historical and Critical Account of the Theatres in Europe (1741) transcribes a passage from James I’s 1603 license to the King’s Men. In extending the purview of EMLoT to the unpublished papers of noted theatre historians, we seek not only to complement our survey of printed secondary works, but also potentially to uncover new or unique material, either previously unpublished or taken from lost originals. To date, we have conducted preliminary surveys of the Edmond Malone and Francis Douce collections at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and the Charles William Wallace collection at the Huntington Library, San Marino, California.6 This research is to be reviewed and integrated into EMLoT over the course of the next year. All forms of transcription are therefore worthy of note: not only those faithful in every respect to the original, but also the excerpted, emended, and otherwise adulterated. We may thus consider not only the frequency with which a primary-source document has been published, but also its various 6

We owe thanks to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada’s International Opportunities Fund for the grant enabling us to conduct this research.

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treatments over time and at the hands of different editors. Which documents tend to be preserved whole, and which heavily excerpted; which preserved in facsimile, and which modernized? In constructing (what we believe is) an unprecedentedly detailed account of the extant archive, we hope also to stimulate further discussion on the meta-history of that archive. What may the handling of primary-source materials at various periods and from different cultures tell us about changing attitudes toward, or investments in, the phenomenon of “Shakespeare’s stage”? Properly speaking, of course, neither primary- nor secondary-source document is useful to us per se. The crux of our interest, rather, is in the relationship between a primary (transcribed) and a secondary (transcribing) document. The job of compiling EMLoT is to describe that relationship within the parameters of an established template. In the first stage of EMLoT creation and development, we identified several thousand such unique relationships. Our current task, effectively, is to fill in the blanks. As EMLoT has moved from a flat-face database to an electronic platform, these blanks have multiplied and grown in complexity. An EMLoT record properly comprises a number of interlinked files. We begin with the “record” file, which yokes together a primary- and secondary-source document and provides data concerning their relationship: the location of the transcription within the secondary document; citation data for the primary document (as provided by the secondary source); brief notes on the treatment of the primary by the secondary source. In anticipation of a later phase in the process, we have also delimited fields which allow the compiler to enter corrected citation data for the primary source; to link the record to a published REED transcription, and to furnish a unique EMLoT transcription (where a REED transcription is not available). The “record” file links to three further files: two “document” files—one each for, respectively, the primary and secondary sources—and an “events” file. “Document” files are effectively bibliographical templates and are generic in that they do not furnish data necessary to establish a relationship between transcribed and transcribing documents. A single “document” file may in this respect link to several hundred records, depending on the number of transcription relationships in which it is involved. It is in the triangulation of record and document files that EMLoT serves both its primary function as a bibliographic resource and an ancillary historiographical interest.

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EMLoT becomes an encyclopedic research tool in the form of the “events” file, as it is in this context that we record details of a transcription’s contents. A summary furnishes a short-title, an “event type” field allows us to build a keyword profile, and an abstract provides a narrative description of the event. Date fields allow us to discriminate between and specify the dates on which an event happened and was recorded, as well as to identify a relevant feast. Association fields note the people, venues and troupes involved in a given event. Each of the three types of association field is served by an underlying cache of “people,” “venue,” and “troupe” files. As in the case of the “document” files, a single “events” file may link to several records, depending on the number of transcriptions identified from the same document. EMLoT distinguishes itself from other REED resources insofar as it does not itself provide fresh transcriptions from archival sources; its purview does not extend beyond London; and, because EMLoT deals in material associated with purpose-built spaces and professional theatrics, its chronological focus is primarily sixteenth- and seventeenth-century. Rather than serve as a bibliographical adjunct to REED’s projected London volumes, EMLoT is intended to take its place alongside other electronic REED publications as a discrete, but fully interoperable, resource. Above, we touch on the architecture already in place to link EMLoT “record” files to eREED volumes; at present, EMLoT “people” files also link to the Patrons and Performances Web Site through a “patrons” field. Now that the groundwork of EMLoT is complete, we look forward to establishing a more complex system of pathways to connect EMLoT to other REED Online resources. A current priority, for example, is to link EMLoT to Patrons and Performances “events” files. As the programmer initially responsible for developing EMLoT’s online architecture, Michele Pasin will address below the greater challenge of making REED’s electronic resources talk to each other.

EMLoT: towards an interoperable humanistic database At King’s College Department of Digital Humanities we have been involved in the construction of digital scholarly resources for a number of years now. But despite the considerable in-house expertise available, the prospect of building a “London Theatres Bibliography” initially caused a mixture of excitement and apprehension. The strong focus on representing the transmission history of the relevant literature, coupled with the goal of storing a large number of facts related to the people, events, and venues in Shakespeare’s London, seemed quite a challenging project to undertake—probably even

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more challenging, when considering the already established Patrons and Performances Web Site mentioned above. In fact, although the Patrons and Performances has quite a different take on the subject, nonetheless it stands on the horizon of EMLoT development as a reference point that needs to be built upon and linked to. In other words, we soon envisioned a number of usage scenarios requiring a unique access point to the two resources, i.e., a way to query the two databases that relies on their various possible existing points of intersection (e.g., patrons or theatres). In the following paragraphs we discuss the approaches taken in order to address the specific requirements posed by this novel context. We summarize what technologies have been used and what steps have been taken with the aim of creating a freely available web database. In particular, we will focus on the conceptual aspects entailed by the construction of a database for the EMLoT world, as we believe this is the key aspect to take into consideration in order to move towards a more interoperable web of data. As we will see, this approach is inspired by the discipline of ontological engineering, a recent research area in computer science that reuses ideas and methods from philosophical ontology with the aim of building more solid computational data models. From Endnote to MySQL: Approach, advantages, technologies used In September 2008 EMLoT database was only starting to take shape. A lot of research material had already been collected by Tanya Hagen in the form of a very large Endnote library, but soon this type of medium presented several limitations, mainly deriving from the lack of collaborative editing functionalities and the poorly customizable interface. Consequently the first phase of EMLoT involved extracting of such data from Endnote (http://www.endnote.com) and copying it to a MySQL (http://www.mysql. com) database. In order to understand better why we needed to transform the original Endnote library into a different format, it is useful to take one step back and ask ourselves; why did EMLoT material need a database at all? Generally speaking, the most important advantage of databases is that they allow us to search for information more easily and efficiently. This is possible because in a database the entities comprising a specific domain have been carefully identified and separated. Another advantage of having all of this data stored in a database is that we can visualize it in different ways, in different mediums, and by different people at the same time.

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We can define a database as a structured collection of records or data that is stored in a computer system. The structure is achieved by organizing the data according to a database model. The model in most common use today is the relational model (RM). As we can see in Figure 1, the most important feature of the RM is that tables are connected to each other according to specific relations. These relations usually represent real-world relations: for example the “document” table has a relation “authorship” which points at the “person” table. So, in other words, the key feature of a database is that data get “broken down,” so to say, into smaller units. They are grouped according to certain properties we see in them, and we call each one of these groups a “table”. A database is therefore essentially a collection of such tables.

Figure 1. Graphical representation of EMLoT relational model If we take a closer look at the contents of the “theatres” table (Figure 2) we can see that it is composed of a number of records (the rows) and fields (the columns). Each record is representative of an instance of the data-type (entity) we are addressing; instead, a field is representative of one property of that instance. For example, we can see that this table groups data about a

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theatre’s name, a description we can give it, its location, and other metainformation which is not related to the theatre itself but to our action of creating a record. We can now understand why the data stored in an Endnote library were not sufficient for our purposes: we could say that an Endnote library consists of only one table, containing all the fields related to the EMLoT domain. Essentially, what we had to do was to decide how to group these fields in order to create multiple tables (and obviously also a set of relations connecting them all). Now, the interesting question is: how can this be done effectively? Probably one of the most sensible answers is, in a way that resembles the world we are describing.

Let us keep in mind that EMLoT deals with records of theatrical events in post-1642 transcriptions of pre-1642 sources. Thus, as previously mentioned, a key requirement was to represent the transmission history of various kinds of documents. Accordingly, EMLoT bibliographer Tanya Hagen and database designer Michele Pasin had a number of discussion sessions in which they attempted to make explicit the various “features” of the documents we were going to describe (e.g., material properties, publication details, etc). Also, they investigated the extent to which a description of theatrical events was needed in the database, and which are the main “entities” that usually appear in the context of such events (e.g., people, venues, or locations). This process resulted in an initial domain model whose main structure is depicted in Figure 2. Notice how we have three different “poles” that are “orbiting” around the record entity at the bottom right of the figure. Essentially, a record is an abstract entity representing the process by which an EMLoT researcher makes a claim about the connection between two documents, i.e., when we say that “manuscript document X” has been transcribed in “printed document Y.” The logical separation between “record” and “document” reflects the fact that the same document could have been transcribed many times, in different contexts and with different “styles”

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(or errors). This conceptual model thus avoids unnecessary duplication of information. Let us now have a look at each one of the “poles” depicted in Figure 2 below: 1. The source pole represents all the document-types EMLoT deals with; in general, sources’ instances can be transcriptions or originals and are attached to records by means of the is-about-source relation. 2. The person pole gathers the concepts needed for describing a document’s authors and editors, but not only: in fact because we are keeping track of the contents of documents as well, very often it is necessary to store information about laymen, players, and, more generally, people who lived in the period EMLoT is investigating. Thus the person section also contains “historical individual.” 3. The event pole groups the concepts used for describing happenings of various sorts, but mostly performance events. These are the events our sources describe. It is remarkable how difficult the “extrapolation” of event-information from literary texts can be, as the definition and granularity of an “event” cannot be easily agreed upon. In practice, such decisions are made case by case by the editorial team, paying attention to maintaining a consistent approach throughout the entire database (it is worth noting that we have created mechanisms by which an editor can specifically say that some piece of information is the result of his or her interpretation). Finally, the event pole contains also other entities that are less subject to interpretations: companies or troupes (the “Admiral’s Men”), places (“Drury Lane”), and venues (“Clement’s Inn”).

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Figure 2. First sketch of a data model for EMLoT application

Figure 3. Detailed field descriptors for the “document” entities

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The conceptual model depicted in Figure 2 obviously represents only the main logical structure of the EMLoT world. In order to gain more insight into each of the entities introduced above we performed various other evaluations of the Endnote library data; as a result, we obtained a number of much more fine-grained descriptors such as the ones shown in Figure 3.7 After the conceptual model had reached an adequate degree of stability, we moved on to the implementation work. This involved three different phases: 1. We created a new MySQL database structure based on the EMLoT conceptual model. 2. We exported the original Endnote library into the newly created database. Endnote provides a handy “export to XML” functionality, so first we transformed the library to that format for easier processing. Subsequently we wrote a Python (http://www.python. org) script to “explode” that information into our newly-created database. This process was not particularly difficult from the purely technical point of view, but we had to work out a number of strategies for spotting identity relations in the XML document. For example, since the Endnote library consisted of only one big table, two documents having the same author exhibit that by having the same person’s name in the author column. Instead, in the database representation we would have two references in the document table that point at the same record in the person table. The main problem here was that Endnote’s fields contained various spelling errors or differences that required ad hoc algorithms (e.g., for determining that two author names were effectively referring to the same person, even if they were spelled differently). 3. Once the database contents were in place, we created a web application that allows its visualization and editing. To this aim, we used the freely available Django (http://www.djangoproject.com) framework, a python-based environment that aims at speeding up the development of websites by providing a number of reusable application components. The web application (Figure 4) let the EMLoT team check the data imported from Endnote, refine them, and start 7

An extensive outline of these descriptors will be made available in a separate publication.

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adding new ones. After an initial period of testing and familiarizing themselves with the new environment, Tanya Hagen and the other editors stopped using Endnote and continued working with this new system. At the time of writing, the administrative side of the web application consists of more than twenty views addressing the management of the different aspects of the database. It is important to underline that the process of creating a web database is normally a result of a series of iterations in which new features are added and others are removed, both at the database level and at the interface one. EMLoT was no exception in this respect, so the outline above must be understood as a simplified version of what happened in reality (in particular, see the next section for an example of the refinements we carried out on the initial conceptual model). Finally, we should mention that what is discussed in this article reflects mainly the first phase of the project, that is, the one involving data capture and representation; a second and equally fundamental phase had to do with the design and construction of adequate presentation mechanisms for the data we collected. A thorough description of all of these aspects would have exceeded the scope of the present discussion. However, let us briefly mention that the EMLoT website features both traditional keyword-based search mechanisms and more advanced browsing tools; in particular, a purposely created “faceted search” component (Tvarožek and Bieliková 2007) allows users to explore the database contents using a highly interactive user interface. To the purpose of gaining more empirical evidence on the effectiveness of these search tools, we are currently running a user-evaluation study of EMLoT at King’s College, London. The results of this experiment, together with a detailed description of the work done on the front-end interface, will be made available subsequently in a separate publication. For the moment, it is possible to see all of the front-end functionalities in action on the EMLoT website , which was launched in February 2011.

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Figure 4. EMLoT administrative web application for the “record” entity Designing a data model: A broader perspective To sum up what has been said: when designing a data model the first crucial thing we need to observe is, clearly, what we want to represent. Secondly, a major constraint is given by the specific medium we are using to store our data. We have seen that in order to take advantage of the characteristics of a relational database, data must be organized into tables that are related to each other (furthermore, even if we haven’t discussed this aspect, we must remember that often data get organized in a specific manner because of performance issues). Finally, there’s a third principle playing an increasingly important role in the modeling of data: the problem of interoperability. With this notion we refer to the fact that, ideally, we would like to be able to integrate other people’s databases with the least effort, and similarly, we would like other people or institutions to be able to reuse our research results. This interoperability problem is quickly gaining importance because of a recent phenomenon that is happening on the web. If we look at the evolution of the Internet, it is easy to realize that if at the beginning the web was conceived mostly for human usage and consumption, now the scenario is

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quite different. This is due to a number of factors, including the increase of computing power, the availability of cheaper and larger storage devices, and last but not least, the constant growing number of internet users. As a result, more and more structured data sources (like databases or XML files) are being made available online, and, consequently, we are now facing an emerging web of shared data that is much too vast only for people to make sense of. Connecting the dots of this enlarged network requires more sophisticated approaches than the current ones, since such new approaches must enable a “deeper” interlinking of related resources. These recent developments of the web are happening in various forms, which we will not discuss here,8 but the key aspect is that computer programs can orchestrate such sources of structured data very efficiently. For example, consider this type of scenario: a student, after finding out about a theatrical company through EMLoT, wants to search the REED collections for other materials about this company, and see these results displayed within EMLoT. Or maybe our student would like to seek more information about the patrons associated with this company by querying the Patrons and Performances website. However, this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are many other data sources out there, providing, for example, relevant information that focuses on the more geographical, historical or artistic sides of the subject we are investigating. These “lateral steps” are in principle doable right now, but they require a lot of copying and pasting, changing sites, and performing different searches which might just make us lose track of the context from which we departed. So, the key issue here is how to connect these resources at a “deep” level, so as to allow a more seamless integration. If each one of them has been created using a different but overlapping data model, how can we guarantee that we can make the resources “talk” to each other? The ontological approach to data modeling Clearly the interoperability problem is equally as important as it is difficult to solve. What we want to highlight here is an approach that will not solve the problem by itself but that can help us in organizing our data so that interoperability is facilitated. This is called the ontological approach to modeling, and in general it can be seen as a useful best practice for modeling data that can be “consumed” not just by our application but also by others, thanks to the infrastructure provided by the web. 8

For an introduction see Berners-Lee et al. 1999; Bizer et al. 2009.

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This approach comes from the discipline of ontology engineering (Mizoguchi 2003; Schreiber 2007), a research area in artificial intelligence that devised a way to employ a rich body of theory from philosophical ontology to the purpose of making conceptual distinctions in a systematic and coherent manner. Ontology engineering is concerned with making representational choices that capture the relevant distinctions of a domain at the highest level of abstraction while still being as clear as possible about the meanings of terms. The term “ontology” is borrowed from philosophy, where ontology is a systematic account of existence. In computer systems, what “exists” is exactly that which can be represented. In order to give the reader a short introduction to this approach in the following sections we describe one of its fundamental principles, and then explain how it has been applied to the context of EMLoT.9 The principle can be summarized as follows: we must determine an essential property for each concept and instance in the model, and make sure that this property is correctly inherited in our hierarchies. The notion of inheritance here has a technical meaning: it refers to the fact that in a given hierarchy, if a super-class (e.g., “animal”) has a property (e.g., “is mortal”), then all of its sub-classes (e.g., “human”) must have that property too. Furthermore, in ontology we say that a property of an entity is not essential if it just happens to be true of it, accidentally, for all time. For example, for a sponge “being hard” is not an essential property, although some sponges can be hard. Instead, for a hammer, “being hard” is essential as we cannot think of a hammer that is not hard. So, if we have a hierarchy of concepts in the model, the principle tells us that we must make sure that this essential property is inherited; otherwise our model is likely to generate inconsistencies. In what follows the same principle is used to clarify the relationship between the concept of “human” and “teacher”: Let us take the common example: . Assume John is a teacher of a School. Given the usual semantics of is-a, since John is an instance of teacher then he is also an instance of human at the same time. When he quits being a teacher, he cannot be an instance of teacher so that you need to delete the instanceof link between John and teacher. However, you have to restore an instance-of link between John and human, otherwise John dies. If we are only interested in property inheritance between human and teacher, the relation seems to be valid because 9

For a more comprehensive description see, for example, Guarino and Welty 2002.

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any teacher is a human in any case. However, if we think of essential property and/or identity criterion of classes, then we can understand the relation is inappropriate and would cause such a problem. (Mizoguchi et al. 2007) This example applies quite well to our initial EMLoT model: we do not have “teachers” in our domain, but we have “authors,” “editors,” and “historical individuals” whose essential property is different from the one of “person.” This can be easily motivated by the fact that an “author” doesn’t cease to be a “person” when she decides to change her career. Nonetheless, we modeled “authors” as sub-concepts of “person.” It is important to highlight that our approach may work in the restricted context of EMLoT—mainly because our database (at this stage) does not contain information about people who start and stop being authors—in other words, that is because we do not have to cope with alternative possible states of reality. However, when integrating our database with others we might have to represent this information too. So a more solid way to organize the “person” concept would be needed. This can be achieved by adding a “role” concept that lets our person-instances be authors, editors, or anything else without generating any contradiction (see Figure 5).

Figure 5. Applying the identity principle to the EMLoT model In conclusion, the ontological approach provides us with a way to create conceptual models that, being deeply rooted in the “shape” of reality itself, are much more solid. This is especially useful when we face the task of putting

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together (i.e., integrating) multiple overlapping views of the same reality (i.e., databases). Figure 6 shows a better version of the EMLoT data model, which has been created by applying the ontological approach more extensively. Notice that also the “source” concept hierarchy has been improved: in this case, by applying the “identity principle” we got rid of the “original” and “transcription” concepts and transformed them into relations employed by the “record” concept when referencing sources.

Figure 6. A better model for EMLoT in the light of the ontological approach

Conclusions and future work In this essay we introduced the context and purpose of the Early Modern London Theatres project by situating it within the pluri-decennial research activities of the Record of Early English Drama project. In particular, we discussed in detail the approach used in creating the database and the type of information that it contains. We highlighted the fact that EMLoT stands out among other related resources because it addresses simultaneously two research needs. First, it is an extensive bibliography, insofar as it aims to identify, record, and assess transcriptions from primary source materials relating to the early London stage, as found in secondary source print and manuscript documents. Second, it provides a comprehensive historiographical survey of

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the field, as it stores information about the people, places, and happenings that emerge from reading the aforementioned transcriptions. For these reasons we expect that the EMLoT web application will meet the needs of a variety of scholars, and stimulate the interest of many nonspecialists too. In order to support further the latter type of audience we also made available a “learning area” section (http://www.emlot.kcl.ac.uk/ learning-zone) that compensates for the highly specialized character of much of the information in the database with more gentle introductions to the field, video lectures, and other learning materials created by our team of experts.10 In general, it is fair to say that the database modeling approaches described in this article were successful in representing the meaning of the information we are considering with a high degree of accuracy and precision. Nonetheless, due to the necessarily circumscribed context of this resource and the practical purpose of the project, in some cases the transformation of real-world descriptions of (aspects of) theatre history into more formal computer representations forced us to adopt “workarounds”; that is, to opt for suboptimal modeling solutions that can act as “working approximations” of particularly complex aspects of the portion of reality we are examining (for example, the fact that writers or actors, within the EMLoT data model, would be better represented not as types of people, but as roles that people can play within specific contexts, cf. section 3.2). This kind of simplification is not unusual for digital resources creators, especially in cases where, like EMLoT, the nature of the domain being represented is particularly intricate and semantically rich. To the purpose of providing a more generic and comprehensive formal representation of the “world” emerging from the EMLoT project, we have started working on the expansion and refinement of the database model here presented so that it becomes a full-fledged formal ontology. In particular, we argued that this type of activity is of primary importance if we decide to consider our database work within a broader context, that is, the context emerging from the fact that more and more databases similar or tangential in scope to EMLoT are being made available online. This scenario, often referred to in the use of terms such as semantic web or web of data, calls for an infrastructure that supports an increased level of interoperability between databases. For example, in a fully developed web of data we could easily query different 10

We were fortunate to have received a 2010 SSHRC Public Outreach grant to enable the development of the Learning Zone feature.

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repositories by using a common interface, and then republish these results elsewhere so that other people can use it. We have introduced the ontological approach to conceptual modeling, a technique that supports the creation of more solid conceptual models, and shown how such an approach can be applied in EMLoT context for the purpose of facilitating any future data integration task. We are currently finalizing the first version of an ontology that models all the major entities in the theatre history domain, so that separate digital resources, such as EMLoT and the various other REED online materials, can be accessed simultaneously. These results will be made available in a separate publication later. In the meanwhile, it is our hope that this publication will contribute to raising the awareness of the importance of such topics for the purpose of creating a “digital ecosystem” of online resources centered on theatrical studies; we therefore invite other digital humanists to get in touch with us for the purpose of creating a special interest group.

WORKS CITED Berners-Lee, Tim, M. Fischetti, and T.M. Dertouzos. 1999. Weaving the web: the original design and ultimate destiny of the world wide web by its inventor. San Francisco: Harper. Bizer, Christian, Tom Heath, and Tim Berners-Lee. 2009. “Linked data— the story so far.” International journal on semantic web and information systems—special issue on linked data: 1–22. Guarino, N., and C. Welty. 2002. “Evaluating ontological decisions with ontoclean,” Communications of the ACM 45.2: 61–65. MacLean, Sally-Beth, and J.A.B. Somerset. 2008. “Performers on the road: Tracking their tours with the REED Patrons and Performances web site.” In New technologies in the Renaissance, ed. William R. Bowen and Raymond G. Siemens, 39–51. Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 324. Tempe, Arizona: Iter Inc./ACMRS. Mizoguchi, Riichiro. 2003. “Tutorial on ontological engineering—Part 1: Introduction to ontological engineering.” New generation computing 21.4: 365–84.

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__________, E. Sunagawa et al. 2007. “A model of roles within an ontology development tool: Hozo.” Journal of applied ontology 2.2: 159–79. Schreiber, Guus. 2007. “Knowledge engineering.” In Handbook of knowledge representation, eds. Frank van Harmelen et al., 929–46. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science. Tvarožek, M. and M. Bieliková. 2007. “Personalized faceted browsing for digital libraries.” In Research and advanced technology for digital libraries, eds. László Kovács, Norbert Fuhr and Carlo Meghini, 485–88. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 4675. Berlin / Heidelberg: Springer. Wickham, Glynne, William Ingram, and Herbert Berry, eds. 2000. English professional theatre, 1530–1660. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sandrart.net: An Online Edition of a Seventeenth-Century Text1 Anna Schreurs

University of Freiburg im Breisgau [email protected]

Carsten Blüm

Hamburg, Germany [email protected]

Thorsten Wübbena

Kunstgeschichtliches Institut of the Goethe University Frankfurt [email protected] This essay presents a project that has been set up for a period of five years on the initiative of the Institute of Art History in Frankfurt and the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, in cooperation with partner institutions, including the Städel Museum and the Historical Museum in Frankfurt, and financed jointly by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) and the Max-Planck-Society. The aim of the project is a critical online edition of Joachim von Sandrart’s “Teutsche Academie der Edlen Bau-, Bild und Mahlerey-Künste” (German Academy of the Noble Arts of Architecture, Sculpture and Painting), published in Nuremberg between 1675 and 1680, a principal early modern source on art. The edition has been available online since July 2008 at http:// ta.sandrart.net. It will be regularly updated and expanded until the project’s completion date of March 2012. The German painter and art writer Joachim von Sandrart (1606–1688), who had a truly European career, is the focus of the project (Figure 1). The “Teutsche Academie” (Figure 2) is the foundation for building an international research platform for art and cultural history of the seventeenth century. Our guiding principle during both developmental and live phases of the edition is to develop pioneering ways of employing the possibilities of the 1

This text is loosely based on a presentation at the RSA meeting in Los Angeles in March 2009. We would like to thank Susanne Meurer for her help with the English translation. © 2014 Iter Inc. and the Arizona Board of Regents for Arizona State University. All rights reserved ISBN 978-0-86698-516-1 (online) ISBN 978-0-86698-515-4 (print) New Technologies in Medieval and Renaissance Studies 4 (2014) 115–147

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internet in a critical and selective manner appropriate to the needs of the reader faced with such an opulent baroque source text. Before the individual components of the new edition on the Internet are explained below, we should introduce the protagonists—the author and his text. Sandrart’s lavishly illustrated publications rank among the most important source texts of the early modern period. Over the centuries, they were studied by artists and scholars throughout Europe. His writings cover a wide spectrum of topics, from theoretical chapters on architecture, sculpture, and painting, through the lives of ancient and modern artists and descriptions of contemporaneous art collections, up to iconographic writings, including translations of Karel van Mander­’s Ovid paraphrase, “P. Ovidii Nas. metamorphosis oder des verblümten Sinns der Ovidianischen Wandlungs-Gedichte gründliche Auslegung,” published in 1679 (“Ovid’s Metamorphosis, or an in-depth interpretation of the allusive meaning of the Ovidian transformation poems”)—and of Vincenzo Cartari’s “Imagini de i Dei de gli antichi”: “Iconologia deorum, oder Abbildung der Götter, welche von den Alten verehret worden” (“Iconologia deorum, or figures of the gods honored by ancient peoples”), published in 1680. The publication of the “Teutsche Academie” and Sandrart’s involvement in the founding of the academies in Augsburg and Nuremberg allowed Germany, a country then still recovering from the aftermath of the Thirty Years’ War, to follow in the footsteps of its neighbors Italy and France, where academic training and other changes in art education had already taken a firm hold. Copies after engravings from the books show that the pictures were used until the nineteenth century in the academic education of artists. Two drawings after the portrait of the Dutch painter Jan van Eyck on a plate from the “Teutsche Academie” (Figures 3a–c)2 attest to this, as do drawings after illustrations, such as the lion, which alludes to the famous art-theoretical dictum “Ex ungue leonem” (Figures 4 a/b)3 and the portrayal of a group of 2

The drawing in the Stuttgart print room (sanguine, 15.1 x 13.9 cm, cf. Kaulbach 2007, 250, no. 498) closely copies the engraving that is enclosed in a medallion and bears an inscription. By contrast, the draughtsman of the sheet formerly in the Galerie Bassenge (sanguine, 18.4 x 15.5 cm, cf. auction catalog from Galerie Bassenge 2010, lot 6217) exchanged the palette for an opened book and thus transformed the artist into a severe-looking scholar. For the engraving, cf. http://ta.sandrart.net/aw/1569. 3 Sanguine and charcoal, 10.8 x 20.3 cm, cf. Kaulbach 2007, 251, no. 499. For the engraving, cf. http://ta.sandrart.net/aw/1118.

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sphinxes: the mythical creatures are crowned by a Baroque motto in the book,4 but the copy of the drawing seems rather like a view of a collection of statues (Figures 5a/b).5 Research to date has focused mainly on the biographies written by Sandrart about his contemporaries. He included first-hand observations and experiences in his descriptions of the Baroque artists Nicolas Poussin, Claude Lorrain, Peter Paul Rubens, François Duquesnoy, and Adam Elsheimer. Equally notable are the passages on early German masters, where Sandrart was the first to publish manuscript material on and written by Dürer or frequently, as in the case of Grünewald, recorded fading oral traditions.6 Examinations of Sandrart’s polyhistorical approaches are a recent addition to Sandrart scholarship. Besides the biographies, he was above all interested in the studies and collections of the ancient world of his day,7 but he also included aspects of natural history in the texts.8 Born in 1606 as the son of Dutch emigrants in Frankfurt, Sandrart’s life took him to the art metropolises of Europe (Prague, Utrecht, London, Venice, Rome, Amsterdam, Munich, Augsburg and Nuremberg) and, as a whole, turned the “Teutsche Academie,” with its first-hand reports on artists, artworks and collections as well as its extensive compilations on the ancient spheres of knowledge, into a work of European dimensions. The diversity of the painter’s contacts with artists, art lovers, collectors, clients, poets, and scholars, including the German Jesuit Athanasius Kircher and the Italian mathematician Galileo Galilei is reflected in the subject areas within art and cultural history of the seventeenth century for which Sandrart’s publication represents an essential source. These areas include art and sponsors in periods of confessionalization; art in times of war and peace; theoretical art terms and changes in their meaning in European art literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; antiquarianism before Winckelmann; Neostoicism and the intellectual escape from religious disputes; literary societies and the 4

“The wondrous sphinx captured much prey / Through deceit and cruelty, she stifled many a man: / He who loves human discretion and fosters an animal’s strength, / shall not be perturbed by adversity or an enemy’s deceit.”; TA 1675, II, Book 3 (Dutch and German artists), 252; http://ta.sandrart.net/472 [June 17, 2010]. 5 Sanguine and charcoal, 8.9 x 22.3 cm, cf. Kaulbach 2007, 251, no. 500. For the engraving, cf. http://ta.sandrart.net/aw/4791. 6 Cf. Susanne Meurer, “Who invented Grünewald,” in preparation. 7 Cf. the chapter on “Die Antike als europäisches Fundament,” in Schreurs 2010. 8 Cf. Schreurs 2009, 133–48.

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idea of a German nation based on a European cultural transfer; and the history of collecting and the art market in seventeenth-century Europe. Consequently, we can divide the objectives or requirements that were set for the technical implementation of the Sandrart.net project into three main groups: 1. On the one hand, the entire text was to be made available online and accessible for searches for people and places, works of art, and publications. The works of art mentioned and in some cases extensively described in the text were to receive a database entry and a picture. In addition, it was planned from the start to successively add translations of the text into Italian, French, and English. The modular structure of the research platform is intended to allow the addition of new translations at any time, even of small sections of text. 2. By creating databases containing all people, places, publications, and works of art mentioned and by creating mutual links between the text and these objects, as well as among the objects, the edition should reflect not only Sandrart’s personal network, but also the interdisciplinary aspects pertaining to his “Teutsche Academie.” This should allow search queries to produce new insights by means of the visualization of collection contexts, constellations of people, and the reception of works of art (both modern and ancient). 3. With the help of a network of scholars from relevant subject areas, the text is to be augmented with scholarly annotations that go beyond the information provided by the project team. It should also be possible to add longer texts (articles or brief research papers).

Introduction to the technology The starting point of the entire project was photographs of all of the approximately 1,600 pages that comprise the three volumes of the “Teutsche Academie.” These photographs were made available by the Städel Museum, Frankfurt, which holds the copy that represented the basis for the online project. About 300 of these pages are full-page engravings while the remaining pages contain text—a total of about 6.5 million characters or 950,000 words.

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For the transfer of the image data to text, the use of OCR was not a realistic option at the relevant point in time (May 2007). 9 The predominant usage of Gothic script made for a difficult starting point, as it cannot be readily processed with OCR software. Moreover, the text also contains Roman type, switching between the two types sometimes even within a single word. German orthography, which was not consistent in the seventeenth century, and the fact that some of the OCR products on the market can only align the recognized texts with word lists from the nineteenth century, were additional obstacles. Further difficulties were caused by irregular spacing between words and the use of abbreviations and other typographical characteristics. Furthermore, the “Teutsche Academie” contains text in eleven languages—including some unidentifiable hybrid forms of old languages. As a consequence, we decided to use manual transcription on the basis of guidelines developed by us. In this way, issues regarding details such as the entry of text from marginalia can be defined more precisely than we could have controlled with OCR software. The results of the transcription justified the decision in favor of manual transcription. The text contained few errors and formed a very good basis for the subsequent tasks. These tasks were initially very text-oriented (such as corrections and the addition of structure information), but as the project progressed, they shifted towards working with databases (which are described in more detail later). Step by step this resulted in a more distinct development of the hybrid character of the edition, that is, as a project that is based on a text on the one hand and depends on this text, but also relies heavily on “conventional” work with relational databases to enrich and aggregate the material. Before continuing with more detailed descriptions of the technology and procedure, we first want to present the current status of the edition, that is, the results already achieved.

Results In July 2010, three years after the project started and two years after the activation of the first online edition (which is still subject to editing and modification processes as before), we can draw an interim conclusion here. A look at the online edition shows which major objectives have been achieved: • Scholarly editing and presentation of the entire text content of all three volumes 9

OCR stands for “Optical Character Recognition”—technology for automatic recognition of characters in digitalized image files and therefore for conversion of the graphic of a text to real text.

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• Search in the full text • Display of all facsimile pages of the “Teutsche Academie” • Search for occurrences of individual persons and individual places, as well as the systematic location of specific annotations about individual persons or places • Identification of works of art mentioned in the text and their addition (including pictures) in a database of works of art • Directory of all contemporary manuscripts and publications together with the secondary literature • Partial scholarly annotation

Using the edition Starting from the homepage of the edition,10 when the user chooses “Full text of the ‘Teutsche Academie’,” the first page of the edition appears (Figure 6), complemented by a small picture of the original page from the seventeenthcentury edition and the page number (each at the top left of the website). The page number (which is not taken from the “Teutsche Academie,” but represents a sequential numbering that we have assigned) is also an entry field in which the user can type the required page number to access the corresponding page directly. Alongside specific launching of individual pages, it is also possible to browse page by page through the digitalized full text—always with the option of viewing a picture of the original page and displaying it in a separate browser window parallel to the text. However, experience shows that users mostly access the edition by means of a place, artwork, or person search. Reflecting this fact, direct access to these three areas is possible at any time using the navigation bar at the top (Figure 7). When a user chooses “People,” they are taken to the “Index of People.” This is a directory of persons mentioned in the “Teutsche Academie.”11 There are several access options from here. It is possible to use the entry field (top left) to select a page number (in the list of people) or an initial letter, or one can enter the name searched for through a free-text field and / or use the filtering by artist (Figure 8). In the case of a typical search for a person 10

On each page, users can choose between various access options (“The full text of the Teutsche Academie”, “Structure of the Teutsche Academie” including an overview of the pages, “People,” “Places,” “Works of Art,” or “Bibliography”) in addition to the information about the edition and the editorial process. 11 In this case, the term “Index of People” should not be taken too literally. It also contains some animals, mythological creatures, and personifications that are of significance for the content or as visual motifs.

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(shown here using the example of “Guido Reni”), the data record appears and provides the user with relevant data on the person. The right-hand pane contains a list of artworks produced by the person searched for (Figure 9). The hyperlinks (via unique identifier) to the “Personennamendatei” (name authority file, PND) and to the “Getty Union List of Artist Names” (ULAN) appear in the left-hand pane among the “basic data” (Figure 10)—we shall return to these reference databases below. In the same way, we want to encourage other projects to refer to Sandrart.net and scholars to cite our data. For this reason it is possible to display the permanent URL (PURL) for the entry in question for all relevant content (text pages, people, places, works of art, bibliography entries). Likewise, users can find citations of the person in all spelling variations in different parts of the text (Figure 11). The user can also access directly from here specific text passages in which this person appears under specific spellings (the number of occurrences is displayed in brackets after the name). When the user chooses an entry, he or she arrives exactly at this point in the full text, in which the corresponding citation is additionally highlighted in color. In addition to the name of a person or the description of a person, an icon12 can be seen here that stands for the flagging of a text passage that refers to a work of art (Figure 12). In this case, it is Guido Reni’s “Abduction of Helen” from 1630/31 and, exactly as for people, the associated entry for the work of art displays an overview of all relevant data for the work and the relationships (to the artist, to the people portrayed in the work of art, to other works of art that are related to this one in various ways, to literature that discusses the work of art, and so on); these relationships are described in more detail below (Figure 13). As previously mentioned, there are 300 full-page engravings in the “Teutsche Academie,” which are handled according to the same procedure used for other artworks. For example, the search for “Laocoon” and the narrowing down to “Printmaking” will retrieve the illustration from the “Teutsche Academie,” an engraving by Johann Jakob Thurneysen after a drawing by Joachim von Sandrart (TA 1675, I, Book 2 (sculpture), panel c [after page 26]). 12

An icon is necessary because descriptions of works of art often contain references to people or places and this nesting in the linking of the description itself would not be possible.

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The view of the entry for the artwork again lists all the basic data, the citations in the text, descriptions within the text, and their relationships—in this case to the ancient statue group of the Laocoon of Hagesandros and Polydoros (Figure 14).

The development of the edition Now that we have presented the results, we want to explain the underlying concepts and procedures. Once the raw version of the transcribed text was available, the real work started for the project team in Frankfurt and Florence. The first step in this regard was editorial processing on the basis of previously established guidelines (http://ta.sandrart.net/edition-information/ editorial-information).

Information on the search technique The objectives formulated at the start of the project of allowing for easy retrieval of entities13 in the text are ambitious because they imply a hit rate of no less than 100% coupled with an error rate of 0% (or to express it in the terminology of information retrieval: values of 1.0 for precision and recall respectively).14 In view of the source text, it would be unimaginable to achieve these quotas purely through automatic text searches. In the seemingly straightforward case of people, we are already confronted with paraphrasing of names, variations on names, nicknames, and identical names— let alone textual errors, such as a reference to Pope Benedict IX when in fact Benedict XI is meant. Even more complicated are references to artworks in the text because there are no formal indicators at all for these. On the basis of these requirements, we saw no possibility of even getting close to the objectives we had set with the help of automated, computer-linguistic methods. Therefore, the only option was to have a scholarly editing team process the text manually. The linking of entities in the text15 and the representation 13

The term “entity” is used here in the sense of the information-technological meaning of uniquely identifiable items or objects in data modeling. 14 The precision specifies how large the proportion of relevant hits as part of the total hits is, while the recall describes which proportion of existing, relevant hits were found during the search. Both are specified in values from 0 to 100% or 0 to 1, whereby 1 or 100% represent the best possible values. 15 This relates not only to the text of the “Teutsche Academie,” but also to annotations; the mention of entities in these is indexed as well and presented in the backend system.

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of these entities in the database (meaning data records) is thus based on metainformation in the text. Unfortunately, this approach is very labor-intensive; although the first version of the edition was online only eleven months after processing began, repeated corrections and additions are still necessary and will be until the end of the project. A reduction of the effort would have been possible only in conjunction with a lowering of the values for precision and recall. However, this would not only have called the original motivation behind the project into question, but would also have rendered certain functions ineffective, above all in the area of machine-based exploitation. For example, Web services that we want to offer in the future make sense only if we can ensure that text occurrences of a person are complete and free of errors as far as it is humanly possible to tell. To date, about 42,000 references to 4,770 people, 13,800 references to 1,750 places, and 2,900 references to works of art in the text have been identified and recorded in this way. In spite of the effort involved, we consider this procedure in retrospect to be unparalleled, when optimum precision is demanded. Only in this way can we ensure that, to return to our earlier example, also those text passages on Guido Reni are found in which he is referred to as “Rheen” or simply “Guido.” On the other hand, passages in which the name “Guido” denotes Guido Bentivoglio do not appear in the search results. At the start of the project, the biggest task, alongside the addition of meta-information in the text, was the creation of the databases of people and places, on which the previously mentioned “Index of people” and “Index of places” are based and in which the entities that refer to the text are entered and enriched with identification information together with canonical or preferred names.

Index of works of art To manage references to art works, it was necessary to develop a database of works of art (“Index of works of art”) in which a limited quantity of master data is entered for each work. We do not add images, as these are imported from external data sources.16 First, color photographs of those works of art 16

In order to make the preparation work available to other projects—in terms of both the technology and the content—we looked for cooperation opportunities at an early stage; these have already led to positive results. In particular, we should name here the cooperation with the database system “ConedaKOR” (abbreviated to KOR), managed chiefly by the Institute of Art History of Frankfurt University. The visual material requested for Sandrart.net is managed through the KOR data pool of Frankfurt University and made available for Sandrart.net by reference to the KOR ID.

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that Sandrart describes within the biographies that he wrote himself were provided, as were those for his own works. As early as the launch of the first version of the online edition in 2008, Sandrart’s biography, which mentions a variety of his own works and those of artists with whom he was acquainted, was presented in illustrated form. Once this phase had been completed, we started to systematically process the works of art in the text on each page of the “Teutsche Academie” and their successive entry in the database of works of art. In the corresponding text passages, works of art of various genres are recorded, although the majority are paintings. Series of paintings are recorded, as are lost works, although in the latter case the corresponding entries are linked to potential preparatory drawings, graphic reproductions, or copies, to give an impression of the lost originals. The engraved illustrations within the “Teutsche Academie” are included in this process. In addition to the entry of the plates in the artwork database, potential source material, such as preparatory drawings by Sandrart and/or graphical source material from other publications are researched, whilst the objects depicted in the illustrations (mostly ancient sculptures or buildings) are equally identified whenever as possible. For example, all visual sources for the engraved full-page illustration of the “Graven image of Osiridis” (Figure 15) have been traced. Images from various publications have been fused into a pseudo-Egyptian scene: Sandrart took the so-called sculpture of Osiris17 from Alessandro Donati’s “Roma vetus ac recens utriusque aedificiis ad eruditam cognitionem expositis” (Rome, 1648; Figure 16), placing it in a niche where it is flanked by two priests copied after two illustrations by Giovanni Battista Galestruzzi in Leonardo Agostini’s “Le gemme antiche figuate” (Rome, 1657–59; Figures 17–18). Galestruzzi’s prints, in turn, show a small sculpture of an Egyptian servant now in the collection of the Florentine Museum of Archaeolgy.18 The visual sources from which Sandrart compiled the scene illustrated in this Osiridis plate are clearly listed and accessible via the “related artworks” links in the respective entry in the artwork database.

17

The sculpture can be identified as the anthropomorphic figure of a god with the head of a falcon found near Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome in 1636. It is now housed in the Staatliches Museum Ägyptischer Kunst in Munich: see Die Wiederentdeckung der ägyptischen Kunst im 18. Jahrhundert: Winckelmann und Ägypten, exh. cat. (Munich 2005), 127–28, cat. 104. (http://ta.sandrart.net/aw/2756). 18 On Sandrart’s textual and visual compilation methods, see also Schreurs (2008).

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For a number of similar identifications of source material, we could draw on the preparatory work done by Jean-Louis Sponsel (Sponsel 1896, chapter XII). The basic data for ancient artworks was obtained from the database of the “Census of Antique Works of Art and Architecture Known in the Renaissance” (http://www.census.de) in Berlin.

Bibliography Following positive experiences with the identifications of persons, places, and works of art, the wish to proceed in the same way with print and manuscript sources mentioned in the text (and thereby to allow for easy identification of texts used by Sandrart) quickly developed. As a consequence, a bibliography was created that contains all early modern manuscript and printed sources that were either cited, compiled, translated, or used as graphical source material by Sandrart, as well as the secondary literature used for scholarly work on the edition. The bibliography is used by other tools; for example, bibliography entries can be referenced in the artwork index.

Text editing However, we now want to return to the text and provide some technical explanations. We are using the XML format TEI P 5 Lite as the document format for the text.19 Yet other than one might expect, we do not employ a native XML Database. At the start of the project it was obvious that we needed to use a standardized, open format such as TEI for future proofing, long-term archiving, and interoperability. However, it was at the same time clear that it would not be necessary or in any case important for either the work of the project team or the users of the edition to interact with XML. Rather, almost all members of the project team are art historians without previous experience with XML. Therefore we decided on an undogmatic but very practical method. Of the two databases that Sandrart.net works with—an internal one that contains the current state of development and a second one, updated at regular intervals, 19

TEI is a standard developed and maintained by the Text Encoding Initiative (http:// www.tei-c.org) for the representation of texts in digital form. Its suitability for the storage of edition texts of this type (also on a long-term basis) lies in the history of over 15 years, the widespread acceptance, the good documentation, and the relatively media-neutral storage that is based on semantic markup. In this case, P5 is the version of TEI and “Lite” is a simplified version from which the elements only required in specialist applications have been removed.

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that the edition is based on—the internal one does not use XML, but a format similar to XML that is considerably simplified. Instead of XML tags, the project team works with simple text macros in the form of curly brackets to enter information. For example, if team members want to link a text passage to an entry for a work of art in the database, they do not need to use a construct such as …20, but {k 123 …}21 is sufficient. Before the data is generated for the edition, as previously mentioned, the simple syntax described is transformed to XML in accordance with TEI P5 Lite, and some additional steps are performed, such as the addition of unique xml:id attributes to ensure that link targets can be addressed. In practice, the use of this macro syntax has proven to be a method that all participants can master easily—even in the case of text passages in which a certain complexity prevails because of nesting. The processing is kept as simple as possible because no dedicated XML editor is in use. Instead, processing is done in the browser because the software used by the team is completely web-based. When the text is displayed in the backend, it is split into segments based on certain structural elements of the text (for example, column switch, paragraphs, headings) and each individual segment can be edited separately so that the navigation in the text is significantly easier. When the editor saves the text, the system uses a checksum determined previously during the segmentation to verify whether or not another user has changed the same text section in the meantime, so that concurrent write access is effectively prevented. For example, this allows two users to work on consecutive lines of a verse at the same time and without conflicts. In addition to the acceptance on the part of the users, this is a crucial benefit compared to a “conventional” approach based on working with an XML editor and a prerequisite for a team working in various locations (Figure 20). After the internal text format has been converted to TEI and validated, this XML document forms the basis for generating the actual content in the edition. The software that processes the XML runs over the document and puts together data in the required way. The steps involved are as follows: • Segmentation of the text at all relevant logical and physical structural elements (volumes, page change, column change, chapters 20

The TEI tag “” stands for “referring string”, defined as “a phrase which refers to some person, place, object, etc.” (http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/en/ html/CO.html#CONARS). 21 “k” stands for the initial letter of “Kunstwerk,” the German for “work of art.” There are comparable text macros for other entity types.

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etc.) and separate storage22 of the text units generated during this process in the database, enriched with a text index for searching and further meta-information. • Indexing of the occurrence of certain tags in the text (in practice, data on the occurrence on pages and in the previously-described text units is recorded) and building of an index table in the database to enable search queries and to enter the structure of the text. After completion of this process, all required information is available in the database and prepared in such a way that all data queries provided in the edition can be processed using conventional database operations, which work extremely efficiently thanks to the corresponding indexes. A search for “all mentions of the person Caravaggio in any left column between pages 200 and 300” can therefore be completed within milliseconds, even on moderate hardware. The TEI document is hence no longer required as of this stage, which eliminates the need for a native XML database. To conclude, we should mention here the translations of parts of the text of the “Teutsche Academie,” which are to be placed alongside the German text. The preliminary work for this has progressed well, so that the first text passages in French will be available in the edition in the near future; partial translations into Italian and English will follow soon.

Relations One of the most appealing characteristics of Sandrart.net is that, whenever possible, information is not isolated but cross-referenced with other information—both within the edition and to external targets. The latter of these appears in the links to international reference databases such as PND23 or the Getty ULAN (http://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabularies/ulan/ index.html). This is not only a question of enriching database objects with additional information stored in external references databases, but also increasingly a question of matching data from different sources. For example, the PND ID and the ULAN ID also enable users to find people in the relatively 22

Each text segment, for example the content of the left-hand column of a certain page, exists individually in the database as a well-formed XML document—although the segments are taken right out of the text—because enclosing tags are taken into account when saving the XML. 23 The “Personennamendatei” (name authority file, abbreviated to “PND”) is a person authority file run by German-language libraries; cf. http://www.d-nb.de/standardisierung/normdateien/pnd.htm.

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new project “Virtual International Authority File” or “VIAF” (http://www. viaf.org). In the future it also allows for localization of corresponding data records in reference databases that do not yet cooperate with the VIAF Reference IDs are an important component for the future provision of Web services by Sandrart.net as well. Thirdly, these external suppliers provide optimum prerequisites for cooperation with interesting projects on related topics because the existence of reference IDs on both sides substantially facilitates networking. Internally, relations between data records are used for various purposes. These include applications where it is not directly apparent that they are based on generic mechanisms, for example the use of relations for defining artistic authorship. In addition, they are naturally used to display additional information and to link data records. Thirdly, they are also employed in some much more subtle or difficult cases. One example of this is when text passages cannot be directly linked with database entries, as this would create false statements.24 In these cases, the circumstances can often be modeled by adding a connecting data record (“missing link”) and thereby creating relationships between these three elements. Internal relations between database objects are modeled using triples that are additionally enriched with metadata. Each triple defines a relationship between two resources—a subject (for example, a person) and an object (a work of art)—and describes the type of this relationship (“painted”). It is therefore a case of directed graphs, as in the case of RDF.25 These resources are not assigned to the classes of an ontology such as the CIDOC CRM.26 This would be desirable in the medium term, but does not represent a high-priority objective in light of the work to be done in the two remaining years of the project. Yet even without an ontology, these references possess two important characteristics: firstly, the type of reference is clearly defined 24

These are typically works of art. It is often a question of relating text citations to indirectly connected objects such as preliminary drawings or copies of missing paintings. 25 RDF (Resource Description Framework) is one of the core concepts behind the “Semantic Web.” It is a data model for providing information on the relationships between resources, therefore laying the groundwork for a variety of applications for which machine readability is a prerequisite. 26 “The CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CRM) provides definitions and a formal structure for describing the implicit and explicit concepts and relationships used in cultural heritage documentation”: http://www.cidoc-crm.org.

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and secondly, it is machine-readable. The latter is a crucial prerequisite for versatile usage of information. A simple example would be the taking into account related objects when generating search results in the edition.27 This data provides excellent conditions for visualizations, for example for the display of an artwork’s context. On the other hand, the definition of precise, machine-readable relations can bring up additional problems if the information does not fit exactly into a fixed scheme. Any text from the seventeenth century contains numerous statements that are considered today to be imprecise, incorrect, or questionable and thereby brings with it the complication of conflicting information as a consequence of different levels of knowledge. One example of this is Elsheimer’s painting “Apollo and Coronis” (http://ta.sandrart.net/aw/550), which Sandrart incorrectly identified as Procris and Cephalus. It is obvious that an appropriate handling of the conflict between historical and current knowledge requires the display not only of one, but of both types of information. Therefore, we initially decided to present the required differentiation by adding meta-information about the level of knowledge—an approach which we have since abandoned.28 This decision was based on the realization that such comparisons would not only be too complicated (not only for us, but also for users of the edition), but also compromised by a necessarily limited understanding of Sandrart’s knowledge and mindset. Our judgment has to be based on Sandrart’s writings, which, however, only reproduce part of his knowledge. As time passed, our doubts grew that the exclusive reproduction of the level of knowledge based on the “Teutsche Academie” would yield a result that is appropriate, plus understandable and unambiguous for users of the edition. We hence plan to merge the meta-information on the historical and current level of knowledge so that only instances of verifiable conflicts are highlighted in the edition, and the situation is explained by means of appropriate annotations. 27

This is precisely what happens if you search for an artist’s name in the index of works of art in the edition. Relations are used to define artists as the creators of works and the machine-usable storage of this information allows the artist’s name to be incorporated in the search results. In future, we plan to include sitters for portraits who are also connected to the works of art by relations, in the search to simplify retrieval of these works of art. 28 At the RSA Conference 2009, we had presented this approach in the presentation that this text is based on. It is similar to the method propagated for the use of the CIDOC CRM ontology, to place conflicting or incongruent statements next to one another with equal standing and leave the conclusions to the scholarly user.

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Evolving growth versus completed edition By the time the project concludes in March 2012, the edition will have been available online for almost four years—four years in which the information presented online has continuously grown, been refined, and partly corrected. Through provident work practices and a conservative upload strategy, we strive to offer a high degree of reliability, not least with respect to citations, which we encourage through the use of PURLs.29 Nevertheless, we have also made efforts to alert users to the evolutionary character and the potentially tentative nature of the data presented.30 This may appear like a contradiction in terms; it does, however, follow the “Release early, release often” dictum.31 In addition to making information available to users at the earliest possible time, we also hoped that quick publication would result in feedback regarding possible improvements or expansion of the edition—and we were not left disappointed, with feedback exceeding our expectations to the extent that several scholars who had come across the project as a result of the edition have since become active contributors. On the other hand, open-ended development past the project completion date is not planned. Instead, we intend to conclude work in the spring of 2012, declaring the edition as a completed and dated work, as one might with a print edition. A continued and possibly collaborative expansion and update process would, of course, reflect the nature of the internet. This aspect is, after all, one of the chief advantages of online editions over print editions. We do, however, envisage problems with merely casual maintenance (and this is to be expected after the dissolution of the editorial team). For, while it may hold certain benefits, it would conversely devalue present efforts. Only an edition that completely reflects the current state of research at the point of completion can, in our view, be suitable for scholarly citation. The same would not be the case for an edition that is only updated in a selective and non-uniform manner. Such problems are magnified wherever information is

29

The granularity for release is based on a per-record level. Editors may choose for each individual entry on a person, a place, artwork, bibliographical entry, or reference whether the data may already appear in the edition or not. 30 An animated link to a page providing further information on the development of the edition is therefore present at the top of each page, next to the language selection. 31 “Release early, release often” is a paradigm of software development popularised by Eric S. Raymonds in his “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” (Cambridge, MA 1999). It has mainly been adopted by the Open Source movement.

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as strongly interconnected as it is on Sandrart.net, since these connections increase the risk of inconsistencies. This is not to say that we would be opposed to a continuation of Sandrart. net: quite the contrary. However, any plans to this effect should be implemented in the shape of a new project that would not impact the availability of the homogenous form of the older, completed project.32 If necessary and provided that required resources are available, there would be no obstacle to incorporating existing data into a new project (this being another advantage of strictly structured, machine readable data storage) which could then be updated or developed further (for example, in the shape of an additional philological analysis of art historical terms used in the text) in parallel to the existing edition. This would allow for differing interpretations or focal points without having to take into account the continued availability of PURLs and their respect contents—concerns that would come into play if one were to continue work directly within the existing project.

Conclusion—Summary Experiences gathered in the first years of the project have shown that many aspects proved to be more difficult to implement than had been originally envisaged, one example being problems encountered in differentiating between different levels of knowledge in the source text and secondary bibliography. On the other hand, ideas and requests for quantitative and qualitative enhancements to the project were developed during work on the project and in discussions with external scholars. Notable are two new extensive fields of activity: 1. The integration of the Latin edition of the “Teutsche Academie” appears to be an important and wise addition. Sandrart initiated this edition in the 1680s to expand his success to the European market (“Sculpturae veteris admiranda,” Nuremberg 1680; “Academia nobilissimae artis pictoriae,” Nuremberg 1683; “Romae antiquae et novae theatrum,” Nuremberg 1684). This addition of the Latin text to the online edition is a key step towards internationalizing the project. Ever since the seventeenth century and up until today, it is these Latin editions that are most frequently cited by scholars outside German-speaking countries. Above all, the incorporation of 32

In software development, one would use the term “fork,” implying the “splittingoff” of new offspring from an existing project. The development of the fork can either develop in close parallel to the original project, or follow an entirely different path.

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these editions seemed necessary because they are not mere translations, but genuine new editions of the text, published by Sandrart at his own expense, and presenting significant changes and amendments, going as far as the inclusion of new biographies of artists. 2. Furthermore, during the course of the project it became clear that a visualization of the sources used by Sandrart within the text would provide greater and, above all, more quickly comprehensible clarity of the authenticity of his statements. In the case of a text compilation, which is what Sandrart’s “Teutsche Academie” essentially is, evidence of which source texts were used where is just as indispensible as a fast and conspicuous visualization of which passages were written by Sandrart himself. Consequently, the visualization is to be implemented directly in the text, and to be supplemented with a precise bibliography, in order to highlight how Sandrart compiled and translated other texts and pictures, and the extent to which he wrote his own texts. Far in excess of the primary requirement to display Sandrart’s work as a complex composition of text citations and his own words, this allows the project to reveal more details of the practice of polyhistorical publications as the products of reading, compiling, and interpreting academic knowledge. An analytical separation in the textual elements between fiction and factual knowledge, between Baroque rhetoric and the pool of knowledge, may form the foundation for a new contribution to the history of science in the seventeenth century. On completion of the project in March 2012, an online edition of the “Teutsche Academie” will be available: • That comprises the German editions of 1675, 1679, and 1680, as well as the Latin editions of the text published in 1680, 1683, and 1684 • Whose databases can answer numerous questions regarding the collection contexts and constellations of people thanks to their links to the text and to one another • That is enhanced with pictures of the works of art described • That visualizes the penetration of the text by adapted source texts (including Vasari, van Mander, Ridolfi, Donati) • That allows users to display partial translations into English, French, and Italian in parallel • That is annotated by a network of scholars

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As far as the underlying ideas of the project are concerned, we want to conclude by discussing two aspects here: the notion of annotation by a network of scholars and the aforementioned potential infiniteness of digital editions. The coordination of the scholars in the common objective of annotating a text as extensive as the “Teutsche Academie” has proved and continues to be a real challenge. The initial interest and zeal on the part of enthusiastic scholars is often followed by their disillusionment because database entries are rather complex, so that outside scholars require support from the project team in order to enter data. On the other hand, scholarly appreciation of collaboration with an online project still ranks below recognition of collaboration in a printed work, a fact which has had a negative impact on the level of commitment. Consequently, subsequent work on the project will deal to a considerable extent with the issue of how we can make cooperation less complicated and more attractive for the scholars in the network. The opportunity provided by the Internet to make ultimately unlimited corrections and additions to the edition appears tempting, but for the reasons outlined above, the edition is to be concluded at the end of the second project term. This decision has been by no means an easy one, but could ultimately no longer be avoided in view of increasing tensions between a clearly defined and dated status quo on the one hand and continuous development on the other. Eventually, such conflicts between evolving academic outcomes and the reliability actually required by scholarly work could probably best be resolved through tools similar to those commonly applied in software development, in particular through revision control systems. Applied to academic requirements, these would allow for the reconstruction and display of any past state of knowledge, for comparison with other positions and the highlighting of potential differences, and would thereby incidentally offer the possibility of visualizing the evolution of scholarship.

WORKS CITED Galerie Bassenge. 2010. Paintings and drawings of the 15th to the 19th centuries. Auction catalog. Kaulbach, Hans-Martin. 2007. Deutsche Zeichnungen vom Mittelalter bis zum Barock. Stuttgart: Hatje Cantz Verlag.

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Sandrart, Joachim von. 1675. L‘Academia Todesca della Architectura, Scultura & Pittura: Oder Teutsche Academie der Edlen Bau-Bild- und Mahlerey-Künste. Nuremberg. __________ 1679. Teutsche Academie zweyter und letzter Haupt-Teil. Nuremberg. __________ 1679. P. Ovidii Nas. metamorphosis oder des verblümten Sinns der Ovidianischen Wandlungs-Gedichte gründliche Auslegung: … 1.–12.Buch [mit] P. Ovidii Nasonis Lebenslauff/ aus dem Niederländischen Carls von Mander … ins Teutsche übers. und der Sandrartischen Academie einverleibet. Nuremberg. __________ 1680. Iconologia deorum, oder Abbildung der Götter, welche von den Alten verehret worden. Nuremberg. __________ 1680. Sculpturae veteris admiranda. Nuremberg. __________ 1683. Academia nobilissimae artis pictoriae. Nuremberg. __________ 1684. Romae antiquae et novae theatrum. Nuremberg. Schreurs, Anna. 2008. “Von den Vite Vasaris zu Sandrarts Academie: Künstler, Dichter und Gelehrte.” In Le Vite di Vasari, Akten der internationalen Tagung in Florenz, ed. A. Nova, 249–269. __________ 2009. Mythologie und Naturstudie: Die Winde als Götter bei Joachim von Sandrart. In Wind und Wetter. Die Ikonologie der Atmosphäre, eds. Alessandro Nova and Tanja Michalsky, 133–48. Venice: Marsilio. __________ 2010. Joachim von Sandrart zwischen Wort und Bild: Malerei und Dichtung im Deutschland des Dreißigjährigen Krieges. Professorial diss., Frankfurt am Main University. Sponsel, Jean-Louis. 1896. Sandrarts Teutsche Academie kritisch gesichtet. Dresden: Druck and Verlag for Wilhelm Hoffman.

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Figure 1. Richard Collin after Joachim von Sandrart, Portrait of Joachim von Sandrart, engraving, in “Iconologia Deorum” 1680

Figure 2. Title-page of the “Teutsche Academie der Edlen Bau-, Bild und Mahlerey-Künste”, Nuremberg 1675

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Figure 3a. Anonymous, Portrait of Jan van Eyck, copy after the engraving in the “Teutsche Academie” (1675), plate AA, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Graphische Sammlung

Figure 3b. Anonymous, Portrait of Jan van Eyck, copy after the engraving in the Teutsche Academie (1675), plate AA, private collection

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Figure 3c. Philipp Kilian, Portraits of six German artists, engraving, plate AA of “Teutsche Academie” (1675)

Figure 4a. Anonymous, copy after the “Ex ungue leonem” illustration from Sandrart’s “Teutsche Academie” (1675), Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Graphische Sammlung

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Figure 4b. Philipp Kilian after Joachim von Sandrart, “Ex ungue Leonem,” engraving, in: “Teutsche Academie” (1675), 2: 325

Figure 5a. Anonymous, Sphinxes, copy of the engraved text vignette from “Teutsche Academie,” Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Graphische Sammlung

Figure 5b. After Joachim von Sandrart, Text vignette with sphinxes, engraving, in: “Teutsche Academie” (1675), 2: 252

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Figure 6. “Full text of the ‘Teutsche Academie’,” page 1 (http://ta.sandrart.net/1)

Figure 7. Screenshot “People,” “Places,” “Works of art,” “Bibliography,” in the navigation bar at the top of the page (Detail)

Figure 8. Screenshot of access options from the index of people

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Figure 9. Screenshot of the right-hand pane (http://ta.sandrart.net/prs/20)

Figure 10. Screenshot of the left-hand pane (http://ta.sandrart.net/prs/20)

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Figure 11. Screenshot of the left-hand pane (http://ta.sandrart.net/prs/20)

Figure 12. Screenshot (http://ta.sandrart.net/627)

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Figure 13. Screenshot “The Abduction of Helen” (http://ta.sandrart.net/aw/43)

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Figure 14. Screenshot of “Laocoon” (http://ta.sandrart.net/aw/339)

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Figure 15. After Joachim von Sandrart, The graven image of Osiridis, engraving, plate IIII, in “Teutsche Academie” (1679) (http://ta.sandrart.net/aw/1250)

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Figure 16. Anonymous engraver, Sculpture of Osiris, in Alessandro Donati, Roma vetus ac recens utriusque aedificiis ad eruditam cognitionem expositis (Rome, 1648), 75 (http://ta.sandrart.net/aw/2755)

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Figure 17. Giovanni Battista Galestruzzi, Sculpture of an Egyptian servant (seen from left), in Leonardo Agostini, Le gemme antiche figurate (Rome, 1669), vol. 2

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Figure 18. Giovanni Battista Galestruzzi, Sculpture of an Egyptian servant (seen from right), in Agostini, Le gemme antiche figurate (Rome, 1669), vol. 2

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Figure 19. Screenshot “The graven image of Osiridis” (http://ta.sandrart.net/aw/1250)

Figure 20. Screenshot (http://ta.sandrart.net/631)

Virtual Restoration: The Art and Technology of “Recreating” Italian Renaissance Paintings Diane Cole Ahl

Lafayette College [email protected]

Dedicated to Lew Minter, colleague, friend, and collaborator, on his retirement in 2011 Imagine teaching a course in which students stay long after you go home, and then finding them, as if they had never left, when you return early the next morning (Figure 1). It is snowing outside, but they barely notice. Surrounded by open books, they sit in front of computers, mesmerized by what they see before them and by what they themselves have created. On the monitors are Renaissance paintings, not as the works now appear, but as the students believe them to have looked in the past (Figure 2). The images are digital reconstructions of dismembered or partially destroyed works in which missing elements are replaced or “restored.” Students propose recreations of the works by using Adobe Photoshop, the graphics software popular with professional artists and graphic designers for its versatility. Colors can be matched with extraordinary exactitude by selecting from its extensive palette to reproduce and adjust tonal values. Photoshop allows users to clone, reverse, crop, paste, edit, scale, rotate, and “tweak” images with great agility. Lines can be extended and bent in any direction or configuration. Through digital restoration, components of altarpieces that were cut apart in the past can be copied, scaled proportionately, and reunited so that the integrity they once possessed can be seen instead of imagined. The frames of contemporary works that are still intact guide the gilding and carpentry of those that were sawn apart and destroyed. Our students research the style, techniques, and conventions of Renaissance paintings as they endeavor to “recreate” them with Photoshop. The course that I have described, Visual Communication through Technology, was taught in the Art Department at Lafayette College (Easton, Pennsylvania) during our January interim session from 2001 through 2011. Students © 2014 Iter Inc. and the Arizona Board of Regents for Arizona State University. All rights reserved ISBN 978-0-86698-516-1 (online) ISBN 978-0-86698-515-4 (print) New Technologies in Medieval and Renaissance Studies 4 (2014) 149–170

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had the opportunity to concentrate their attention on a single course for three intense weeks, honing their proficiency with Photoshop. Lew Minter, the now-retired director of the Art Department’s Media Lab and a professional artist,1 devised the course in consultation with me, a scholar of Italian Renaissance painting, to enhance technological, artistic, and historical literacy among our students, especially art majors. The art major at Lafayette College incorporates courses in both studio art and art history to ensure that students have direct, hands-on experience with making works as well as a theoretical and historical understanding of art from prehistory through the present in western and global cultures. This “crossover” course ideally united these interests by integrating the areas of proficiency required for the major through digital technology, an area with which our students already were engaged. Many were novices to Photoshop, but their ability increased as their projects progressed. The graphics software has a wide range of applications, from editing photographs, its most popular use, to designing and manipulating images, as in this course. Lafayette College has a site license for Photoshop in our dedicated Media Lab, where students worked on desktop computers. While the single location was mandated by our site license, it fostered a productive sense of community, shared enterprise, and dialogue among the students. The course immersed students in the process of combining historical and art historical research with digital technology. Through the art history courses that are required of all art majors, Lafayette students investigated the historical and artistic contexts in which Renaissance paintings were produced. They understood, among diverse issues, how changes in taste and religious ritual as well as the suppression of churches led to the destruction of frescoes and the dismemberment of altarpieces. They perused books on Renaissance painting, identifying the style, techniques, and colors typical of different artists. Most of our majors had traveled and spent a semester abroad, most frequently in Italy, where they studied art in museums and in situ in churches, villas, and palaces. They became aware of larger cultural issues, including the preservation, collecting, and display of works of art. Like others of their generation, they created digital albums that preserved, reconfigured, edited, and tweaked experience. The projects in this course capitalized on these interests, simultaneously enhancing knowledge of Renaissance painting while teaching students to use Photoshop with greater proficiency.

1

See Lew Minter’s website: http://webbox.lafayette.edu/~minterl/

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The course was inspired by my collaboration with Lew Minter in 1996, five years before it was piloted at Lafayette. I sought his expertise to reconstruct a partially destroyed fresco by the Florentine master Benozzo Gozzoli (ca. 1420–1496).2 The Madonna and Child with Angel (1450) in the church of San Fortunato in Montefalco, a town in Umbria, is Benozzo’s earliest signed and dated work, and consequently is particularly significant to understanding the master’s formation (Figure 3). The left half of the fresco was completely destroyed when a chapel was added to the church in seventeenth-century renovations. The compositional unity and balance of the mural is now lost, and the brightly colored pier of the new chapel contrasts jarringly with the soft, subtle tones of the painting. Like that of many medieval and Renaissance masters, Benozzo’s work is balanced and highly symmetrical. I therefore surmised that the lost part of the fresco must have included a music-making angel and architectural elements that mirrored those of the right side. Although I might have advanced this hypothesis in writing, an actual reconstruction would better illustrate what I had imagined. I asked Lew Minter if there were any way to suggest the appearance of the original work through digital technology. His solution was to use Photoshop, a program whose capabilities have increased with each subsequent version. Following my instructions, Minter used Photoshop to copy the right side of the fresco and then reversed it to create an image that was symmetrical in the most literal sense of the word (Figure 4). I suggested that we “reconstruct” the missing left side of the Virgin’s mantle by studying Benozzo’s later images of the Madonna so that the fall and folds of drapery would correspond to his style. I asked Minter to replace lost elements, including the friezes and roundels comprising the frame, as well as the pilaster and shell-like niche of the Virgin’s throne, by copying and reconfiguring ones from the fresco that are better preserved. By analogy with paintings by Benozzo and other Tuscan masters, including Fra Angelico, his collaborator in the 1430s and ’40s, the missing pilaster and shell niche were presumed to repeat those of the right side. The digital image replaced the lacunae with a reconstruction conforming to the style and conventions compatible with Benozzo’s works. Benozzo was highly influential in Umbria during the 1450s and ’60s. To confirm the general accuracy of the reconstruction, I identified several works of similar style and composition from the region, including two in Trevi and 2

I first presented the reconstruction at Benozzo Gozzoli: Viaggio attraverso un secolo, Convegno Internazionale di Studi (Florence–Pisa, 8–10 January 1998). See Ahl (2003, 100, illustrations 27 and 28).

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Foligno by his follower Pierantonio Mezzastris (doc. 1458–1506), and the Madonna dell’Orchestra (Perugia, Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria) by Giovanni Boccati (doc. 1440–1486), which paraphrase the Madonna and Child while expanding the music-making choir of angels. Another striking corroboration of the reconstruction is the Madonna and Child with Angels (Berlin, Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Gemäldegalerie) by Bartolomeo Caporali (ca. 1420–1506/9), which repeats the wall and vegetation behind the throne and includes praying angels to either side (Figure 5). Such analogies indicate the general viability of the proposed reconstruction, which is not, however, without its flaws. It is unlikely that the color of the angels’ gowns was identical, since variation is evident in the above-noted works and in Benozzo’s own paintings. It is improbable that both angels played tambourines, for a lute, to judge by analogy with other works, would have been more conventional. Nonetheless, in this, the earliest of several projects that we undertook, Lew Minter and I recognized the implications of what we had done. Our collaboration suggested the potential of digital technology for enhancing students’ understanding of Renaissance painting and advancing research in art history, which often is based on works that are in poor or fragmentary condition. Digital restoration allowed us to “recreate” frames, reverse damages, and reunite components of altarpieces and other works that have been cut apart and are in different locations. As historians of Italian art know all too well, the original appearance of many extant works has been compromised greatly over the course of time. Murals may have been whitewashed or destroyed due to changes in liturgical practice during the Catholic Reformation, because they were deemed oldfashioned, or as a result of sanitary measures thought to prevent outbreaks of disease.3 Damage from excessive humidity, leaking roofs, saline deposits, warfare, floods (including that of 1966, which destroyed many works in Florence), and earthquakes; colors darkened by the smoky residue of candles and oil lamps; mutilation and renovation when patronage or taste changed; ill-advised restoration and repainting: All of these have distanced us greatly from the original appearance of murals. Mosaics, such as those that adorned Old St. Peter’s in Rome before it was rebuilt in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, were routinely destroyed in renovations, although some fragments fortuitously were preserved. Once adorning the wall of Pope Boniface VIII’s funerary chapel (ca. 1296) in Old St. Peter’s, mosaics of the Head of the Madonna (Brooklyn, Brooklyn Museum) and the Christ Child (Moscow, State 3

Roettgen (1996, 9–26) concisely surveys changing attitudes towards mural painting and its preservation.

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Pushkin Museum) by the great Roman master Jacopo Torriti (active 1270– 1300) retain their glittering beauty, but are utterly devoid of context. Their bodies, gestures, and the rapport between the figures can only be imagined, and their role in enhancing the now-dismembered tomb by Arnolfo di Cambio (ca. 1240–1300/10) has been entirely lost.4 The original appearance and condition of panel paintings, altarpieces in particular, have suffered egregiously from time, ill-conceived restoration, or the environments in which they were kept. Some polyptychs were modified within years of their creation for various reasons ranging from the desire to modernize outmoded works to the need to enshrine or renew the potency of a sacred image (Hoeniger 1995). Many altarpieces were confiscated, dismembered, dispersed, and sold when Italian churches and religious communities were suppressed, an appalling and irremediable destruction of Italy’s artistic patrimony that began in the late eighteenth century (Strehlke 2001, 41–57). Altarpieces, especially polyptychs, were shorn of their original frames and sawn apart to produce collectible “works of art” that could readily be sold; Duccio’s great Maestà for Siena Cathedral (1308–1311; Siena, Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, and other locations), the key work for understanding Sienese painting of the fourteenth century, is a tragic example (Bellosi 2003). Although descriptions, drawings, and engravings have assisted us in reconstituting the fragments of some altarpieces, it is difficult to imagine—for our students as well as ourselves—what these works originally would have looked like (Strehlke 2001, 48–50). Coupled with research on the style of an artist and his contemporaries, digital technology can bring us closer to visualizing their appearance. Although such endeavors do not purport to recreate the original, they provide important educational and curatorial tools from which our students can learn. Museum professionals as well as archaeologists have incorporated digital reconstructions in their scholarship. In 2001, for example, David Alan Brown of the National Gallery of Art published a “recreation” of the portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci by Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) that united the actual panel, which had been cut down at some point in its history, with Leonardo’s preparatory drawing of a woman’s hands.5 The Portrait of a Lady (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art) by Lorenzo di Credi (1457/59–1536) in which the subject holds a ring between her fingers was evidently inspired by Leonardo’s depiction 4

For more information on the tomb, see Maccarrone (1983), cited in Strehlke (2001, 47). 5 See the most recent discussion by Brown (2003, 357, 361, 366 n. 34–35).

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(Brown 2003, 357–69). Curators have used Photoshop to reconstruct frames or reconstitute works that have been cut apart and dispersed, as is evident in several entries in catalogues of the National Gallery in London and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.6 Archaeologists and architectural historians, assisted by graphic designers, have sought to “recreate” sites and structures that have been partly or completely destroyed, as shown by such websites as the Theban Mapping Project, directed by Kent Weeks (www.thebanmappingproject.com). At the Renaissance Society of America conference at the University of Cambridge in 2005, the late Henry Dietrich Fernández of the Rhode Island School of Design proposed a digital reconstruction of Raphael’s house (destroyed, but once located on the Via Giulia in Rome), based on surviving drawings and his understanding of Raphael’s architecture. The course at Lafayette College was distinct because it brought the experience of these professionals to undergraduates, many of whom pursued careers in art history, architecture, design, advertising, and communications. It intensified their awareness of crucial issues in the field, including conservation and historic preservation, while advancing their expertise in digital technology. Of equal importance, I saw it as a means of engaging students more actively in the study of Renaissance art. To introduce the methodology and objectives of the course, Lew Minter presented two of our collaborative projects. Both are conjectural reconstructions of dismembered works by Fra Angelico (ca. 1395–1455) that I published in my book Fra Angelico.7 In consultation with me, Minter realized these projects by uniting his understanding of Italian Renaissance art, resulting from his study of Old Master paintings, with his expertise as an artist and the array of tools available in Photoshop, from cloning and pasting selected elements to replicating tonal values. The San Domenico di Fiesole Altarpiece (ca. 1422–1423), still in situ in Fiesole (near Florence), is crucial to understanding Angelico’s early style (Figure 6). It once was a gold-ground triptych, the outlines of which are still faintly visible on the panel. In 1501, when the apse of San Domenico was renovated, Lorenzo di Credi transformed Angelico’s work into a single panel altarpiece. He added 6

See, for example, the reconstructions of Masaccio’s Pisa Polyptych (Gordon 2003, 214, figure 18) and Fra Angelico’s San Marco Altarpiece (Boskovits 2003, 16–17, figure 1). A colorized reconstruction by Lew Minter based on the black and white image in Boskovits is included in Hartt and Wilkins (2010, 227, plate 9.4). 7 The project was described by Read (2004). The reconstruction appears in Ahl (2008, 226, plates 164 and 165).

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the landscape background, modernized the Virgin’s throne, and refashioned its frame, leading Giorgio Vasari (1568) to describe it as “retouched… and ruined” (Vasari 1906, 2: 510). The components of its frame subsequently were dispersed: The predella (the painted horizontal panel on which the altarpiece stands), for example, is in the National Gallery, London, and two of the original pilaster saints are in the Musée Condé, Chantilly. In 1977, Umberto Baldini reconstructed the altarpiece with a line drawing done by a draftsman (Figure 7). Its frame and shape were based on Angelico’s Cortona Triptych (ca. 1434–1435; Cortona, Museo Diocesano). The drawing requires the viewer to imagine all of the work’s missing elements, from the roundels above to the predella below, as well as the color. By using Photoshop, Lew Minter recreated the components that were absent in Baldini’s drawing (Ahl 2008, 40–44, 226, plate 164) (Figure 8). To replace the anachronistic landscape, he copied and digitally burnished the gold background of the predella as the setting for the figures in the main panel. He followed the still-visible outlines of the original triptych and scaled the frame of Angelico’s Cortona Triptych to fit. We studied the frames of other works from the 1420s, including those of Gentile da Fabriano’s Adoration of the Magi (1423; Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi) and Masolino’s Madonna of Humility (1423; Bremen, Kunsthalle). For this reason, we decided to replace Baldini’s pilasters with colonnettes. By using Photoshop, Minter copied and proportionately scaled other components of the altarpiece. He colorized the Annunciation roundels (ex-Vienna, Tucher Collection), which are known only through black-and-white photographs, basing his palette on the predella, which is in a good state of preservation. Integrating thorough research into works by Angelico and his contemporaries with digital technology, our work presented a model for Minter’s students to emulate in their own reconstructions. Another collaborative project involved the digital reintegration of a predella belonging to an unidentified altarpiece that Angelico painted early in his career (Figure 9).8 At some point in its history, the altarpiece was cut apart and its components dispersed. The Madonna and three of the flanking saints are evidently lost; the present location of the fourth saint, Saint James Major (exMinneapolis, Minneapolis Institute of Arts), is unknown. Laurence Kanter and Carl Brandon Strehlke identified five panels that comprised the predella 8

Laurence Kanter identified them as components to an altarpiece for the Da Filicaia family, possibly for its chapel in Santa Croce, Florence, and proposed a reconstruction incorporating more elements; see Kanter and Palladino (2005, 121–32).

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(Kanter 2000; Strehlke 1994, “Fra Angelico: Predella (47a–d)”; Strehlke 2004, “Predella panel of an altarpiece: Dormition of the Virgin”). The nearly identical size, gilded corners, and style of the paintings confirm the correctness of their proposal. Publications that have shown the panels in color illustrate each individually on a page. While this allows the viewer to appreciate the fine detail of each, there is no sense of the compositional rhythm or integrity that, I imagined, was found in the original predella. Illustrating them together, Strehlke’s catalogue to the John G. Johnson Collection (2004) reproduced the ensemble in black and white. The chromatic unity of the panels could not be appreciated. The digital reconstruction of the panels provides a more satisfactory solution (Ahl 2008, 227, plate 16). The gilded frame of the predella to Angelico’s early Annunciation (Madrid, Museo del Prado) provided the model. With Photoshop, the frame of the Prado predella was scanned, cloned, scaled, and extended. The individual panels were copied from color transparencies and illustrations. Viewed together and seen in color, the predella reveals the young Angelico’s fascination with architecture, perspective, and stunning luminary effects to evoke the sacred. As shown by the parallel walls of the first two scenes and the dim church interiors of the last two panels, the compositions are complementary. On the left, the two exterior scenes are composed with diagonal, foreshortened walls, directing the beholder’s gaze to the central panel of the Dormition of the Virgin. The two interior scenes on the right include parallel walls that recede in perspective to suggest depth and to focus on the miraculous events within them. Careful analysis suggests how deliberately Angelico calculated the composition of each with respect to its neighbor and to the predella as a whole. Regarded individually, the panels are beautifully painted and minutely rendered scenes; shown together as reconstituted here, they display the visual continuity and drama that distinguishes Angelico’s early works, as seen in the predellas of the San Domenico di Fiesole Altarpiece (London, National Gallery) and Coronation of the Virgin (Paris, Musée du Louvre). With these reconstructions as their models, our students selected their own works to restore. They were especially interested in frescoes. This may have been due to the widely publicized restorations of Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling and Last Judgment and Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper, which were discussed at length in my classes. Students learned about the damage caused by leaking roofs, poor restoration, and the ravages wrought by time, the environment, and, in the case of the Last Supper, actual bombardment of the site. They were especially moved by the destruction caused by the earthquake

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that collapsed part of the roof at San Francesco in Assisi in 1997, shattering into fragments compartments of the frescoed vaults in the Upper Church. They observed how passages added a secco (painted in tempera, oil, or wax) to frescoes had peeled away, and how colors had darkened or faded. Successful reconstructions required mastery of Photoshop, careful study of each artist’s works, and great concentration. Intense engagement is evident in the digital restoration of a detached fresco by Andrea del Castagno (before 1419–1457), the Crucifixion with Saint Benedict, the Virgin, Saint John the Evangelist, and Saint Romuald (ca. 1445; Florence, Cenacolo of Sant’Apollonia) (Figure 10). Originally located in the convent of Santa Maria degli Angeli, the mural was whitewashed in the late nineteenth century and removed from the wall in 1952.9 In the course of its restoration, the painted surface was separated from its sinopia (underdrawing), a process that typically results in the flat surface that is now visible. A student who had studied Renaissance art with me chose this work as her project (Figure 11). She was aware of the theological and artistic traditions from which the work emerged as well as its conservation history. In preparing her project, she examined works by Castagno that were in a better state of preservation to gain a keener sense of his style and development. She tried to replicate the sculptural appearance of his drapery and the subtlety of his modeling. She “restored” the mural by “repairing” some of the lost passages of drapery and strengthened the hems of the saints’ mantles. She reinforced the faded base, flutes, and capital of each column, and she removed the most visible cracks and abrasions that disfigured the sky behind the figures. Finally, she replaced the faded green arch with a frame simulating dark green Prato marble. The fresco’s dull surface is characteristic of murals that have been detached; her reconstruction, with its more vibrant tones, attempted to correct this. Another student was inspired by his admiration for Giotto (ca. 1267/75– 1337). He chose to restore the Confirmation of the Franciscan Rule in the Bardi Chapel, Santa Croce, Florence (ca. 1320) (Figure 12). The mural’s condition was compromised by being whitewashed in the eighteenth century and repainted in the nineteenth. It also was damaged by rain from the church’s leaking roof that caused loss of paint on the quadrant of the vault above. Large patches of plaster are missing, disfiguring the surface. Passages of the architecture and some of the faces, including that of Pope Honorius III, are obliterated. The student carefully reproduced the timber beams of the ceiling and walls by copying those from adjacent areas that were better preserved (Figure 13). He 9

Horster (1980, 175–76) records its condition.

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colorized the faded garments of the figures, using those of the figures below as a model. He recreated the missing features of the pope by copying them from another figure, and repaired the profiles of the onlookers at the left by doing the same. Turning to the vault, he carefully recreated the decorative friezes and sky above it by copying and pasting them from areas that were better preserved. By repairing the disruptive losses, his reconstruction imparts the ritualized solemnity, compositional coherence, and chromatic unity that Giotto intended. Equally dramatic was another student’s recreation of Benozzo Gozzoli’s damaged mural of Saint Augustine’s Confirmation as Bishop of Hippo, located in the church of Sant’Agostino in San Gimignano (1464–1465) (Ahl 1996, 121–40) (Figure 14). Fallen plaster and abrasion had obliterated part of the surface, including the key figure of Saint Augustine and some of the inscription and decorative frieze below the scene. Once again, the student began his project by looking at Benozzo’s works, concentrating on scenes in the chapel that were in a better state of preservation (Figure 15). He used Photoshop to replace several lost elements, including the putti of the frame, copied from their adjacent counterparts, the missing friezes, and the architecture on the right side. He recreated the lost inscription, the complete text of which was known, by copying and pasting letters from scenes that were in better condition. Missing figures were similarly replaced by tweaking parts of their wellpreserved counterparts. He decided not to colorize lost passages of drapery, which were added a secco (in tempera), for there was no trace of their original color. As with the other projects, the digital recreation plausibly suggests the style of the original frescoes, bringing the student closer to understanding the artist’s process and intentions. Another student imagined the original appearance of Leonardo’s Mona Lisa (1503; Paris, Musée du Louvre) after learning of the Louvre’s reluctance to clean it (Figure 16). She traced the influence and afterlife of this iconic work before proposing a digital reconstruction. She removed the veils of darkened varnish so that the landscape appears less lugubrious. The garments of this silk merchant’s wife appear rich instead of murky, their deep colors now distinguishable. The student inserted columns to the side, attempting to recreate those that once framed the figure but were lost when the panel was cut down at some point in its history. To be sure, the capitals and bases of the columns are far more elaborate than any Leonardo would have used, and the colors are far brighter and more saturated than those found in his works. At the same time, the digital removal of the varnish may bring us closer to imagining the master’s sfumato than does the work in its present condition.

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Such projects interested students in studying medieval and Renaissance art, areas that I teach, on an advanced level. Those who took Minter’s course selected research topics that united traditional investigations of historic context, patronage, iconography, and style with a detailed analysis of a painting’s state of preservation. The digital reconstructions offered students the opportunity to engage with a work more actively. Students considered how it would appear were it in its original condition, frame, and setting. To do so required study of the artist’s entire oeuvre as well as an awareness of works by the master’s contemporaries. These investigations involved students deeply—in almost all instances, more so than those of classmates who restricted the scope of their research to more conventional academic research. The students consulted me frequently for further reading and discussion of their subjects, so that, as a student described, “I could get inside the artist’s head.” Every facet of the work was examined in minute detail so that tonal values could be approximated more accurately, making students aware of nuances of color. The process “slowed down” their gaze so they looked more thoughtfully and with greater concentration at the image. It also inspired those focusing on studio art to experiment with color and technique. One student was impressed by the use of terra verde (green pigment) underpainting in works by Renaissance masters. He decided to employ it in his own canvases, which were based on photographs of deceased family members and engaged issues of reconstructing memory. The technique imparted a modulating undertone to his works, but more important to him, imbued the images with an apposite aura of history, nostalgia, and remembrance. Not by coincidence, the student described his own experience in reconstructing Fra Angelico’s Descent from the Cross and its frame (Florence, Museo di San Marco) as a transforming experience in his understanding of the master’s works and his own development as an artist. The digital reconstructions of Lew Minter and his students have enjoyed an audience far beyond Lafayette College. David G. Wilkins used them to illustrate several works in the leading textbook for Italian Renaissance art, History of Italian Renaissance Art, of which he is the co-author with the late Frederick Hartt. Perhaps the most striking reconstruction reunited the panels of Duccio’s Maestà, which, as noted earlier, are dispersed in museums throughout the world. Minter and I identified early fourteenth-century Sienese works that were intact and used them as guides in recreating the destroyed frame of the Maestà (Hartt and Wilkins 2010, 106, plate 4.5; 107, plate 4.7). He and two students copied the panels with Photoshop and scaled them proportionately before pasting them in place. Since color changes in response to

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lighting conditions and many other variables, they ensured it was consistent from panel to panel, making corrections as necessary. To replace the missing central pinnacle above the main panel of the Madonna and Child flanked by saints and angels, Minter “ghosted” an Assumption of the Virgin, its likely subject, from another Sienese work. Bringing together the scattered components of the altarpiece and enclosing them in a gilded frame complete with tracery and pinnacles, the reconstruction evoked the original splendor of the Maestà when it stood on the high altar of the Siena Cathedral. The students involved with this project were in my Italian Renaissance art class. They used their experience as the basis for research papers in the course. As with others who have taken Minter’s classes, they demonstrated intense involvement with the subject and wrote thoughtful, engaged papers. Their classroom presentation was enthralling and generated exceptional interest among their peers. In teaching Renaissance culture to a postmodern generation, we strive to engage our students in “active learning” and “hands-on” experiences. Digital technology is invaluable to this enterprise. It is the language that our students speak and it offers tools that traditional scholarship alone cannot provide. In Lafayette College’s course on digital restoration, students actively connected with the past while they learned to use Photoshop. In “recreating” Italian Renaissance paintings, they became involved with the historical and aesthetic contexts of Renaissance culture, and felt responsible for ensuring the preservation of its legacy. While their knowledge of art history and Photoshop were the tools for such virtual reconstructions, their research, dedication to their projects, and imagination enabled their success, demonstrating the potential of technology in teaching art history. By digitally reconstructing Renaissance paintings, they revealed the beauty of these works to us and, more significantly, to themselves.

WORKS CITED Ahl, Diane Cole. 1996. Benozzo Gozzoli. New Haven: Yale University Press. __________ 2003. “ ‘Qualis sit pictor prefatus inspice lector’: le opere di Benozzo Gozzoli in Umbria.” In Benozzo Gozzoli: Viaggio attraverso un secolo, eds. Enrico Castelnuovo and Alessandra Malquori, 95–114. Pisa: Pacini Editore. __________ 2008. Fra Angelico. London and New York: Phaidon Press Limited.

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Baldini, Umberto. 1977. “Contributi all’Angelico: il Trittico di San Domenico di Fiesole e qualche altra aggiunta.” In Scritti di storia dell’arte in onore di Ugo Procacci, ed. Maria Grazia Ciardi Dupré dal Poggetto, 236–46. Milan: Electa. Bellosi, Luciano. 2003. Duccio: la Maestà. Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana Editoriale. Boskovits, Miklós. 2003. “The Healing of Palladia by Saint Cosmas and Saint Damian.” In Italian Paintings of the Fifteenth Century. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art, eds. Miklós Boskovits and David Alan Brown, 16–17. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art. Brown, David Alan. 2003. “Ginevra de’ Benci.” In Italian Paintings of the Fifteenth Century. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art, eds. Miklós Boskovits and David Alan Brown, 357–69. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art. Gordon, Dillian. 2003. “Masaccio. The Virgin and Child.” In Fifteenth Century Italian Paintings. National Gallery Catalogues. Vol. 1. , 201–23. London: National Gallery Company. Hartt, Frederick, and David G. Wilkins. 2010. History of Italian Renaissance Art: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture. 7th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Hoeniger, Cathleen. 1995. The Renovation of Paintings in Tuscany, 1250–1500. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Horster, Marita. 1980. Andrea del Castagno. Oxford: Phaidon Press. Kanter, Laurence B. 2000. “A Rediscovered Panel by Fra Angelico.” Paragone 51: 3–13. __________ and Pia Palladino. 2005. Fra Angelico. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. Maccarrone, Michele. 1983. “Il sepolcro di Bonifacio VIII nella Basilica Vaticana.” In Atti della IV settimana di studi di storia dell’arte medievale dell’Università di Roma “La Sapienza,” ed. Angiola Maria Romanini, 753– 71. Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider. Minter, Lew. Personal Website. http://webbox.lafayette.edu/~minterl/. 2 December 2011. Web.

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Read, Brock. 2004. “Technology and research are combined to digitally reassemble lost works of art.” Chronicle of Higher Education 2 July 2004: 28. Roettgen, Steffi. 1996. Italian Frescoes: The Early Renaissance 1400–1470, trans. Russell Stockman. New York: Abbeville Press. Strehlke, Carl Brandon. 1994. “Fra Angelico: Predella (47a–d).” In Painting and Illumination in Early Renaissance Florence 1300–1450, ed. Laurence B. Kanter et al., 326–32. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. __________ 2001. “Carpentry and connoisseurship: The disassembly of altarpieces and the rise of interest in early Italian art.” In Rediscovering Fra Angelico: A Fragmentary History, ed. Clay Dean, 41–57. New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery. __________ 2004. “Predella panel of an altarpiece: Dormition of the Virgin.” In Italian Paintings 1250–1450 in the John G. Johnson Collection and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, 45–51. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art. Vasari, Giorgio. 1906. Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori scultori ed architettori scritte da Giorgio Vasari pittore, ed. Gaetano Milanesi. 9 vols. Florence: G. C. Sansoni.

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Figure 1. Lew Minter and Alexis Siemons in Media Lab, Williams Visual Arts Building, Lafayette College

Figure 2. Piero della Francesca: Vision of Constantine, ca. 1452–1466, Cappella Maggiore, San Francesco, Arezzo/ Digital Reconstruction by Jay Amarillo of Piero della Francesca: Vision of Constantine, ca. 1452–1466, Cappella Maggiore, San Francesco, Arezzo

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Figure 3. Benozzo Gozzoli: Madonna and Child with Angel, signed and dated 1450, San Fortunato, Montefalco

Figure 4. Digital Reconstruction by Lew Minter of Benozzo Gozzoli: Madonna and Child with Angel, signed and dated 1450, San Fortunato, Montefalco

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Figure 5. Bartolomeo Caporali: Madonna and Child with Angels, ca. 1460, Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

Figure 6. Fra Angelico: San Domenico di Fiesole Altarpiece, as remodeled by Lorenzo di Credi in 1501, ca. 1423, San Domenico, Fiesole

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Figure 7. Umberto Baldini: Reconstruction (1977) of Fra Angelico: San Domenico di Fiesole Altarpiece, as remodeled by Lorenzo di Credi in 1501, ca. 1422–1423, San Domenico, Fiesole

Figure 8. Digital Reconstruction by Lew Minter of Fra Angelico: San Domenico di Fiesole Altarpiece, as remodeled by Lorenzo di Credi in 1501, ca. 1423, San Domenico, Fiesole

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Figure 9. Digital Reconstruction by Lew Minter of predella of an unidentified altarpiece by Fra Angelico, ca. 1425: Naming of Saint John the Baptist, Museo di San Marco, Florence; Saint James Major Freeing Hermogenes, Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth; Dormition of the Virgin, John G. Johnson Collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia; Meeting of Saints Dominic and Francis, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco; and Vision of Saint Lucy, Collection of Richard L. Feigen, New York

Figure 10. Andrea del Castagno: Crucifixion with Saint Benedict, the Virgin, Saint John the Evangelist, and Saint Romuald (detached from the convent of Santa Maria degli Angeli), ca. 1445, Cenacolo of Sant’Apollonia, Florence

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Figure 11. Digital Reconstruction by Stephanie Moss of Andrea del Castagno: Crucifixion with Saint Benedict, the Virgin, Saint John the Evangelist, and Saint Romuald (detached from the convent of Santa Maria degli Angeli), ca. 1445, Cenacolo of Sant’Apollonia, Florence

Figure 12. Giotto: Confirmation of the Franciscan Rule, probably 1320s, Bardi Chapel, Santa Croce, Florence

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Figure 13. Digital Reconstruction by Gregory Herchenroether of Giotto: Confirmation of the Franciscan Rule, probably 1320s, Bardi Chapel, Santa Croce, Florence

Figure 14. Benozzo Gozzoli: Saint Augustine’s Confirmation as Bishop of Hippo, 1464–1465, Sant’Agostino, San Gimignano

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Figure 15. Digital Reconstruction by Don Smith of Benozzo Gozzoli: Saint Augustine’s Confirmation as Bishop of Hippo, 1464–1465, Sant’Agostino, San Gimignano

Figure 16. Digital Reconstruction by Stephanie Moss of Leonardo da Vinci: Mona Lisa, 1503, Musée du Louvre, Paris

Greensickness and HPV: A Comparative Analysis? Jessica C. Murphy

University of Texas at Dallas [email protected]

William H. Hsu

Kansas State University [email protected]

Wesam Elshamy, Surya Teja Kallumadi, and Svitlana Volkova Can two female diseases from different historical periods be made to talk to one another in a meaningful way through textual analysis? The essay that follows is the story of one attempt to answer that question by focusing specifically on early modern greensickness and modern-day human papillomavirus (HPV). We say “attempt” because there are not an elegant tool and a complete analysis at the end of this tale. The story does, however, demonstrate a number of lessons that we hope will benefit scholars of the early modern period interested in using new technologies in their research. What follows, then, is a detailed account of bringing together seemingly disparate things to see if they might work together: a literary scholar and computer scientists, two female diseases separated by almost five hundred years, and two universities with varying access to a subscription database. The most successful of those combinations was the collaboration across disciplines, in part because one of the goals of the project was to create a component for The Software Environment for the Advancement of Scholarly Research (SEASR) that could allow scholars to engage with seemingly disparate materials (in this case, attitudes toward two different female diseases in two different time periods). SEASR is designed to help humanities scholars collaborate in their work with digital materials. But more than that, SEASR allows developers to tailor applications to fit their research objectives. It is this customizability that makes SEASR appropriate for working with what might at first seem a wildly disparate set of texts and ideas. SEASR is also an ideal environment because of its appeal to programmers and humanities scholars alike. The United States Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval for the use of the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine Gardasil in June of 2006 evoked a heated debate among doctors and parents about the ethics of vaccinating young girls against a sexually transmitted disease (O’Rourke 2007; McGuire 2009; Caseldine-Bracht 2010). Because the FDA recommends that the vaccine © 2014 Iter Inc. and the Arizona Board of Regents for Arizona State University. All rights reserved ISBN 978-0-86698-516-1 (online) ISBN 978-0-86698-515-4 (print) New Technologies in Medieval and Renaissance Studies 4 (2014) 171–197

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be administered to girls as early as the age of nine, the debate centers around the presumed innocence of the young female body and the empirical evidence that reveals that young women are indeed engaging in sexual intercourse earlier than was previously thought. The ongoing controversy over the HPV vaccine reflects not merely parental discomfort with their daughters’ sexual activity, but also our own cultural investment in regulating the sexuality of young women while simultaneously denying its existence. Similar tensions lie behind the rise in diagnoses in the early modern period of greensickness, a disease that some scholars consider a precursor to hysteria. Greensickness is a “disease of virgins” for which the most effective cure is intercourse within marriage. Jessica C. Murphy’s research on greensickness was in its early stages when the Gardasil controversy was reaching a boiling point in 2007. The language about HPV “felt” similar to that about greensickness because of its demonstration of a preoccupation with premarital female sexuality, and the impetus for this project grew from that hunch so familiar to literary scholars.1 Initially the goal of the project was to use data mining and text analysis tools to do a comparative analysis of the language in early modern texts—literary, medical, and herbal—about greensickness and the language in modern medical and popular texts about HPV. The analysis has the potential to draw a picture of continuities and disjunctions in attitudes toward female sexuality in the two periods. We discuss here, however, the process involved in the attempted development of a digital tool to conduct such research alongside some of the theoretical justifications for its usefulness. In the early modern period, greensickness was considered a disease of virgins. The young women suffering from greensickness look pale, have a loss of appetite, have ceased menstruation, and are generally languishing. Herbal manuals propose a variety of cures based in herbal mixtures, but the one cure that will definitely work is sexual intercourse (King 2004, 79). Sexual intercourse helps to relieve the main cause of the disease—that the sufferer of greensickness is “stopped up” and needs cleansing. Thus even the herbal cures are geared towards purgation. Greensickness is first mentioned in a letter of Johannes Lange in 1554 and becomes subsumed by other diseases at

1

For the relationship between what humanities scholars practice with and without computers, see McCarty (2005), especially chapter 1 on modelling. The “hunches” or “feelings” on which literary scholars frequently depend to begin their research into a text can often be borne out by digital investigation.

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the end of the seventeenth century (King 2004).2 Greensickness’s popularity roughly coincides with Elizabeth I’s reign (1558–1603). Because it is a disease caused by virginity, greensickness may also be a cultural comment on Elizabeth’s own public use of virginity (King 2004, 140). Unlike the recommended cure for greensickness, which is sexual intercourse, doctors interested in stopping HPV advise preventative measures. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website, HPV is currently the single most commonly transmitted sexually transmitted infection, and there are more than forty strands of the virus. Infected people may not realize they have HPV, so the CDC advise, “The surest way to prevent HPV is not to have sex.” HPV’s prevention, abstinence, stands in direct opposition to greensickness’s cure, sexual intercourse. HPV is highly contagious: “Anyone who has ever had genital contact with another person can have genital HPV. Both men and women can get it—and pass it on—without even realizing it.” Men can get HPV, but the chances of severe complications from that infection are very slim. There are some texts as well that accuse young men of having greensickness, but these tend to be comments on the young men’s masculinity or proof of the ineptitude of doctors.3 The focus of HPV literature is on prevention through safe-sex practices, which is why the vaccine, Gardasil, came so highly recommended when it was first released. Because HPV spreads easily and abstinence is difficult to enforce, a vaccine might seem to solve some of the major problems. However, putting the suspect commercial concerns aside, the opinions about the vaccine are difficult to distinguish from the opinions about young women and premarital sexual intercourse.4 In much the same way as some argue that giving out free condoms to students encourages sexual activity, opponents of the vaccine frequently argue that vaccinating young women will increase the chances of their engaging in premarital sex. 2

For a discussion of the history of greensickness, as well as an analysis of its historical significance, see King (2004). 3 Christopher Merret, in The accomplisht physician, the honest apothecary, and the skilful chyrurgeon, detecting their necessary connexion, and dependence on each other. Withall a discovery of the frauds of the quacking empirick, the præscribing surgeon, and the practicing apothecary. Whereunto is added the physicians circuit, the history of physick; and a lash for Lex talionis. (London, 1670) claims that the “vulgar physician” will incorrectly diagnose a young man with greensickness (5). 4 I am aware of the arguments about commercial interests in the pushing of the vaccine, but will not be discussing that here. Please see Caseldine-Bracht (2010).

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Although the project grew from Murphy’s initial interest in representing the language used about HPV and greensickness using digital visualization, the objects under study resisted attempts to apply visualization tools. As a scholarly technique, digital visualization can often offer a way to approach textual evidence from an alternative viewpoint. Martyn Jessop argues that “digital visualization … tools … allow visual perception to be used in the creation or discovery of new knowledge” (Jessop 2008, 281–82).5 A digital visualization can often be a good way to begin an analysis, but we did not produce a visualization in part because the objects of study resisted it. One of the challenges of the project has been trying to figure out how to get these two female diseases in these two historical moments to talk to one another. Not only is there a major separation in time between the two occurrences, there is also a difference in kind. Gardasil vaccinates against HPV, but its primary aim is preventing cases of cervical cancer that can stem from the virus. The vaccine is a preventative measure against an eventual disease. Greensickness, on the other hand, is the resultant disease. Its underlying cause might be said to be the sufferer’s virginity, which makes greensickness itself more like cervical cancer than like HPV. However, the discussions about the vaccine revolve around the sexually transmitted disease itself— HPV—with cervical cancer as only the haunting possible eventuality. With greensickness, on the other hand, rarely does one read a discussion about virginity as pathological in and of itself. Although greensickness might work as a covert way to represent virginity pathologically, writers do not directly talk about virginity as pathological. One thing that discourses about HPV and greensickness do share is a relationship to marriage. The discussions about HPV seem to stem from a fear of premarital sexual intercourse, with marital intercourse as a safe ideal, and the discussions about greensickness seem to urge young women to marry in order to achieve the ideal of marital intercourse and “cure” themselves. The diseases’ different time periods also meant that we were dealing with very different sources. HPV can be found in web searches across a variety of publications—from opinion pieces to science journals. To find attitudes toward greensickness in the early modern period, on the other hand, one must turn to the texts available on Early English Books Online (EEBO). The challenge for Murphy, then, was one of data consistency and gathering. In fact, it seemed at first that the data would have to be hand-gathered, smoothed, 5

See also Johanna Drucker and Franco Moretti for the importance of the visual in scholarly knowledge creation.

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and entered into a database before they could be analyzed. While not impossible for a literary scholar to undertake, the potential workload was still somewhat daunting. Computer science, after all, has automated so much of what Murphy would be performing by hand, and there is computer science research into natural language recognition. In other words, the frustration can stem not only from the mountain of difficult work ahead, but also the nagging notion that someone on the other side of campus might know a better and faster way to do it.6 Through Murphy’s participation in the SEASR seminar at the Digital Humanities Summer Institute in June 2009, she was connected to a computer scientist at Kansas State University (KSU). William Hsu works on information extraction, a topic within the field of information retrieval that deals with analyzing documents in order to identify entities and relationships. The collaboration between Hsu and Murphy made sense because at the time Hsu was developing mathematical models and software tools specifically aimed at identifying diseases mentioned in English language texts, such as news articles (Volkova and Hsu 2010). Finding relationships described in these articles was an information-extraction problem that had not yet been addressed using arbitrary news articles retrieved from the web. Previous approaches had dealt primarily with refereed articles such as those in biomedical journals, or with rudimentary named entity recognition consisting only of the names of diseases. The goal of Hsu’s work was to identify deeper structure from text, describing relationships such as where and when a disease outbreak was reported, what species were affected, and what modes of confirmation, such as field or laboratory analyses, were reported. The end result of such extraction was to enable an automated system to produce responses to a query such as “type 2 diabetes,” which could then be plotted on a timeline or a map as shown in Figure 1. The type of search tool depicted is based on a KIIAC tool aimed specifically at finding mentions of animal diseases (e.g., “swine flu Mexico 2009”) and providing a federated display of results.

6

For good discussions about collaboration between the humanities and computer science, see Rockwell (2009) and Spiro (2009).

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Figure 1. Prototype event search based on a previous IR system for veterinary epidemiology Collaboration between UT Dallas and Kansas State University began in October 2009, for the purpose of developing computational workflows for automatically analyzing text to summarize and visualize its content. This joint work aims at applying new methods for information extraction to discover events of interest that are mentioned in text. Information retrieval is the process of finding material, usually documents, of an unstructured nature, usually text, that satisfies an information need from within large collections, usually stored on computers (Manning et al. 2008). Information extraction is a type of information retrieval whose goal is to automatically extract structured information, i.e. categorized and contextually and semantically welldefined data from a certain domain, from unstructured machine-readable documents (“Information extraction” 2010). The Kansas Integrated Information Analysis Center (KIIAC) is an information extraction system originally developed for digesting English language news reports on animal-disease-related events. This system consists of the following components: 1. Search tool. Users enter “free text” queries into a search box. 2. Web search. The query is submitted to a whole-web search engine (Yahoo in the current version) that filters out stop words such as

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common articles and prepositions, and returns links to articles found containing the disease of interest. A software tool called a web crawler (also known as a spider) is then used to archive an article.

Figure 2. Web crawling component of a typical end-to-end information extraction system, depicting several example document sources Figure 2 depicts the acquisition of documents, some of which can first be used to develop and calibrate a component for filtering and ranking pages (the next stage of the overall process). As the figure shows, both domain-dependent and domain-independent entities and quantities can be detected; the distinction between these categories itself varies by application area. For example, in disease event detection, examples of domain-dependent entities include synonyms and slang terms for a disease, whereas place names and many other proper nouns are considered domain-independent. Additional “crawled” documents can be used for experimental validation of the system. Hsu’s group uses a simplified “spot crawler” that captures only the article without following any links. Spot crawling is the process of performing localized page archival on the web, given a single link or range of links (i.e., a partial web path). Spot crawling leverages the power of search engines to obtain relevant web pages from the Internet. The process begins by obtaining a set of relevant candidate queries for which to search. For each of these queries the top n search results are retrieved from web search

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engines such as Google, Yahoo! or Bing. For each link returned, the spot crawler obtains all the other pages to which the retrieved link points. A constant limit is set upon the depth of the localized crawls. This depth acts as a threshold that specifies page relevance for crawl results. From these web pages, text is extracted using an algorithm developed by Weninger, Hsu, and Han (2010). This algorithm is part of a software tool called Context Extraction using Tag Ratios (CETR) that removes formatting directives such as HTML tags and other extraneous information that can identify and extract readable content from a web page. CETR filters out the irrelevant tags and other meta content that is not visible to the user on a web page. To obtain relevant web pages for this particular task, initial queries such as “HPV” and “HPV vaccine” were given as input to the system, which was then used to perform a spot crawl with a depth limit of zero. That is, content is obtained from the retrieved search results only, without performing any further directed crawls on the search results. Source text is then obtained from these web pages by using the content extractor that strips all the relevant text from the web pages. 3. Search result ranking. The results are processed and ranked using the Lucene suite of information retrieval tools (Apache Foundation 2010). A standard analysis system is used to calculate the numerical scores shown. Lucene scores are arbitrary nonnegative real numbers, and higher scores denote a better match between a query and candidate document. It is generally not recommended to normalize relevance scores to a range such as [0, 1] because performing such normalization on the basis of a document collection obscures the absolute meaning of the relevance score. In particular, a score should be robust enough to withstand the removal of documents from the collection, so that the deletion of higher-scoring documents does not result in recalculation of scores, effectively boosting the relevance of the remaining documents. (Apache Foundation 2009) 4. Event extraction and ranking. Documents returned from the search are fed as input into the KIIAC information extraction system, and the following tasks are performed:

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Figure 3. An example of named entity recognition in the disease domain a) Named entity recognition: variants of the disease name of interest are put into a glossary or “gazetteer” (similar to the one used for greensickness, which is described below), and all such variants can be recognized. Figure 3 shows an extensive example of (named) entity recognition, whose definition is extended to include generic entities such as species, dates, and numerical quantities. In the KIIAC application developed using the above NER system, an ontology-based approach was used for the disease name extraction. The ontology is automatically constructed by learning semantic relationships (synonymic, hyponymic, and causative) between the ontology concepts using a syntactic pattern-matching approach. The ontology includes disease names, their synonyms, abbreviations, and corresponding viruses.

Figure 4. Information returned by the entity extractor The NER system takes raw web documents as input, matches it against the ontology, and returns the set of attributes for each

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extracted disease, as shown in Figure 4. This figure illustrates what information is returned by the entity extraction system. The set of attributes includes the extracted disease name, length, starting and ending position, frequency per document, the canonical disease name, and any corresponding synonyms and abbreviations based on an ontology look-up. b) Temporal tagging—dates and times are extracted and converted into a standard machine-readable (“canonical”) format, so that they can be plotted on a timeline using the MIT SIMILE software package as shown in Figure 1. c) Spatial tagging—similarly, location names are extracted from text, disambiguated—for example, the toponym (place name) “Salina” could denote towns named Salina in Kansas, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, or Utah in the United States alone, or Salina Island to the north of Sicily (Wikipedia, Salina 2010)—and plotted on a Google Map. d) Event extraction—candidate event descriptors, consisting of a disease, date/time, and location, are checked for validity (Volkova and Hsu, 2010; Volkova et al., 2010); those triples that pass this final test are transmitted to a Java script that places markers on a timeline and map view; these can also be stored in a database for later use e) Event ranking—based on the preceding steps, events can be ranked according to other criteria, such as polarity of opinion; this is an example of a thematic map.7 5. Timeline and map visualization. Color-coded markers are then placed on a superposed Google Maps-based map view and an MIT SIMILE-based timeline view, allowing basic user filtering by disease. The web crawler also retains URLs so that users can also click through to view the full text of articles on the original source sites.

7

For a description of thematic mapping, see Wikipedia, Thematic map (2010).

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Figure 5. End-to-end system for event extraction The overall process is depicted in Figure 5, which shows the simultaneous transformation of data from each stage to the next.8 Although there is no dearth of free and accessible tools for someone interested in performing text analysis, Hsu’s system was particularly well suited for Murphy’s task because it was designed with language about disease in mind. Murphy tried a number of free text analysis tools before teaming up with Hsu, but because of the quirky nature of the data, each tool was not exactly right. For example, AntConc (Anthony 2006) is a multifunctional concordance tool developed by Laurence Anthony of Waseda University in Japan. Murphy performed an analysis of twenty-five sample texts mentioning greensickness, and this analysis revealed the problems caused by some of the vagaries of early modern spelling. For example, if one searches for “green,” there are a couple of results that have nothing at all to do with greensickness, and greensickness as a single word does not come up once (see Figure 6). 8

The next step in the process will be to assign a polarity to the items that are extracted. For a description of this, please see Appendix 2.

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Figure 6. AntConc concordance of twenty-five sample documents mentioning greensickness What makes AntConc a little more useful than some other concordance tools is that the user can click through the returns to find multiple occurrences of a word. However, there is still a lack of precision when it comes to looking for a word like greensickness, which may occur as one word or two and has multiple spellings. Similarly, IBM’s Many Eyes’s Word Tree feature falls into the problem of variance. Many Eyes’s word trees are in fact quite useful for users who want to analyze data through concordance and keyword in context (KWIC) aspects while maintaining sentence-level integrity. As you can see in Figure 7, finding greensickness itself is not necessarily difficult, but the robustness required for a comparison to HPV just is not there.

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Figure 7. Many Eyes Word Tree of twenty-five sample documents mentioning greensickness Textmap is more along the lines of what Murphy was in fact looking for (Research Foundation of the State University of New York 2009). This tool searches for current news about an “entity” and performs a number of different analyses. For example, Figure 8 below shows the textmap of “cervical cancer,” the disease to which some strains of HPV are thought to lead. A Textmap search for “HPV” returns “cervical cancer” as a result, rather than giving an overall view of HPV as such.

Figure 8. TextMap of Cervical Cancer

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There are three graphs down the center of the page, a map of occurrences to the right and a network of relationships to the left. The user can zoom in on any one to see it more clearly. According to their website information, TextMap monitors news sources and “analyzes both the temporal and geographical distribution of news entities” (RFSUNY 2009). News aggregators and analysis tools might work for analyzing the HPV data on its own, but there is not a way to load in the texts mentioning greensickness for the purposes of comparison here. Further, HPV, because it is not a dangerous disease in itself but rather leads to diseases, does not usually make it to these aggregators as an emergent epidemic situation. Hsu’s team created a Kansas Integrated Information Analysis Center (KIIAC) Event Search for “opinions about HPV vaccine and women.” The KIIAC interface shows geographical and temporal information with mentions. Ideally, here, we might be able to color-code each of the hits as “positive,” “negative,” or “neutral.” As Figure 9 shows, each hit can be magnified and the link followed to the source.

Figure 9. KIIAC Event Search showing hit bubble with link

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The spatial and temporal data come from the publication information of the sources, or the bylines. For HPV this works fairly well, but once again greensickness presents a challenge. To represent the greensickness information in space and time requires a different kind of map and a different sense of publication information. Theoretically, a good map for the greensickness data would be “The Early Modern Map of London” at the University of Victoria in British Columbia: http:// mapoflondon.uvic.ca/ (Jenstad 2004). This digital version of the “Agas” Map offers a look at early modern London through a contemporary map and a robust amount of information about the areas represented on the map. Publication information, however, might not be as informative in these cases as in the case of HPV. For instance, there may be some significance to the fact that the states on the east and west coasts of the United States show by far more publications that discuss HPV because of the tendency toward liberal politics on the coasts. Finding the importance of references to greensickness, however, might depend more on the names of the printers and booksellers and other works they produce and sell rather than the location of their shops alone. The other problem that arises when we think about comparing the analyses is that of visual similarity. The Google Map of the present-day world does not necessarily compare well with the “Agas” map of London from the late sixteenth century. Another problem with generating a tool to handle greensickness mentions in a similar way to HPV mentions is one of orthography. The irregularity of the early modern spelling of greensickness makes it complicated to find with simple word searches. Because a synonym list is difficult to generate automatically, Murphy sent Hsu and his team a list of all of the synonyms that came to mind as well as a list of other words that might not be considered direct synonyms, but might often stand in for the disease (see Figures 10–11 below).

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Figure 10. Greensickness synonym list

Figure 11. Metonyms and associated words that might be used in place of greensickness Spelling was not the only challenge, as the lists in Figures 10 and 11 show. Because many of the texts referred to greensickness metaphorically or figuratively, there were frequently symptoms of greensickness that functioned as

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metonyms for the disease itself. Further, associated diseases often stood for greensickness. Murphy thus sent Hsu three lists: synonyms, metonyms, and associated diseases. Although the word lists Murphy generated could by no means cover everything, we were reasonably certain that it was a good start. At this point in the collaboration, after a lot of discussion about the project, Hsu and Murphy hit a somewhat insurmountable obstacle: limited access. Murphy, who is at UT Dallas, and Hsu, who is at KSU, verified in advance that they both had access to Early English Books Online (EEBO) through their respective universities’ libraries (Chadwyck-Healey). Equipped with the synonym list and a subscription to EEBO, Hsu and his team began work on a crawler. Unfortunately, the results were not what any of us expected. Hsu and Murphy conferred, and it soon became clear that Murphy had access to the full text versions while Hsu did not. Kansas State University does have a subscription to EEBO, but it is not a partner in the EEBO Text Creation Partnership (EEBO-TCP), while the University of Texas was a Phase I partner. Hsu and his team have access only to the images in the database, and not to the full-text transcriptions. There is no good institutional argument for KSU’s Department of Computer and Information Sciences to have access to full-text transcriptions of early modern texts: thus an expensive partnership is not a viable option. This setback meant that Hsu was required to work on a crawler without an easy way to test it and Murphy had to record the data by hand. A search for greensickness in EEBO returns 314 full-text documents. Recording by hand can be very helpful because it allows for a human reader with experience reading early modern texts to get a sense for the body of work that makes up the data set. But this manual recording also takes significantly more time than a crawler and may in fact introduce errors. In future work on the project, we will be looking for ways for Hsu to have access to those full-text documents. While the initial intent of the project was to compare the language used to describe greensickness and that used to describe HPV, our experimentation has both broadened and refined our interests. One area affected has been the way in which we conceive of the similarities between these two female diseases separated by hundreds of years. To compare HPV and greensickness directly with one another does not exactly work. HPV is the underlying cause for cervical cancer (not always, but it is the potential of cervical cancer that drives the market for the vaccine) and greensickness is a disease whose underlying cause is virginity. In other words, HPV is to cervical cancer as virginity is to greensickness. A side effect of thinking about the two diseases in a

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comparative way has been to refine our understanding of each. One point of comparison is the way in which each phenomenon reveals attitudes about female sexuality in the two periods and how those attitudes correlate directly to discourses about marriage. Early modern English doctors and culture in part saw virginity in a pathological way, as something that could make a young girl ill. Virginity, then, is healthy only until one is of age to marry. American doctors in 2010 see premarital sexual intercourse as a danger to young women. Intercourse has evolved from being a cure for to being a cause of disease. There are a number of secondary goals of the project that are less focused on these two female ailments specifically. One of these is to create a tool that allows researchers to use EEBO’s collection in a more robust way than is now possible. The tool would be able to work well with early modern texts and could potentially be of great use to early modern scholars. As a component for SEASR, this tool will have the additional benefit of working in a robust research environment. There are some lessons to take away from this first attempt at a project like this one. Any scholar of the early modern period who has tried to work with new technologies and early modern English primary sources has encountered the difficulties that variance presents. But this variance is not necessarily a problem. Take, for example, the case of the greensickness synonyms and metonyms in Figures 10 and 11 above. Those lists reveal more than just an inconvenience—they reveal a richness of meaning that can be lost in a limited vocabulary. To think, for example, of greensickness through its symptoms— paleness, fever, cessation of menses—is to concretize the disease. The identification of greensickness with visible phenomena reminds us of the female body that is suffering these symptoms. Pulling out the metonymic references to greensickness in these texts would allow a scholar to perform a more indepth reading of the texts. Although it involves a lot more programming, the full, layered meanings offered by early modern English must be incorporated into any computer analysis of early modern texts. Additionally, our difficulty in accessing the full-text documents is an argument for access to the great digitization work being done with primary materials.9 The work that EEBO-TCP is doing is important and costly, and charging for partnership is logical. One can hope, however, that a future iteration of the database will allow access to the transcriptions with a subscription only. 9

Here I am thinking in particular of the work done at the English Broadside Ballad Archive, which is open to all and offers scholars and students alike access to the work it does on the primary materials in its collection.

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Early English Books Online is the largest digital collection of early modern primary texts and the importance of access to the collection in these times of dwindling travel budgets in academia cannot be underestimated. For this project, we hope eventually to be able to show the greensickness information temporally and spatially to compare it to the HPV information with special attention to sentiment analysis. But the larger picture includes a SEASR component that has the potential to assist scholars interested in digging deeper into EEBO’s collection. This component will treat early modern English as a complex set of vocabulary whose complexity only contributes to its meaning rather than as an obstacle to be overcome.

WORKS CITED Anthony, Laurence. “AntConc 3.2.0m.” Laurence Anthony’s website. 2012. Web. http://www.antlab.sci.waseda.ac.jp/antconc_index.html. 14 Jan. 2013. Apache Foundation. “Scores as percentages.” Lucene Wiki. 20 Sept. 2009. Web. http://wiki.apache.org/lucene-java/ScoresAsPercentages. 28 Jan. 2011. Apache Foundation. Apache Lucene. 2010. Web. http://lucene.apache.org/ java/docs/index.html. 10 July 2010. Caseldine-Bracht, Jennifer. 2010. “The HPV vaccine controversy: Where are the women? Where are the men? Where is the money?” The International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics 3, no. 1: 99–112. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “What is HPV?” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 5 Feb. 2010. Web. http://www.cdc.gov/ hpv/WhatIsHPV.html. 26 March 2010. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “The facts-HPV.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Web. http://www.cdc.gov/std/hpv/thefacts/default.htm. 26 March 2010. Chadwyck-Healey. Early English Books Online. 30 June 2010. Web. http://eebo. chadwyck.com/home. 30 June 2010. Drucker, Johanna. “Graphesis.” Poetess Archive Journal 2.1. 2010. Web. http:// paj.muohio.edu/paj/index.php/paj/article/viewArticle/4. 29 Jan. 2011.

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English Broadside Ballad Archive. 2010. Web. http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/. 10 July 2010. Hatzivassiloglou, Vasileios, and Kathy McKeown. 1997. “Predicting the semantic orientation of adjectives.” In Proceedings of the 35th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL-97), 174–81. Stroudsburg, PA: Association for Computational Linguistics. IBM. Many Eyes. 2010. Web. http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/ manyeyes/. 30 June 2010. Jenstad, Janelle. “Welcome.” The map of early modern London. 20 May 2010. Web. http://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/. 30 June 2010. Jessop, Martyn. 2008. “Digital visualization as a scholarly activity.” Literary and Linguistic Computing 23.3: 281–93. King, Helen. 2004. The disease of virgins: Green sickness, chlorosis, and the problems of puberty. New York: Routledge. Manning, Christopher D., Prabhakar Raghavan, and Hinrich Schütze. 2008. Introduction to information retrieval. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McCarty, Willard. 2005. Humanities computing. London: Palgrave Macmillan. McGuire, Lois. “HPV vaccine slow to catch on.” Mayo Clinic 12 May 2009. http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/hpv-vaccine/MY00660. 9 June 2010. Moretti, Franco. 2005. Graphs, maps, trees. London: Verso. The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The Software Environment for the Advancement of Scholarly Research (SEASR). 2009. Web. http://seasr.org/. 30 June 2010. O’Rourke, Meghan. “Cancer sluts: Does the HPV vaccine ‘promote’ promiscuity?” Slate.com 27 September 2007. Web. http://www.slate. com/id/2174850/pagenum/all/#p2. 9 June 2010. Research Foundation of the State University of New York (RFSUNY). TextMap. 2009. Web. http://www.textmap.com/. 9 July 2010.

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Rockwell, Geoffrey. “Collaboration: Digital humanities and computer science.” Theoreti.ca 17 Nov. 2009. Web. http://www.theoreti. ca/?p=2841. 7 July 2010. Spiro, Lisa. Examples of collaborative digital humanities projects. Digital scholarship in the humanities 1 June 2009. Web. http://digitalscholarship. wordpress.com/2009/06/01/examples-of-collaborative-digitalhumanities-projects/. 7 July 2010. Volkova, Svitlana, and William Hsu. 2010. “Computational knowledge and information management in veterinary epidemiology.” Paper presented at the 8th IEEE International Conference on Intelligence and Security Informatics (ISI 2010), May 23–26, 2010, Vancouver, BC, Canada. Volkova, Svitlana, Doina Caragea, William H. Hsu, and Swathi Bujuru. 2010. “Animal disease event recognition and classification.” Paper presented at the First International Workshop on Web Science and Information Exchange in the Medical Web (MedEx 2010), April 30, 2010, Raleigh, NC, USA. Weninger, Tim, Jiawei Han, and William H. Hsu. 2010. “CETR—content extraction via tag ratios.” Paper presented at the 19th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW 2010), April 26–30, 2010, Raleigh, NC, USA. Wikipedia contributors. “Information extraction.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 8 July 2010, 17:05 UTC. Web. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/ index.php?title=Information_extraction&oldid=372421910. 10 July 2010. Wikipedia contributors. “Salina.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia 4 June, 2010, 19:56 UTC. Web. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Salina&o ldid=366072402. 10 July 2010. Wikipedia contributors. “Stop words.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia 27 May 2010, 21:26 UTC. Web. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index. php?title=Stop_words&oldid=364550555. 10 July 2010. Wikipedia contributors. “Thematic map.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia 29 June 2010, 15:41 UTC. Web. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index. php?title=Thematic_map&oldid=370804550. 10 July 2010.

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Wilson, Theresa, Janyce Wiebe, and Paul Hoffman. 2009. “Recognizing Contextual Polarity: an exploration of features for phrase-level sentiment analysis.” Computational Linguistics 35.3: 401–433.

Appendix 1: Twenty-Five Sample Documents Mentioning Greensickness with Numbers of Mentions A. T., practitioner in physicke. 1596. A rich store-house or treasury for the diseased Wherein, are many approued medicines for diuers and sundry diseases, which haue been long hidden, and not come to light before this time. Now set foorth for the great benefit and comfort of the poorer sort of people that are not of abilitie to go to the physitions. (2 mentions) Acton, George. 1670. A letter in answer to certain quaeries and objections made by a learned Galenist against the theorie and practice of chymical physick wherein the right method of curing of diseases is demonstrated, the possibility of universal medicine evinced, and chymical physick vindicated. (1 mention) Adams, Thomas, fl. 1612–1653. 1614. The deuills banket described in foure sermons [brace], 1. The banket propounded, begunne, 2. The second seruice, 3. The breaking vp of the feast, 4. The shot or reckoning, [and] The sinners passing-bell, together with Phisicke from heauen. (1 mention) Alsop, Vincent, 1629 or 30–1703. 1678. Melius inquirendum, or, A sober inquirie into the reasonings of the Serious inquirie wherein the inquirers cavils against the principles, his calumnies against the preachings and practises of the non-conformists are examined, and refelled, and St. Augustine, the synod of Dort and the Articles of the Church of England in the Quinquarticular points, vindicated. (1 mention) Ames, Richard, d. 1693. 1691. Islington-Wells, or, The threepenny-academy a poem. (1 mention) Anonymous. 1670. An Account of the causes of some particular rebellious distempers viz. the scurvey, cancers in women’s breasts, &c. vapours, and melancholy, &c. weaknesses in women, &c. gout, fistula in ano, dropsy, agues, &c. : together with the vertues and uses of a select number of chymical medicines studiously prepar’d for their cure and adapted to the constitutions and temperaments of all ages and both sexes / by an eminent practitioner in physick, surgery and chymistry. (3 mentions)

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Anonymous. 1616. The famous ratketcher with his trauels into France, and of his returne to London. To the tune of the Iouiall tinker. (1 mention) Anonymous. 1588. The good hous-wiues treasurie Beeing a verye necessarie booke instructing to the dressing of meates. Hereunto is also annexed sundrie holsome medicines for diuers diseases. (1 mention) Boyle, Robert, 1627–1691. 1663. Some considerations touching the vsefulnesse of experimental naturall philosophy propos’d in familiar discourses to a friend, by way of invitation to the study of it. (1 mention) Bureau d’adresse et de rencontre (Paris, France). 1664. A general collection of discourses of the virtuosi of France, upon questions of all sorts of philosophy, and other natural knowledg made in the assembly of the Beaux Esprits at Paris, by the most ingenious persons of that nation / render’d into English by G. Havers, Gent. (2 mentions) Charleton, Walter. 1680. Enquiries into human nature in VI. anatomic praelections in the new theatre of the Royal Colledge of Physicians in London / by Walter Charleton. (2 mentions) Culpeper, Nicholas, 1616–1654. 1662. Culpeper’s directory for midwives: or, A guide for women. The second part. Discovering, 1. The diseases in the privities of women. 2. The diseases of the privie part. 3. The diseases of the womb. 4. The diseases and symptoms in children., London: Printed by Peter Cole, 1662. (8 mentions) Dunton, John, 1659–1733. 1691. A voyage round the world, or, A pocket-library divided into several volumes .. : the whole work intermixt with essays, historical, moral, and divine, and all other kinds of learning / done into English by a lover of travels .. , London : Printed for Richard Newcome, [1691]. (1 mention) Gildon, Charles, 1665–1724. 1692. The post-boy rob’d of his mail, or, The pacquet broke open consisting of five hundred letters to persons of several qualities and conditions, with observations upon each letter / publish’d by a gentleman concern’d in the frolick. , London: Printed for John Dunton, 1692. (2 mentions) Golborne, John. 1674. A friendly apology, in the behalf of the womans excellency together with some examples of women-worthies : as also the character of a virtuous and accomplished woman : wherein ladies of pleasure are taxed and admonished / written in verse by J. Golborne. (1 mention)

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Greenwood, Will. 1657. [Apographe storges], or, A description of the passion of love demonstrating its original, causes, effects, signes, and remedies / by Will. Greenwood, [Philalethes]. (2 mentions) Harvey, William, 1578–1657. 1653. Anatomical exercitations concerning the generation of living creatures to which are added particular discourses of births and of conceptions, &c. (3 mentions) Merret, Christopher, 1614–1695. 1670. The accomplisht physician, the honest apothecary, and the skilful chyrurgeon detecting their necessary connexion and dependence on each other : withall a discovery of the frauds of the quacking empirick, the praescribing surgeon, and the practicing apothecary. (1 mention) Mynsicht, Adrian von, 1603–1638. 1682. Thesaurus & armamentarium medico-chymicum, or, A treasury of physick with the most secret way of preparing remedies against all diseases : obtained by labour, confirmed by practice, and published out of good will to mankind : being a work of great use for the publick / written originally in Latine by .. Hadrianus à Mynsicht ..; and faithfully rendred into English by John Partridge .. , London : Printed by J.M. for Awnsham Churchill, 1682. (3 mentions) Neville, Henry, 1620–1694. 1647. A parliament of ladies with their lawes newly enacted. (1 mention) Phillips, Edward, 1630–1696?. 1685. The mysteries of love & eloquence, or, The arts of wooing and complementing as they are manag’d in the Spring Garden, Hide Park, the New Exchange, and other eminent places : a work in which is drawn to the life the deportments of the most accomplisht persons, the mode of their courtly entertainments, treatments of their ladies at balls, their accustom’d sports, drolls and fancies, the witchcrafts of their perswasive language in their approaches, or other more secret dispatches .. , London : Printed by James Rawlins for Obadiah Blagrave. (2 mentions) Randolph, Thomas, 1605–1635. 1651. A pleasant comedie, entituled Hey for honesty, down with knavery translated out of Aristophanes his Plutus by Tho. Randolph, augmented and published by F.J. (2 mentions) Riolan, Jean, 1580–1657. trans. Nicholas Culpeper. 1657. A sure guide, or, The best and nearest way to physick and chyrurgery that is to say, the arts of healing by medicine and manual operation : being an anatomical description of the whol body of man and its parts : with their respective diseases

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demonstrated from the fabrick and vse of the said parts : in six books .. at the end of the six books, are added twenty four tables, cut in brass, containing one hundred eighty four figures, with an explanation of them : which are referred to in above a thousand places in the books for the help of young artists. (1 mention) Willis, Thomas, 1621–1675. 1684. Dr. Willis’s practice of physick being the whole works of that renowned and famous physician wherein most of the diseases belonging to the body of man are treated of, with excellent methods and receipts for the cure of the same : fitted to the meanest capacity by an index for the explaining of all the hard and unusual words and terms of art derived from the Greek, Latine, or other languages for the benefit of the English reader : with forty copper plates. , London : Printed for T. Dring, C. Harper, and J. Leigh. (20 mentions)

Appendix 2: Opinion/Sentiment Assignment For each link obtained from the spot crawls, relevant text is extracted from the web pages, and sentiment polarity is assigned by an annotator to the referent in that particular portion of the web page. These web pages contain information about HPV and HPV vaccines either in a public health reference context or a general reference context. The pages pertaining to the public health reference sections usually contain medical information regarding HPV, HPV vaccines and cervical cancer. They also contain information about transmittal of HPV, tests for HPV and tools for diagnosing and preventing HPV and the related statistics. The general health reference pages usually contain extraneous information related to HPV and HPV vaccines. They also contain anecdotal evidence about HPV. Such anecdotal text can usually be found in the comments section of public health web site and blogs. The referents in these portions of text are the HPV vaccines and the various kinds of HPV vaccines found in the market. Sentiment polarity such as positive, negative or neutral is assigned to these texts based on the general sentiment attributed in the text to the referents. An unbiased text that gives information about the referent and does not possess to any positive or negative connotations is assigned a neutral polarity. For example:

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• “ Learn about the health effects of HPV and how the infection is transmitted HPV Vaccines Vaccinerelated resources for parents, patients, providers and the media” • “There are two vaccines (Cervarix and Gardasil) that can protect women against most cervical cancers (see above). Cervical cancer can also be prevented with routine cervical cancer screening and follow-up of abnormal results. The Pap test can find abnormal cells on the cervix so that they can be removed before cancer develops. An HPV DNA test, which can find HPV on a woman’s cervix, may also be used with a Pap test in certain cases. Even women who got the vaccine when they were younger need regular cervical cancer screening because the vaccine does not protect against all cervical cancers.” In the above sentences the sentiment throughout the text is predominantly neutral as it provides mostly information, so they are assigned a neutral polarity. On the other hand, any text that seems to possess any kind of positive or negative tilt towards the referent is assigned the corresponding polarity. For example: In “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) recommends that girls between the ages of 11 and 12 receive the vaccine, as it is important to get the vaccine before becoming sexually active. The vaccine is approved for boys and girls and men and women between the ages of 9 years and 26 years.” The sentence has a positive tone due to the presence of words like “recommends” corresponding to the referent and hence it is assigned a positive polarity. By contrast, in “Several conservative groups in the U.S. have publicly opposed the concept of making HPV vaccination mandatory for preadolescent girls, asserting that making the vaccine mandatory is a violation of parental rights. They also say that it will lead to early sexual activity, giving a sense of immunity to sexually transmitted disease. Both the Family Research Council and the group Focus on the Family support widespread (universal) availability of HPV vaccines but oppose mandatory HPV vaccinations for entry to public school.” The text has a negative tone due to the presence of words such as “oppose” which are assigned to the referent and hence it is assigned a negative polarity.

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The specific type of sentiment analysis described here is based only on prior polarity, i.e., semantic orientation, the polarity that would be listed for a word in a lexicon, and the aspect of contextual polarity (phrase-level polarity) that accounts for the influence of the domain or topic (e.g., the referent). (Hatzivassiloglou and McKeown 1997; Wilson et al. 2009) Assignments of prior polarity based on a lexicon can be automatically applied to adjectives and adverbs in a text, while contextual polarity is generally more challenging to impute. Both types of polarity are imputed by manual annotation in this research. The much broader task of subjectivity analysis across primary and non-primary sources, taking account of bias and lack thereof in third-party reporting of public opinion, is beyond the scope of this work.

Resuscitability and “Excellent New” Early Modern Verse Kris McAbee

University of Arkansas at Little Rock [email protected] The Renaissance investment in rebirth, in renewing old modes of cultural production, reveals itself in the ways that early modern media style themselves as especially new. Self-conscious gestures in a discourse of newness are particularly evident in acknowledgements of form, when texts call attention to their formal features as doing something new. We see this in early modern verse forms across the cultural spectrum, from the popular form of broadside ballads to traditionally “high” forms like sonnet sequences. An emphasis on newness is characteristic of each genre. Given David M. Henkin’s argument that “media history, at its core, is a study of the forms of circulation,” new media theory offers routes to explore the cyclical nature of particular early modern forms (2008, 36). Self-conscious references to novelty are, on the one hand, readily identifiable as part of the Renaissance project of “rebirth,” while, on the other, they are analogous with new media phenomena that depend upon a certain cyclicality of newness. Employing digital information visualizations, this essay argues that sonnets and ballads as early modern media objects typify the cycle of renewability as posed by new media theory. Despite the overwhelming and simultaneous popularity of both sonnets and ballads, these two areas of literary production in the Renaissance rarely appear in the same critical discussions. The lack of apparent overlap in the two cultural phenomena stems largely from class-related expectations about both production and consumption of the texts involved; sonnet sequences and broadside ballads are generally situated on opposite ends of the cultural spectrum. However, recent critical interventions have shown the line between ballads and sonnets, whose popularity was so dependent upon their circulation in print, are not as hard and fast as generic constraints might suggest.1 Along such lines, Eric Nebeker’s recent article, “Broadside Ballads, 1

Of course, broadside ballads influenced other, non-lyric genres as well. The influence © 2014 Iter Inc. and the Arizona Board of Regents for Arizona State University. All rights reserved ISBN 978-0-86698-516-1 (online) ISBN 978-0-86698-515-4 (print) New Technologies in Medieval and Renaissance Studies 4 (2014) 199–216

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Miscellanies, and the Lyric in Print,” goes a long way toward demonstrating the permeability of supposed boundaries between Renaissance lyric and ballads by examining commonalities among miscellanies and broadside ballads in metrical schemes, poetic topics, and print history. Nebeker locates in broadside ballads the bridge between Tottel’s Miscellany of 1557 and the vogue for sonnets nearly thirty years later: “Tottel was thus able to appeal to different kinds of readers for decades because different parts of his miscellany became relevant as the audience diverged. The early popularity was based on the taste for ballads that is evidenced in broadsides as well as other early poetry” (2009, 1002–03; see also Marquis 2007). A literary history of modes of Renaissance literary production hence includes a connection among broadside ballads and the lyric form that would manifest in the vogue for sonnet sequences. The boundaries between these forms are especially permeable when it comes to a cultural preoccupation with both genres’ newness as literary trends. In Shakespeare’s Love’s Labor’s Lost, after a scene in which multiple sonnets are produced by the major characters with the same speed and vigor that they are being replicated on the printing press of the day, the witty Berowne— himself, ironically, the author of one of the many sonnets in the play— mocks his fellow sonneteers: “Tush, none but minstrels like of sonneting!” (Shakespeare 1997, 4.3.156). Berowne’s ridicule of the sonnet vogue as mere minstrelsy—the stuff of popular ballads—ironically pairs the two seemingly disparate literary forms. Berowne’s bit of self-satire distorts his perspective on the literary modes in which he participates to bring them into ironic focus. Sonnets, like ballads, are proliferating at a rate that signals faddishness, a type of novelty that is necessarily short-lived precisely because it seems to thrive. The simultaneity of these literary trends intimates a cultural preoccupation with shorter verse forms in print. While the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries saw a much-noted vogue in sonnet sequences, broadside ballads were simultaneously being printed in unparalleled numbers, of ballad culture in Shakespeare’s dramatic works, for example, has received a significant amount of critical attention; see in particular Newman (2007, 95–135). Though such work is beyond the scope of this essay’s argument, insofar as this essay concerns itself with these verse forms as new print media, it is worth noting that scholars do locate the through line between ballad culture and Shakespeare in ballads as a print medium, as opposed to a strictly traditional, performance-based oral medium. See the work of folklorist Helen Sewell (1962).

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estimated to have been printed in the millions by this time (Watt 1993, 11). The sonnet and ballad forms may have lived and breathed in the courtly games of favor or on the tongues of street mongers, but their popularity was fueled by the printing press, through which these trendy texts were repeatedly renewed in material production. The information revolution brought about by the book and the printing press has a significant corollary in the digital revolution of today—a correspondence much noted by cultural and print historians. Both information revolutions—that of early modern period print and that of the contemporary digital network—experienced a public backlash due to the ambiguous effects of the very democratization of knowledge that they enable. Neo-luddite concerns about the “dubious” nature of information on the internet rehash the early modern anxieties about printed texts that “spread as from a spring,” thereby “corrupting the multitude” (Himmelfarb 1996; Chettle 1592, 55).2 However, by pointing to an analogous relationship between the “virulence” —that is, the figurative infectiousness—of these literary trends and the operations of media objects in the contemporary network society, I realize that I am in danger of suggesting that chronologically and socio-culturally distinct phenomena are somehow the same thing. Certainly that is far from the case. Rather, I want to draw attention to, and thereby critique, the fraught nature of “newness” when it comes to both moments in history. I do not aim simply to say “there is nothing new under the sun,” claiming that the rise of new media is merely a reconfiguration of media trends in the early modern period. Instead, I want to bring into focus the very idea of newness in both the early modern period and today to point to the cultural factors that contribute to a discourse of the new. The implied emphasis on the newness of so-called “new media” has become an increasingly vexed theoretical perspective invoking a starker divide in “old” vs. “new” media behaviors than are critically helpful when taking the long view. As Alan Liu reminds us, “New media, it turns out, is a very old tale” (Liu 2008). Thus, turning to new media theory of information proliferation, specifically notions of textual degradation and regeneration, suggests some potential points of contact among sonnets, ballads, and rising trends in media history. A cycle of renewability emerges in the propagation of both sonnets and ballads, in a pattern suggestive of what new media theorist Wendy Hui Kyong Chun calls the “resuscitability” of information. For Chun, “Digital media networks are not based on the regular obsoleteness or disposability 2

In fact, Himmelfarb herself draws this connection between the two eras (1996).

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of information” but, instead, on the endurance of the ephemeral. “Even text messaging,” she notes, “which seems to be about the synchronous or the now enables the endless circulation of forwarded messages, which are both new and old. … This repetition, rather than detracting from the message, often attests to its importance” (2008, 171). Yet even for Chun, the importance of this repetition is not limited to digital media. Commenting on the “rediscovery” of Mendel’s theories of genetics thirty-five years after his original experiments, she remarks: “Repetition is thus not the evidence of thought wasted but of thought disseminated” (2008, 160). Thus, Chun invites the application of the notion of resuscitability beyond merely the newest of new media. This very notion of resuscitability bears heavily upon both the sonnet and the ballad culture of the English Renaissance. The vogue for sonnet sequences of the 1590s, in particular, suggests repetition on several levels. First, in terms of temporality, the sonnet form regenerated over time, experiencing lulls and spikes in popularity. Three hundred years after the form was developed in thirteenth-century Italy, two hundred years after Petrarch and Dante popularized it, and nearly half a century after the Pléiade of French poets embraced the Italian form, English writers published sonnets as sequences in unprecedented numbers, embracing a trend for the long-standing form as newly English (since Wyatt and Surrey’s pioneering moves of forty years earlier). Yet the vogue itself did not see a simple upward trajectory in the popularity of the form. In fact, as the visualizations below show, data about the printing of the sonnet sequences that make up the “sonnet vogue” of Renaissance England shows peaks and valleys suggestive of a cycle of renewability rather than exponential growth. Digital visualization tools make readily apparent the shape of these printing trends. In particular, Motion Charts by Google are especially helpful for dramatizing trends over time because they offer animated timelines that allow users to interact with several data points. Yet, even without the animation (as in the still shot in Figure 1), Motion Charts can show the relationships among several data sets simultaneously in a still set, in this case bringing together multiple factors to reveal instantly the structure of the sonnet vogue.3

3

The interactive versions of all visualizations in this essay, and the data sets behind them, are available though my ongoing visualization project, “The Sonnet Virus,” which hopes to expose new possible narratives for the rise and fall of the sonneteer in sixteenth-century England and beyond: http://ualr.edu/kxmcabee/sonnetvirus-home.html.

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Figure 1. Unique love sonnet sequences, first publication, 1555–1640 (Motion Chart Screenshot) This particular timeline traces love sonnets specifically.4 Each bubble represents the first publication of a unique sonnet sequence, while the size of each bubble represents the number of sonnets in that sequence (so that larger bubbles represent longer sequences). The bubbles scroll horizontally as time elapses, since the x-axis represents time. The vertical y-axis represents the total number of sonnet sequences published that year; thus, spikes in the graph demonstrate an intensified level of publication in a given year. As the graph shows, publication of sonnet sequences peaks in the 1590s, suggesting why the sonnet vogue is also frequently called the sonnet “boom.” Yet the graph contradicts one narrative of Renaissance sonnet production that would have us believe that sonnets were written in increasing numbers through the end of the sixteenth century before dropping suddenly out of fashion. Instead, we see in the period between 1580 and 1635 about ten years of intense productivity followed by a sustained and steady publication record. Moreover, as is indicated by the size of the bubbles, the number of sonnets increases over time, such that though only one sequence is published in any given year after the “boom,” those sequences tend to consist of more sonnets, corresponding with the larger bubbles. In this way, the sonnet 4

Love sonnets are typical of the vogue, as opposed to religious or miscellaneous sonnets, which were produced simultaneously but not in the same numbers nor to the same degree of cultural resonance in terms of contemporary depictions of the form. For example, other genres, such as drama and prose fiction, that depict the propensity for sonnet-writing do so in the terms of love poetry.

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sequence genre is resuscitated over a sixty-year period, exhibiting what Chun might call the “undead” of the genre (2008, 171). Similarly, the 1590s boom is itself indicative of the resuscitability of information, showing its own peaks and valleys. The sonnet boom of the 1590s can be seen in Figure 2 below, which depicts only the sequences published in that decade. Figure 2 shows a screenshot of the same timeline as in Figure 1 above, but uses the zoom function to focus on the boom itself.

Figure 2. Unique love sonnet sequences, first publication, 1590–1599 (Motion Chart Screenshot) This graph highlights the sequence credited with inaugurating the trend for publishing sonnets, the pirated 1591 edition of Sir Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella. The relative lull following it in 1592 actually suggests an intense period of productivity—not of publication, but of the actual authoring, editing, compiling, and acquiring of the sequences to be published in the subsequent years. Such valleys, as in 1595 as well, are necessary for the peaks: these are the years in which the dissemination of information happens and resuscitation begins. As Chun reminds us in the case of the re-emergence of Mendel’s theories of genetics, we cannot assume that the gaps in production are indicative of inactivity. Thought (in this case, in the particular form of sonnets) is being disseminated in these lulls. Certainly some lulls in production are more dramatic than others, and even the sustained, yet occasional, publication of sonnet sequences well into the seventeenth century eventually tapered off to a widespread distaste for the form in the eighteenth century. However, taking a longer view provides

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even more evidence for the sonnet as representative of the resuscitability of media forms. William Lisle Bowles resuscitated the trend in 1789 with his Fourteen Sonnets, influencing Wordsworth and thus three generations of sonnet-writers including Keats, Shelley, the Rosettis, Yeats, Owen, and Auden. The renewed interest in the form in the nineteenth century culminated in the Victorian “sonnetomania,” analogous to the sonnet craze of the late sixteenth century. Timelines of literary production speak to the genre’s regeneration overtime. Likewise, the genre’s content is also resuscitated with each new sequence, as the sonnets spin out in intertextual play. Each sequence attempts to renew the conventions of the genre. For the love sequences in particular, Petrarch is revived every time a sonnet laments the pleasure and pain of the unrequited nature of a divine love. Indeed, the form of the sonnet sequence itself is suggestive of resuscitability: the “little songs” of sonnets—always compact, concise, and contained—open up into the superfluity of a narrative sequence. The genre manifests what Chun calls the “undead of information” in that each sequence is composed of additional sonnets upon sonnets in an open circuit of exchange with the conventions of preceding sonnet media. Though the sequential nature of a sonnet sequence lends some sense of chronology to each individual sonnet, each “new” sonnet is not immediate to its production or its placement in the overarching form of the sequence. That is, the thirty-fifth sonnet of a sequence bares only the narrative impression of being “newer” than the thirty-fourth, and so on. As we see with the reorganization of sequences, especially in cases like Michael Drayton’s Idea, for which sonnets were revised and reordered for six different publications, a sonnet’s newness is in part an arbitrary function of its sequential placement. In this way, the sonnets of sonnet sequences correlate with the “nonsimultaneousness of the new” of weblogs. As Chun articulates, in blogs, “an older post can always be ‘discovered’ as new; a new post is already old” (2008, 169). Likewise, sonnets have a certain portability akin to weblog posts. They circulate in their own sequences and are “ ‘discovered’ as new” in other texts, or vice versa: consider the appearance of Shakespeare’s sonnets 138 and 144 in The Passionate Pilgrim (1599), ten years before the publication of his sequence. So, while sonnets seem closed off by the constraints of the fourteen-line form and short-lived due to their trendy nature, their compactness allows for circulation that results in persistence of form and convention. Indeed, this endurance of the ephemeral is the subtext of individual sonnets themselves. As Dante Rosetti articulates in his famous nineteenth-century sonnet: “A Sonnet is a moment’s monument,— / Memorial from the Soul’s eternity /

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To one dead deathless hour.” Reading Rosetti’s understanding of the enduring ephemerality of the sonnet against Chun’s assertion that the “undead of information” is constitutive of new media, we see the sonnet as participatory in the trajectory of new media, the poetic form itself always racing toward the edge of obsolescence. New media’s very sustainability depends on the elusiveness of the “newness” of the media, on its being already old on the moment of inception. As Chun describes: Indeed, rather than asking, What is new media? we might want to ask what seem to be the important questions: what was new media? and what will it be? To some extent the phenomenon stems from the modifier new: to call something new is to ensure that it will one day be old. (2008, 108) Similarly, when the sonnet form was revived in sixteenth-century England and again in the nineteenth century, it was new precisely because it had been old. Likewise, as the individual sonnets themselves are printed, rediscovered, and re-appropriated in further poetic production, their newness is not simultaneous with their creation. This is precisely the problem that Chun confronts in new media’s enduring ephemerality: The slipperiness of new media—the difficulty of engaging it in the present—is also linked to the speed of its dissemination. […] This constant repetition, tied to an inhumanly precise and unrelenting clock, points to a factor more important than speed—a nonsimultaneousness of the new, which I argue sustains new media as such. (2008, 108) New media’s obsession with newness and simultaneously imminent obsolescence is a feature of not just digital new media but, I would argue, all new media. In this arena, despite their much-acknowledged differences, courtly sonnet culture and popular broadside ballad culture of the early modern period correspond. Both genres draw attention to their newness in ways that signal a potential unease or unsettledness about their circulation. Such references to newness speak to the moments of tension characteristic in new media’s attempts at self-definition. In their introduction to New Media, 1740–1915, Lisa Gitelman and Geoffrey Pingree articulate:

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There is a moment, before the material means and the conceptual modes of new media have become fixed, when such media are not yet accepted as natural, when their own meanings are in flux. At such a moment, we might say that new media briefly acknowledge and question the mythic character and the ritualized conventions of existing media, while they are themselves defined within a perceptual and semiotic economy that they then help to transform. (2003, xii) Although sonnets and ballads both build on historical forms, their resuscitative nature puts them in a constant state of flux in which they persistently return to questions about the conventions of existing media. Broadside ballads in particular take self-referential pains to advertise their newness and trendiness, in spite of evidence of their well-established nature. Ballads’ obsession with their own freshness is evident in their very titles. In fact, “new” is one of the most frequent words in ballad titles, as indicated by Figure 3. This word cloud was made with titles of the ballads in the Pepys and Roxburghe collections, together totaling approximately 3,300 ballads. It visualizes the word frequency, such that the words that appear the most often across the data set of ballad titles appear the largest in the “cloud.”

Figure 3. Word frequency in titles of Pepys and Roxburghe ballads (Word Cloud)

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Here, “Love” occupies a significant amount of real estate—telling us that it is one of the most frequently used words in titles of ballads. But other words appear nearly as frequently: the word cloud shows the word “new” twice, once capitalized and once not—and both times rather large. Thus the word cloud shows us that newness is among the most popular ideas expressed in the titles of a representative selection of extant early modern ballads. Interactive tag clouds made with IBM’s Many Eyes allow more detailed analysis of the frequency of these words. A simple tag cloud, as in Figure 4, shows (in alphabetical order) the most frequent words in the data set, in this case again the titles of the Pepys and Roxburghe ballads. “Love” and its many variants are clearly recurrent in ballad titles, but once again we see the prominence of “new.”

Figure 4. Word frequency in titles of Pepys and Roxburghe ballads (Tag Cloud) The interactive feature of IBM’s Many Eyes invites further investigation into the word frequencies, since hovering over any given word with the mouse pointer lists specific instances of occurrence, as in Figure 5.

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Figure 5. Detail of occcurences of “new” in titles of Pepys and Roxburghe ballads (Tag Cloud) The specific examples demonstrate how “new” appears in titles—not simply to describe a new phenomenon (as in the “New Government”) but also to describe the ballads themselves (“New Ditty,” “New Song,” and “New Ballad”), thus revealing across ballads a conflation of subject and medium in an overarching discourse of the new. Further exploration, with the aid of Many Eyes tag cloud’s two-word phrase feature, uncovers concern with newness among ballad titles that may in fact surpass ballads’ seemingly primary interest in love. Simply toggling the tag cloud to visualize the frequency of two-word phrases instead of single words, illustrates that among two-word phrases in ballad titles, those that include “new” are the most frequent (Figure 6).

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Figure 6. Two-word phrase frequency in titles of Pepys and Roxburghe ballads (Tag Cloud) This refined view illustrates that “new song” is by far the most frequent two-word phrase in ballad titles, and that “new” appears repeatedly in title phrases. Titles use “new” as a singular modifier describing “ballad,” “ditty,” and “song,” while also using the word often enough that the newness itself is frequently described as “pleasant” or “excellent.” This phenomenon of excellently new ballads provides a telling example of ballad culture’s obsession with novelty and the way that such ephemeral “ditties” endure. This endurance of the ephemeral is analogous to digital new media’s reliance on the degeneration and resuscitation of material. As with the screen captures from “The Sonnet Virus” in Figures 1 and 2, the Motion Chart in Figure 7 provides a still shot of an animated timeline. Again, time is measured along the horizontal x-axis and total number of items published for that year shown on the vertical y-axis, so that periods of intensified publication will be visualized by peaks on the graph. This graph, however, depicts data about the ballads from the Pepys and the Roxburghe collections that have the phrase “excellent new” in the title.

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Figure 7. Frequency of Pepys and Roxburghe ballads with “excellent new” titles, 1600–1800 (motion chart screenshot) This graph indicates that “Excellent Newness” stretches over a long period of ballad history, from 1601 to 1790. Moreover, much like the intermittent vogues for sonnet writing, there are some intensely trendy moments in which to title a ballad as “Excellent New.” Some of these ballads, such as the 1689 broadside “An Excellent new song fitted for the times,” privilege their contemporaneity above all else. All this title tells one is that the ballad is especially current and, because “fitted to the times,” ephemeral. Yet we see across this timeline the endurance of the ephemeral in the repeated interest in excellent newness as well as in the regeneration of subject matter itself. Like the text messages and blog posts that Chun cites as emblematic of new media objects’ ability to be resuscitated through rediscovery, even ballads such as these that emphasize their own time-specificity by advertising that they are not only excellent but also new are subject to such resuscitability. The graph in Figure 8 shows in more detail the period at the end of the seventeenth century, during which “excellent new” ballads were especially popular, showing the sorts of peaks and valleys of production that were evident in the late sixteenth-century sonnet trends.

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Figure 8. Frequency of Pepys and Roxburghe ballads with “excellent new” titles, 1670–1702 (Motion Chart Screenshot) And like the sonnets, specific ballads themselves, not just the subgenre of “excellent new” ballads as a whole, exhibited qualities analogous to new media’s resuscitability. Consider an interesting emblem of the “excellent new” subgenre in ballads: the 1684 broadside “An Excellent New Ballad of Patient Grissel.” The story of Patient Grissel itself, of the woman who obediently follows her husband’s wishes while he repeatedly tests her virtue through cruel tricks (including pretending to have their children murdered), is the stuff of folklore and, while debatably “excellent,” is certainly not “new” in 1684. Versions of the Griselda tale appear in the writings of Boccaccio, Petrarch, and Chaucer. Dekker, Chettle, and Haughton’s play entitled Patient Grissel hit the stage in 1599. The story is resuscitated in the eighteenth century, which saw three different operas named Griselda. Clearly Grissel avoided obsolescence in the seventeenth century, between the sixteenth-century dramas and the eighteenth-century operas, with the aid of the “excellent new” ballad, a medium in its heyday at the time. Given the story’s traditional context, the title of the “excellent new” Grissel ballad would suggest that what is “new” about this text is its medium, not its contents. Yet, a search of the English Broadside Ballad Archive (http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu) for ballads with “Grissel” in the title proves that assumption false. Between the Pepys and the Roxburghe collections there are at least six ballads that contain the word “Grissel” in the title. Moreover, the excellent new ballad of the Patient Grissel is hardly the first of these. At least two of these ballads were published well before 1684 and the text of these ballads is virtually identical. What is new, however, is the aesthetic object—the placement of the text and the woodcut illustrations;

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these are the function of the new printer. Hence the ballad’s “newness” is tied directly to the production of its medium—it is a new edition, not a new story nor even a new ballad, per se. Clearly, the phrase “excellent new” is used to advertise the ballad as a contemporary (with some emphasis on “temporary”) commodity. Not unlike ballads, the sonnet sequences printed during the sonnet vogue advertise their newness on the title pages: the pirated edition of Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella also boasts (equally pirated) “sundry other rare sonnets” by diverse other gentlemen. The title page for Spenser’s Amoretti, published at the height of the vogue, extols the newness of its contents, proclaiming, with pride of place, “Written not long since by Edmund Spenser.” Even sequences published after the vogue, like Shakespeare’s 1609 sequence, emphasize newness: the title page embraces the nonsimultaneity of the new by insisting that these sonnets are “never before imprinted,” gesturing at the same time toward the freshness of the printed text and the relative obsolescence of publishing sonnet sequences. The literary history argument that Nebeker sets forth, in which printed ballads readied the literary marketplace for the elite forms of the sonnet sequence, bears upon both the convergences and the divergences between sonnets and ballads in their pursuit of enduring ephemerality. Nebeker’s argument evolves into an eventual departure between the elite lyric styles of sonnet culture and the ruder forms of the broadside ballad, supporting Burke’s withdrawal thesis: “In Elizabeth’s reign the references made by educated men to minstrels and their ballads became more and more patronizing as the literary ideals of the Renaissance made their impact” (Burke 1978, 277). Yet, the extra-generic characterizations of both balladeer figures and sonneteer figures as well tend toward similar mocking ironies. Consider again the sonnet scene of Love’s Labor’s Lost, when Berowne relies on just such a patronizing tone toward balladeering to mock the educated men (comically, including himself) who write sonnets: “Tush, none but minstrels like of sonneting” (4.3.155). Indeed, among terms for poets, “sonneteer” and “balladeer” seem uniquely tied. Both terms do not enter English vernacular until well after their associated genres had been established as fashionable, but the mocking depictions of both sonnet and ballad production in contemporaneous Renaissance texts offer precedent for disparaging connotation of both expressions. Words for verse production like “poet” or “bard” evoke the ideal of the creator of a second, golden nature, as Sidney articulates in his Apology—a nature belied in Renaissance depictions such as those in Love’s Labor’s Lost of ballad minstrels or those who “turn sonnet” as ridiculous, petty

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poets.5 Other terms such as “rhymer,” “versifier,” “hack” may connote some of the distrust, negative attitude, or downright vitriol toward poets, but they lack both the generic specificity and the full character portrait offered by either “sonneteer” or “balladeer.” Both terms employ generic specificity while evoking figures that are defined by a cultural understanding that does not depend wholly on historical biography nor on lyric persona. That is, Renaissance texts create sonneteering and balladeering figures who are linked by their mutual depictions as producers of predictable poems at best and doggerel at worst. These depictions correspond with Chun’s assessment of the weblog as an emblem for the nonsimultaneity of the new in new media. Blog entries are not linked by plot, but rather, Chun reminds us, they are “tied together solely by the presence of the so-called author” (2008, 169). Such is certainly the case with sonnet sequences, where any overarching narrative depends upon the presiding presence of the lyric persona. We learn from other genres that this “so-called author,” that is, the figure evoked as the speaker/writer of the sonnets, is merely on par with a balladeer. Perhaps this criticism of sonnetwriting, as ventriloquized through Berowne’s comparison of sonneteering and balladeering, speaks to the apparent lack of intertextuality between broadside ballads and Shakespeare’s sonnets (a surprising deficit given his plays’ frequent allusions to ballads). Shakespeare would have been aware of a cultural anxiety about the over-production of sonnets since he participated in the production of sonnets as well as the mockery of the practice. Shakespeare’s sonnets then might naturally avoid the borrowing from less elite forms as part and parcel of the much acknowledged self-referential anxiety expressed in sonnets regarding their poetic legacy. In other words, ballad culture and sonnet culture share in a “productive unease” typified by new media.6 This tension centers around the self-definition of their forms, ever verging on the obsolete, and results in a persistent discourse of the new. 5

To “turn sonnet” is Armado’s phrasing upon falling for Jaquenetta in Love’s Labour’s Lost: Adieu, valour; rust, rapier; be still, drum; for your manager is in love; yea, he loveth. Assist me, some extemporal god of rhyme, for I am sure I shall turn sonnet. Devise, wit; write, pen; for I am for whole volumes in folio. (1997, 1.2.181–185) 6 I borrow this term from Julia Flanders’s description of digital scholarship’s way of finding itself in provocative moments of friction with traditional modes of investigation (2009).

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WORKS CITED Bowles, Rev. William Lisle. 1789. Fourteen sonnets, elegiac and descriptive. Written during a tour. Bath: R. Cruttwell. Burke, Peter. 1978. Popular culture in early modern Europe. New York: New York University Press. Quoted in Nebeker 2009, 1009. Chettle, Henry. 1592. Kind-harts dreame. Conteining five apparitions with their inuectives against abuses raigning. London: John Danter and John Wolfe. Chun, Wendy Hui Kyong. 2008. “The enduring ephemeral, or the future is a memory.” Critical inquiry 35: 148–71. English broadside ballad archive. University of California at Santa Barbara, 2012. Web. http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu. 25 May 2012. Flanders, Julia. 2009. “The productive unease of 21st-century digital scholarship.” Digital humanities quarterly 3.3. The Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations, 29 Sept. 2009. Web. http://www. digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/3/3/000055/000055.html. 25 May 2012. Gitelman, Lisa, and Geoffrey Pingree. 2003. “What’s new about new media?” In New media, 1740–1915, eds. Lisa Gitelman and Geoffrey Pingree, xi– xxii. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Henkin, David M. 2008. “On forms and media.” Representations 104.1: 34–36. Himmelfarb, Gertude. 1996. “A neo-luddite reflects on the internet.” Chronicle of higher education 43.10: A56. Liu, Alan. 2008. “Imagining the new media encounter.” In A companion to digital literary studies, eds. Susan Schreibman and Ray Siemens, 3–25. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Web. http://www.digitalhumanties. org/companionDLS/. 25 May 2012. Marquis, P.A. 2007. Richard Tottel’s Songes and Sonettes: The Elizabethan version. MRTS 338. Tempe: ACMRS. McAbee, Kris. 2010. The sonnet virus. 24 April 2012. Web. http://ualr.edu/ kxmcabee/sonnetvirus-home.html. 25 May 2012.

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Nebeker, Eric. 2009. “Broadside ballads, miscellanies, and the lyric in print.” ELH 76: 989–1013. Newman, Steve. 2007. Ballad collection, lyric, and the canon: the call of the popular from the Restoration to New Criticism. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Sewell, Helen. 1962. “Shakespeare and the ballad: a classification of the ballads used by Shakespeare and instances of their occurrence.” Midwest folklore 12.4: 217–34. Shakespeare, William. 1599. The passionate pilgrime. London: W. Iaggard. Shakespeare, William. 1997. Love’s labor’s lost. In The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans. 2nd ed. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. Sidney, Philip. 1591. Syr P.S. his Astrophel and Stella. Wherin the excellence of sweete poesie is concluded. To the end of which are added, sundry other rare sonnets of diuers noble men and gentlemen. London: John Charlewood for Thomas Newman. Watt, Tessa. 1993. Cheap print and popular piety, 1550–1640. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

“Speak the Speech”: Dramatic Blank Verse As a New Medium on the English Stage Farrah Lehman

New York Institute of Technology [email protected] Many new media interventions into Early Modern English drama permit audiences and readers to explore texts and performances via computer-based media. The most common and perhaps most successful (at least in terms of longevity) of these interventions tend to be archival in nature: the Internet Shakespeare Editions offers plays and facsimiles attributed to and associated with Shakespeare, while the more recent Global Shakespeares project collects and tags video clips and performances of Shakespeare’s plays from different regions of the world. Other interventions involve digitizing texts in order to create near-Talmudic hyperlink structures or concordances with search functions that would have been unimaginable in print media. Still others take the form of immersive computer games; in the mid-2000s, Indiana University’s Synthetic Worlds Initiative developed Arden: The World of William Shakespeare, a massively multiplayer online game in which players were immersed in the universe of Richard III but received “quests” from characters drawn from the comedies. In these interventions, the computer game is transformed into a new performance genre that calls into question assumptions about the roles of fate, suspension of disbelief, and point-of-view immersion in both literature and theater. However, although archives, Web performances, and games indeed give rise to relevant ethical and pedagogical debates, and can surely consist in enjoyable modes of presentation, they do not exhaust the possibilities for new media interventions, or interactions between new media theory and Early Modern English drama. This essay examines blank verse on the English stage as a “new medium” that simultaneously aligns quite well with naturalization narratives offered by new media theorists such as Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, Friedrich Kittler, and Marshall McLuhan and calls into question various assumptions that these narratives make about the relationship between media perceived as “natural” modes of communication and human consciousness. In doing so, this essay stages a different type of new media intervention, one whose © 2014 Iter Inc. and the Arizona Board of Regents for Arizona State University. All rights reserved ISBN 978-0-86698-516-1 (online) ISBN 978-0-86698-515-4 (print) New Technologies in Medieval and Renaissance Studies 4 (2014) 217–242

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most obvious precedent is perhaps Neil Rhodes and Jonathan Sawday’s The Renaissance Computer: Knowledge Technology in the First Age of Print (2000), a collection of essays that acknowledges the fact that, as the editors put it, “the experience of our own new technology has enabled us to re-imagine the impact of new technologies in the past” (Rhodes and Sawday 2000, 2; and compare the essay by McAbee in this volume). During a generation or even decade when a medium is still new, attentive readers are better able to understand the impact of new media, which are not immediately received by audiences as natural. Despite some critics’ claims that blank verse was either always natural or was swiftly and brilliantly naturalized by Shakespeare, it actually seems to shift, over a period of four decades, from an uncomfortably “unnatural,” hypermediative form considered appropriate for political drama to a naturalized manner of speaking best suited to a comic temperament. However, this essay does not seek to demonstrate that there is a match between aspects of historically and culturally distinct media development narratives, nor does it seek to end with the same construct with which it began; rather, it critiques new media narratives at the same time that it engages them. As Alan Liu has recently cautioned, the phrase “new media” is in itself problematic because it “stages an exaggerated encounter between old and new.” When analyses of new media concern themselves with only the differences between the new and the old, or with the ways in which the new does or does not represent progress, new media’s narratives become “narratives of modernization,” inviting uneasy associations with bureaucracy, globalization, and pseudoliberal versions of enlightenment. Liu goes on to argue that such “right angled” narratives of progress and development “typically do not survive concrete acts of narration” (Liu 2008, 3–4). Still, Liu does not advocate doing away with narration altogether when theorizing new media. He offers his own new media narrative which not only asserts its refusal to determine all new media encounters but also is capable of reversing and folding back on itself. This narrative is determined by three central moments: “enchantment” or “colonization,” in which subjects are so much under the medium’s spell that they are determined by it; “disenchantment” or “critique/resistance,” which always happens within the colonization narrative; and “media surmise,” which introduces the possibility for adopting the medium itself for the purpose of critique instead of critiquing the medium from a stance that only appears to be outside of it (Liu 2008, 4–7). If resistance always happens from within a colonization narrative, then it is

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always-already inscribed in our encounters with the medium and is therefore not quite as radical as it imagines itself to be. Media “surmise” co-opts rather than resists the medium (in this case, narrative) in order to critique the medium. Blank verse both fits with and challenges more recent new media narratives. McLuhan and others have noted that early on a new medium tends to be hypermediative, and, in some cases, strongly political, capable of critiquing political and social ideologies circulating in the culture within which it developed. Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, I will argue below, relies on these facets of the emerging medium in order to achieve ideological critique without recourse to the proto-Brechtian metatheatrics that are often assumed to represent the only possibility for metamediation in the theater. Where new media naturalization narratives can help to explain shifts in the use of blank verse in early modern drama, so too can the story of dramatic blank verse alter the new media naturalization narrative. The final section of this essay will address one critical difference between blank verse’s naturalization narrative and similar narratives of twentieth- and twenty-firstcentury new media developments offered by the critics referenced above: though blank verse was eventually “naturalized” in that it was imagined to be transparent and speechlike, few if any early modern commentators claimed that it resembled thought. Thus, what may be at stake in theorizing blank verse as a new medium are not only the arguments that hypermediation on stage was always a matter of proto-Brechtian metatheatrics and that Shakespeare or Marlowe naturalized blank verse but also the supposed connection between natural or transparent media and consciousness. Put another way, if blank verse was a new medium that was eventually naturalized by early modern culture, then the particulars of its naturalization narrative call into question the implication or assumption that a medium must eventually resemble human consciousness in order to seem natural.

I. In Shakespeare’s dramas, the term “blank verse” is used to indicate freelyflowing, natural-sounding speech. Hamlet, on learning of the players’ arrival in Elsinore, asks that “the lady … say her mind freely, or the blank verse shall halt for’t” (2.2.323–24).1 Much Ado About Nothing’s Benedick finds it impossible to render his love for Beatrice in “festival terms” or rhyme (5.2.35–40), 1

All citations of Shakespeare are from The Arden complete works, ed. Richard Proudfoot, Ann Thompson, and David Scott Kastan (London: Thomson Learning, 2001).

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noting that even the names of “Troilus the first employer of panders, and a whole bookful of these quondam carpet-mongers … yet run smoothly in the even road of a blank verse” (31–34). And in As You Like It, Jaques reacts to Orlando’s line “Good day and happiness, dear Rosalind” with “Nay then God buy you, an you talk in blank verse!”, using the term in a humorously metatheatrical sense, perhaps mocking Orlando’s line of blank verse spoken in a scene that otherwise comprises prose exchanges. Though Jaques calls attention to Orlando’s line, the term, within the context of the scene, refers to Orlando’s plain, honest speech (4.1.29–30). A carefully constructed verse form consisting of five iambic feet was considered a smooth, perhaps honest, form despite the fact that more realistic prose speech was available to early seventeenth-century dramatists. Nineteenth-century critics generally offered two explanations for why blank verse was viewed as “natural” in the early to mid-seventeenth century: either blank verse was felicitously suited to drama because it already resembled speech, or it initially sounded constructed and clunky but was eventually transformed into a naturalistic (or instinctive) and speechlike form by none other than the Bard himself. Both explanations have persisted into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and are therefore worth evaluating here. The former explanation, the idea that blank verse was speechlike from the outset, seems to have circulated amongst editors who argued that blank verse had always been—as one editor of Marlowe’s complete works phrased it—“well-suited to natural dialogue” (Thomas 1909, viii). Robert L. Ramsay, writing in 1910, found it “perhaps a little remarkable that blank verse did not win acceptance at once as the fittest dramatic medium” (Ramsay 1910, 194) given its role in a “fundamental dramatic impulse towards realism” that would ultimately lead to Ibsen’s “taking a step towards real life” (Ramsay 1910, 182). Much in the same way that E.K. Chambers imagined the Renaissance stage to represent one point on a trajectory that culminated with the proscenium arch, Ramsay viewed the use of blank verse in drama as representing one point on a trajectory that culminated in the development of the realist theater. In his late twentieth-century study of meter in Shakespeare’s plays, George T. Wright labeled pentameter “the most speechlike of English line lengths” because it is “by nature asymmetrical—like human speech” and blank verse “a spoken language of the stage that combined natural phrasing and intonation with a high degree of metrical patterning” that nevertheless did not sound highly stylized (Wright 1993, 193). Even Stephen Greenblatt, whose

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work paved the way for many arguments about the ways in which early modern stage practices deconstructed rather than bolstered the concept of the “natural,” claimed that Marlowe’s blank verse “must have seemed, after the jog-trot fourteeners of the preceding decades, like reality itself” (Greenblatt 1983, 222). Currently, some cognitive views of poetics hold that the human brain “likes” iambics and that blank verse’s smooth, “even road” has a neurological basis, a position that critic Timothy Steele has rejected on the grounds that it is English-centric, as many languages are not fundamentally iambic in structure (Steele 1999). Blank verse was, however, initially received by many as “bombast[ic]” and “bragging,” descriptors that come from Thomas Nashe’s oft-quoted critique of blank verse in stage plays: playwrights “who (mounted on the stage of arrogance) thinke to out-brave better pennes with the swelling bombast of bragging blank verse” create a cacophonous “drumming decasillabon” (Nashe 1589, 3). The second explanation for blank verse’s naturalization better accounts for responses such as Nashe’s. Here, the story typically begins with the severely end-stopped lines of Sackville and Norton’s Gorboduc (1561), the first English drama composed entirely in blank verse. Marlowe, whose first plays are full of “bombast” and “ranting” (Cunningham 1870, ix), later learns “to make the measure that thundered the threats of Tamburlaine falter the sobs of a broken heart” (Bullen 1885, xxv), becoming, as one late nineteenthcentury editor would call him, “Shakespeare’s greatest predecessor” (Bullen 1885, ix). And although Wright’s claim that blank verse had a “speechlike” quality is clearly in line with the first explanation, he is at the same time able to argue that this quality had to be “developed” somewhat (Wright 1993, Chapter 3). According to Wright’s (and others’) timeline, iambic pentameter and blank verse become more naturalistic, universal, and even human when Shakespeare successfully raises Marlowe’s “mighty line” to a new level. While the latter explanation for blank verse’s naturalization does indeed account for the form’s perceived “bombast” in its early days and for Shakespearean blank verse naturalism, it seems to take for granted an assumption that good blank verse drama begins and ends with Shakespeare. Russ McDonald has convincingly argued that negative criticism of early blank verse—up to and including Marlowe’s plays—is often the result of familiarity with (and implicit approval of) Shakespeare’s “rhythmic diversity” (McDonald 2004, 62). In my view, the idea that Shakespeare naturalized and perfected blank verse might in some cases be the result of an unacknowledged Bardolatry: Shakespeare was an unusually naturalistic playwright for

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his time;2 naturalism was valued by nineteenth-century Romantics and early twentieth-century realists and perhaps today continues to be valued despite postmodernist assertions against what Ramsay called “the fundamental dramatic impulse towards realism” (Ramsay 1910, 182); therefore, some are led to conclude, Shakespeare successfully brought realism to the stage via naturalism and blank verse. The latter explanation, much like the former, also assumes that there was a “realism-impulse” in the first place. However, any new media naturalization narrative needs to take into account the differences between realism and naturalism, two concepts that are sometimes mistakenly conflated. As Gilles Deleuze noted in his analysis of cinema, naturalism does not have to suggest realism, and can, in fact, consist in a sharply different mode of acting in which there is only impulse (but obviously, not an “impulse towards realism” of any sort) without “behavior,” without conscious processing, without humanistic psychology. Realism, on the other hand, is where “affects and impulses now only appear as embodied in behaviour, in the form of emotions or passions which order and disorder it” (Deleuze 1986, 141). Realism involves affects embodied as and in emotions; naturalism’s affects or impulses are not embodied in rational or psychological emotion. If realism is in a sense embodied, emotional naturalism, then Shakespeare’s status as the author of the most naturalistic early modern plays surely does not necessitate the claim that his plays were also the most realistic. Further, some of the earliest critiques of English blank verse drama and poetry suggest that realism was not a major concern and that it may not have been a factor at all in the naturalization of blank verse. The medium of blank verse was not initially received as not realistic enough; rather, it was received—much in the same vein as Sir Philip Sidney’s criticism of English stage plays in general in The Apologie for Poetry (1595)—as not decorous enough. For example, George Puttenham’s The Art of English Poesie (1589) advises that decorum is to be followed solely on the basis of theatrical convention, where “speech and stile” should match the speakers’ rank and state not in terms of how a person of a certain rank would actually behave or speak, but in terms 2

G.K. Hunter (1997) claims that Shakespeare’s plays, especially when compared to their boys’-company counterparts, were not only naturalistic but also relatively realistic. Additionally, Chapter 1 of Welsh 2001 explains how Shakespeare transformed the Hamlet story from the political, “historically situated” tales told by Saxo Grammaticus and Belleforest into a novelistic play about the relationships between and within two families.

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of how a character on stage representing that person would be expected by the audience to behave or speak (Puttenham 1811, 124). Puttenham was especially concerned with “figures and figurative speeches” that violated the principles of decorum. Though “ornament” is for him an important component of poetry, figures “passe the limits of common utterance and can be used to deceive the eare and also the mind, drawing it from plainnesse and simplicitie to a certain doublenesse” (Puttenham 1811, 128). This may on first glance seem like an argument in favor of realism, but, as Puttenham explains, figures that were used in ostensibly real-life conversation and might therefore seem realistic to audiences could be considered indecorous and inappropriate for verse, both on- and offstage. Puttenham supplies the example of “princes pelfe,” a phrase that was often used to refer to one’s own treasures and winnings but was considered “lewd” because pelfe denotes the “scraps and shreds of taylors and skinners,” which should not be associated with princes. This commonly used phrase, Puttenham argues, is entirely inappropriate for prose speech. Debates about the use of rhyme in English verse also suggest that decorum, not realism, was a central issue in early modern poetics. George Gascoigne, the author of one of the earliest English blank verse plays (Jocasta) and a long blank verse poem (Steele Glas), supports the use of rhyme but writes that “to use obscure and dark phrases in a pleasant Sonnet, is nothing delectable, so to intermingle merie iests in a serious manner is an indecorum” (Gascoigne 1810, 4). Where Gascoigne approves of the decorous use of rhyme, those who were critical of rhyming verse were not overtly concerned about whether such verse seemed realistic: Thomas Campion and Francis Meres opposed the use of rhyme not because of the rather obvious observation that “real” speech rarely if ever comprises end-rhymed lines, but because Latin verse did not use rhyme. Rhyme, in other words, was unnatural not because it was not realistic, but because it was not part of the Latin poetic tradition. For Campion, writing in 1602, avoiding rhyme is an issue of nationalism: English verse, he claimed, should sound more like classical Latin and Greek and less like contemporary French, Spanish, and Italian verse (Campion 1815, 166). Taking into account sixteenth- and seventeenth-century concerns about rhyme and decorum, it becomes more difficult to argue that blank verse’s initial reception as “bombastic” and unnatural resulted from a “realism impulse” that led Marlowe and Shakespeare to transform the metrical pattern into a naturalistic, realistic, and “human” form of dramatic speech. I would suggest that there is an alternate possibility that does not entirely

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contradict the naturalization narratives presented above: when blank verse was first incepted into English drama, it was, put simply, a new medium. While it surely did not engender the radical sociocultural effects that print or film did, dramatic blank verse was a component in an emerging theater culture in which plays were, for the first time, being written for stages housed in new architectural structures rather than for processions, holiday fairs, and dinner parties. In its development, blank verse followed a pattern remarkably similar to that which most new media seem to follow, at least within the cultural imagination or the theories of new media critics, shifting from uncomfortably unnatural, obviously constructed mediating tool to transparent window that seemed as though it had always been suited to the content behind it. What distinguishes this narrative from the “always natural” and “naturalized by Shakespeare” narratives is that the shift from hypermediated to natural was not a shift from undeveloped to well-developed; every aspect of blank verse drama, in other words, did not necessarily become “better” as it was naturalized.

II. Because blank verse was a new medium in a theatrical culture somewhat concerned with the “natural” but relatively unconcerned with realism, Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin’s terms “immediacy” and “hypermediacy” are far more useful in the context of this discussion than are the concepts of realism and failed-realism that narratives of naturalization sometimes engage. Bolter and Grusin use immediacy and hypermediacy to describe the relationship between new media and the “natural,” defining the immediate as that which renders an interface “natural rather than arbitrary” (Bolter and Grusin 2000, 23). The term “immediacy” can refer to both an apparent absence of mediation or representation and the psychological “feeling” or immediate connection or interface. The hypermediate, on the other hand, continually reminds the spectator or participant that the interface is present and is not necessarily a natural extension of human sensory functions. In the posthumanist new media experience, the interface or medium, when rendered visible or palpable, acts on rather than as a result of the audience; it is neither an extension nor a product of the senses. What is especially relevant about Bolter and Grusin’s conception of the hypermediate is that it does not valorize the immediate and does not assume that the immersive is automatically the most natural, authentic mode of experience. According to their model, one cannot say that the immediate is authentic (or “real”) while the hypermediate is not. They supply the example

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of a hypermediate rock concert in which audiences remain aware of mediation—perhaps because of electric instruments, lighting, and visible amplification equipment—and still consider their experience “authentic” (Bolter and Grusin 2000, 71).3 This concept, I would argue, can be easily extended to any theatrical experience that engages emotion by calling attention to its own mediation. For Brecht, metatheatrical performances that distanced audiences from reality-effects were nevertheless not characterized by an absence of emotion; in fact, as Brecht wrote in an early essay on epic theater, while “the essential point of the epic theatre is perhaps that it appeals less to the feelings than to the speaker’s reason … at the same time it would be quite wrong to try and deny emotion to this kind of theater” (Brecht 1964, 23). Later, he would write that the anti-illusionistic theater in which the spectator is expected to think and “interpose … judgement” rather than “fling [him or herself] into the story as if it were a river” engages emotions in different ways, for different purposes from psychological realist or cathartic performances do (Brecht 1964, 201). There can be an element of immediate emotional response within a hypermediated experience. The earliest phases of a new medium seem to be marked by hypermediacy rather than transparency. Both Brecht’s commentary on the use of film as an aid for generating alienation-effects on stage and screen and McLuhan’s analysis of television’s capability for engendering sociopolitical effects portray each medium as valuable because of its capacity for calling attention to itself; importantly, each medium was relatively new when Brecht and McLuhan wrote about it. When Brecht argued that film permitted productions on both stage and screen to engage an Homeric style of oral storytelling rather than a psychological realist, unstylized mode of performance steeped in motivation, he saw the new medium’s potential for producing alienation-effects via hypermediation. Film, a new medium when Brecht wrote “Theater for Pleasure or Theater for Instruction?” in the mid-1930s,4 allowed audience members to focus on mediation; the medium thereby created a profound separation between medium and content that brought medium to the forefront and depsychologized content. 3

Auslander 1999 also uses rock culture to deconstruct the notion that “authenticity” is what allows us to determine the boundary between live and mediatized performance. 4 Though the essay was published posthumously, John Willett dates it 1935–1936, basing his decision on Brecht’s letters and previous editors’ conclusions (Brecht 1964, 76).

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McLuhan, on the other hand, did not posit quite so profound an audience/ performance divide. First, he values realism where Brecht does not, going so far as to attribute Pudovkin’s and Eisenstein’s anti-realistic techniques to a separation of sound and image associated with the Russian “backward or oral culture” and calls the “realistic novel” a “complete anticipation of film form” (McLuhan 1964, 287–89). He is clearly not in favor of filmmakers’ anti-illusionistic practices and supports the idea that film should be entirely realistic, taking particular issue with methods and practices that emerged from the Eastern Bloc. However, McLuhan does view television as a hypermediative medium that can call various sociopolitical and cultural ideas into question. He labels television, a relatively new cultural medium at the time of his writing Understanding Media in the 1950s, a “cool” or low-definition, participatory medium that does not create a sharp Brechtian divide between audience and performance but serves a function similar to that which film served for Brecht because it forces audiences to ask questions about mediation when it calls attention to mediation. “TV,” McLuhan writes, “brought about a questioning of all mechanical assumptions about uniformity and standardization, as of all consumer values” (McLuhan 1964, 221). McLuhan’s argument shows that a not-yet-naturalized medium can “[bring] about a questioning” of certain social, political, and cultural assumptions because of its still-hypermediative features; further, the ways in which the new medium hypermediates need not be intentionally metatheatrical or Brechtian. While metamediation did mean metatheatrics for a number of early modern plays, some were able to rely on a different form of metamediation: the deployment of hypermediative (and “new”) blank verse.

III. The earliest English blank verse dramas ask interesting, though rarely radical, sociopolitical questions. Sackville and Norton’s Gorboduc (1561) and Gascoigne and Kinmelwersh’s Jocasta (1566), which are probably the earliest English dramas composed entirely in blank verse, are both brother-tobrother civil war tragedies from which “family” and psychological character are curiously absent. In early blank verse drama, themes of “human nature” are supplanted—especially in Gorboduc—by political interactions and hypermediative verse. In Sackville and Norton’s play, the titular king decides to split his kingdom between his sons Ferrex and Porrex, making an outlandish decision in a society founded on primogeniture. Though for the present-day reader the plot

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will likely invite comparison to King Lear, Gorboduc focuses on neither old age nor familial relationships on their own terms; central to the first act is the bad political decision that Gorboduc makes in spite of his advisors’ counsel. His (naturalistic?) instinct fails, and eventually his wife, Videna, kills Porrex so that Ferrex, her favorite son, can rule an undivided kingdom. Once again, however, the events of the play extend far beyond “family drama,” as a rebellion and civil war result from Videna’s actions. Jacqueline Vanhoutte has argued that Gorboduc can indeed be read as a radical political commentary not only because it suggests that monarchs should take into account Parliament’s advice regarding succession (Vanhoutte 2000, 227–28), but also because it presents a situation in which “the threat to England is embodied in a monstrous mother” (Vanhoutte 2000, 237), a scenario which could easily be construed as an attack on Elizabeth I. Despite these possibilities and its demonstration of how foolish kings can cause violent civil strife, the play ends on a not-quite radical note. In Act 5, Gorboduc’s advisor Eubulus, who does admit that the end of the Gorboduc family resulted from a situation in which “kinges will not consent / To grave advise, but follow willful will” (5.2.1751–52), also concludes that subjects are not allowed, “even in secrete thought,” to rebel against the king (5.1.1389–95). Order is restored at the end of the play, when the nobility kills the rebelling citizens. What may have prevented audiences from becoming immersed in the drama and thereby from fully “buying into” the messages about obedience proffered by Eubulus and the nobility was the play’s metrical hypermediatedness: Gorboduc’s unrelentingly unvarying blank verse could not have sounded or appeared natural. Almost every line of Gorboduc’s debate with his advisors, for example, is enjambed on a period or comma. Videna’s speeches are slightly less severely end-stopped—twenty-three of her thirty-nine lines in 1.1.21–67 are enjambed at the grammatical conclusion of or a logical pause in the sentence—but she several times altogether stops so that Ferrex may say his lines. Speakers never interject before the end of a line, even during what seem to be heated debates. They certainly never share lines of blank verse, a practice that would become common for subsequent dramatists, including Shakespeare. Regardless of enjambment, it is difficult to read Gorboduc without stopping at the end of each line because of a striking dearth of syllabic variation from line to line. Of Videna’s thirty-nine lines at 1.1.21–67, only two (38 and 46) fall one syllable short of ten. Another line clearly includes an eleventh syllable with a mid-line trochee (55), and one may or may not have an eleventh

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syllable, depending on whether the word “even” (48) is read “e’en.” There are no extra syllables to be found in Videna’s eighty-one-line soliloquy in 4.1, and the five lines that seem to fall one syllable short of ten can all be explained with an accented “èd.” These end-stops and generally unvarying ten-syllable lines were perhaps not only noticed on the page but also heard on the stage as well. Though Bernard believed that by the time Thomas Nashe was writing one of the last interludes in 1593, the disuse of “complicated rhyme schemes” meant that the play was now “free from the artlessness that characterized the folk drama” (Bernard 1939, 191), McDonald finds that it was specifically Marlowe’s blank verse, not blank verse in general, that successfully “remov[ed] the obvious chime at the end of the line” (McDonald 2004, 64). Prior to Marlowe, then, it is possible that blank verse dramas like Gorboduc in a sense preserved that “chime” through their metrically unvarying lines. Five years after Gorboduc was staged, Gascoigne translated two plays from their original Italian texts, one into English prose and the other into blank verse. The first, Supposes, a comedy of errors of sorts, was translated (following the Italian) into prose, while the other, Jocasta, a Euripidean telling of the story of the battle between Oedipus’ sons, was written entirely in blank verse where the original Italian play was not. Jocasta is thematically not unlike Gorboduc; it focuses on a battle between brothers that is presented as a civil war rather than a family struggle, and, according to Allyna E. Ward, transforms Creon into a legitimate king rather than a tyrant, a man who “wants to rule well but … is, like Sackville’s Gorboduc, mortal and fallible” (Ward 2008, 5), in order to comment on tyranny but advocate nonviolent rebellion or a “passive resistance” of sorts (Ward 2008, 29). Tellingly, Gascoigne associates blank verse with a play in which kingship, ritual, and war take precedence over family. Like Gorboduc, Gascoigne’s Jocasta, which was likely first staged for a private audience at Gray’s Inn, is a dissenting yet not-quite-radical political drama that was somewhat but not entirely in line with the Brechtian project, in my view not exactly enough to warrant a proto-Brechtian label. Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, however, will mark a turn towards a more radical commentary on power. It is, however, not (yet) a turn towards Brechtian metatheatrical devices intended to force audiences to recognize purportedly “natural” impulses as theatrical. Metatheatrics were not yet necessary when language and meter were capable of generating metamediative, anti-immersive drama on their own.

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IV. The observation that early modern English plays were written and staged non- (and often anti-) immersively is hardly new. Some critics, including Graham Holderness, have argued that the physical conditions of amphitheater performance necessitated non-immersion and anti-illusionism; Holderness claims that with “rudimentary stage props” and daylight shining in, “the actors could not deny the presence of an audience” (Holderness 1985, 161). Others, including Jonathan Dollimore and G.K. Hunter, more overtly associate early modern anti-illusionism with Brechtian modernist metatheatrics. Suggesting that Jacobean plays were far more radical than nineteenth- and twentieth-century critics had believed them to be, Dollimore finds that playwrights at the time offered, much like Brecht, critiques of political, legal, and religious ideologies so that audience members might be able to see those ideologies for what they were. In Dollimore’s view, early modern metatheatrics were not merely protoBrechtian; the era’s metatheatrical practices could legitimately be considered Brechtian because they influenced Brecht’s theories of drama. Hunter too has argued that it would not be anachronistic to read Brecht’s theories into early modern drama, noting that it is surely significant that the modern theatrical successes of The Jew of Malta (first restaged 1964), The Revenger’s Tragedy (1966), Marston’s The Malcontent, and Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy (1982) have been facilitated by finding in such plays qualities that appear also in Brechtian drama and the theater of the absurd. The modern discovery that these are highly theatrical qualities indicates mainly a breakdown of the late Victorian valuation of psychological unity in responsible public figures, but the discovery is not simply an illusion of the modernist imagination; it picks up on elements already there (Hunter 1997, 65). As Dollimore concisely states, “The originality of Althusser has been overestimated” (Dollimore 2004, 19). In other words, at least some early modern English theatergoers would have been quite capable of understanding that some of what had been portrayed as “natural” within the culture had actually been naturalized by a variety of top-down and bottom-up cultural forces. One such naturalized concept that is strongly critiqued in Marlowe’s first Tamburlaine play is fate, and there are indeed elements of what Dollimore would call Althusserian ideological critique built into the play via its presentation of fate as a military strategy. When, for example, the unrelentingly

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violent conqueror Tamburlaine tells the Persians that he “hold[s] the fates bound fast in chains, / And with [his] hand turn[s] Fortune’s wheel about” (1.2.17), he apparently seeks to convince Cosroe’s soldiers that they might as well fight for him instead of against him because the “Persian crown” was “promised at [his] birth” (91–92). In the next act, it is again suggested that Tamburlaine takes advantage of the soldiers’ faith in fate in order to convince them that their attempts to defeat him will be futile; he claims that “the fates and oracles of heaven have sworn / To royalise the deeds of Tamburlaine” (2.3.7–8). Fate is exposed here as an idea that can be easily manipulated and used in order to take advantage of those who believe in it or fear it.5 But what is especially remarkable about the play’s critique of fate is that it, unlike most Brechtian or proto-Brechtian dramas and also unlike Marlowe’s later plays, generally achieves this critique without recourse to metatheatrics. Marlowe’s later plays engage a number of metatheatrical tropes. Doctor Faustus, for example, presents a theatricalized pageant of sins in which Wrath taunts the playgoers (5.324–26) and Envy complains about the seating arrangements (Marlowe 1999, 334–35). Barabas’ covert scheming in The Jew of Malta takes place in asides that permit him to speak alternately to the characters on stage and to the audience, perhaps leading audience members to become simultaneously complicit in and critical of his plans. Even 2 Tamburlaine operates on a metatheatrical level of sorts, presenting itself as a ghost-less revenge tragedy that, for the most part, adheres to a well-worn son-avenges-father’s-death plot; in that adherence, it calls attention to its own “archival” theatricality, to the fact that it is a play situated within a familiar theatrical tradition. 1 Tamburlaine relies instead on metrical and verbal hypermediation, calling attention to its blank verse lines and general lack of psychological “characterization” without overly announcing its status as a work performed in the theater. Tamburlaine’s verbal and metrical hypermediations will be considered in detail below; first, however, it is worth pointing out why the play’s reliance on hypermediation does not have to exclude immediacy. According to Bolter and Grusin’s new media narratives, a new medium in its early stages is capable of not only simultaneous immediacy and hypermediacy but also an 5

Stephen Buhler has described a similar ideological critique operating in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: Cassius, in full Epicurean mode, “debunk[s] Roman superstition and point[s] out the political consequences of credulous belief,” and “endeavors to show how both the powerful and those who challenge that power can transform terrifying supernatural events into political strategies” (Buhler 1996, 318–21).

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immediated hypermediation, astonishing/shocking/terrifying audience members via the still-hypermediative medium. In order to explain how hypermediacy can itself be immediate, Bolter and Grusin turn to the (probably) apocryphal story of the audience’s reaction to the Lumière Brothers’ first film; when the filmmakers projected “The Arrival of a Train at La Cientôt Station” onto a screen in a basement café in 1895, audience members, as the story goes, were terrified at the sight of a train coming towards them. However, for Bolter and Grusin—and according to the examples of the earliest blank verse dramas discussed in the preceding section—a new medium often cannot help but be noticeably hypermediative when it is first introduced. It seems therefore highly unlikely that audience members at this very early stage in film production would have experienced the film as so completely realistic and completely immersive that they would have believed that they were in the path of an actual train. By way of film theorist Tom Gunning, Bolter and Grusin are able to account for both early-stage hypermediacy and the sense of terror and confusion that the audience in the Lumière Brothers story purportedly encountered: The film theorist Tom Gunning (1995) has questioned the story and has suggested that the audience may have been awestruck, but not so naïve to think that a train was about to burst into a basement room of the Grand Café. What astonished the audience, he thinks, was precisely the gap between what they knew to be true and what their eyes told them. They admired the capacity of the film to create so authentic an illusion in the face of what they knew to be true. (Bolter and Grusin 2000, 155) It is worth noting that this explanation does not resort to the questions of realism and naïveté that tend to be brought up when audience responses to a new medium are considered, including questions of whether audience members reacted so strongly because they could engage with the performance only by suspending disbelief, and whether they were frightened because they did not know that they were not “really” in physical danger. The Grand Café situation exemplifies what Bolter and Grusin call hypermediacy within immediacy, where audiences become aware of the unmediated, never-fullyrepresentable gap between what they see and what they know (Bolter and Grusin 2000, 155). In 1 Tamburlaine, the still-hypermediative, still-non-“natural” medium of blank verse is a source of strong, in some cases highly immediate, commentaries on

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power. Marlowe rather paradoxically subtracts both power (with regards to how characters are supposed to relate to one another in political terms) and everything but power (because without sociopolitical character relationships and without psychological character, there can for Marlowe only be power) when all of the characters speak in the same metrical and verbal patterns. Though some characters in Tamburlaine occasionally speak in prose, none is denied a “mighty line” of blank verse. The virgins in (Egyptian) Damascus use the same metrical patterns to plead for their lives that Tamburlaine uses to command their deaths (5.1.64–120). In the same relatively unvarying blank verse employed by Tamburlaine to win Cosroe’s men to his side, Zenocrate and Zabina each claims a direct line to her culture’s deities, each assuring the other woman that the gods have already decided that her husband will be victorious (3.3.189–200). For the most part, “character” in this drama is not demarcated via metrical patterning.6 Jill Levenson has noted that the “personae” in Tamburlaine are also not differentiable by the vocabulary that they use. Because “the personae employ the same lexicon,” she argues, “obviously Marlowe does not adjust this body of language to produce subtle characterizations” (Levenson 1988, 100). But this does not constitute monotonous repetition; for Levenson, the play is repetitive in an epic sense, such that Marlowe goes so far as to avoid representation of “human nature” and psychological difference altogether. The epic mode, in other words, is about storytelling, not nature as it relates to human psychology. In Levenson’s view, Marlowe achieves this epic mode not through heavy-handed metatheatrical devices but “through a self-conscious lack of expressions for family relationships, nature in its seasonal cycles, daily pastimes, aphoristic wisdom, humor, and sex” (Levenson 1988, 112). While this “lack” can surely be attributed to the “fond and frivolous gestures” omitted by printer Richard Jones in 1590, the epic, estranging effects of verbal and metrical nonvariation in the play cannot be denied. In this nonvariation, Marlowe seems to, as Levenson puts it, “offer[] a rhetorical and ironic version of history rather than an experiential and philosophical commentary on human relationships” (Levenson 1988, 112). Although metrically “equal,” without significant verbal and metrical distinctions among characters, relationships in Tamburlaine at the same time can only be political 6

I use “character” interchangeably with “persona” here and elsewhere; the term “character” is not intended to imply that I am reading stage personae as though they were “real,” psychologically constructed humans.

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or informed by power. “Human” (or character-based) relationships are supplanted by the purely political and historical. There is, however, one notable exception to Tamburlaine’s “blank verse for everyone” scheme. Mycetes, who at the beginning of the play admits that he does not have the capacity for “great and thundering speech” (Marlowe 1998, 1.1.3–4) and later cannot meet Tamburlaine’s challenge to “speak but three wise words” (2.4.25), sometimes adds or subtracts syllables and end-rhymes his lines where other characters do not. Early on, for example, he breaks from a relatively strong blank verse speech that should end on “I might command you to be slain for this!” (1.1.23) with a second-guessing “Meander, might I not?” (24). He also, much unlike Cosroe and Tamburlaine, tends to end his speeches with rhyming couplets, rhyming even as he “commands” his men to fight Tamburlaine, ending lines with “away/today” (1.1.67–68) and “below/show” (79–80). When he senses that he has been betrayed by Cosroe, Mycetes end-rhymes “stock” with “mock” (104–105) and again turns to his advisor, saying (in a somewhat weak line of iambic pentameter), “Meander, come, I am abused, Meander” (106). Finally, after Cosroe has become king, Mycetes announces to Meander, who himself does not speak in rhyme, that he will kill both Cosroe and Tamburlaine, ending this speech on an ABAB rhyme (“doors/head/sword/said” [2.2.10–13]). Every other character speaks in the same unrhymed blank verse pattern; the fact that Mycetes departs from this pattern via rhyme and questions that are not part of any blank verse line in the text is telling. For the characters who do speak in identical blank verse patterns (i.e. every character other than Mycetes), social standing does not affect speech. However, the one exception happens to be the only man who is, ironically but appropriately, a king by birth. Positionality, or the idea of social and character-based positions established in a sense prior to Act I, is (perhaps also ironically) not a factor in this drama of wars and emperors. Tamburlaine’s story, which purportedly comprises his transition from shepherd to emperor via his defeat of local monarchs, does not dramatize a change in positions; the audience never sees Tamburlaine-as-shepherd. Once again, when Marlowe subtracts positionality, there is only power. I use the term “subtract” here in reference to Deleuze’s essay on Carmelo Bene’s Richard III (Deleuze 1997), which critiques productions that attempt to comment on power by exerting theatrical power on an audience. The essay takes issue, in other words, with Brechtian metatheatrics. Indeed, Brechtian metatheatrics cannot exhaustively describe anti-illusionism in the theatrical

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environment, especially in regards to the early modern era, when, for instance, the theater engaged the metrically metamediative anti-illusionisms described here. For Deleuze, playing or experimenting with power via subtracting codifications (or, the “text”) so that characterization and conflict are not presented as encoded dramatic tropes prevents the drama from merely reasserting the power structures that it set out to critique. In his essay on Bene’s production, Deleuze suggests subtracting beginnings and endings because these favor “History”-with-a-capital-H and positionality over becomings, potential, and actualizations. In this vein, had Marlowe initially presented Tamburlaine as a shepherd—for our purposes here, specifically as a shepherd whose speech patterns were markedly different from the “mighty lines” assigned to kings-by-birth—the drama would have been about a shepherd’s rise to power and Tamburlaine would have, at least for the audience, remained a shepherd (i.e. “the shepherd who became an emperor”). Marlowe’s project, of course, cannot exactly be described as “Deleuzian” because while positionality is subtracted in Tamburlaine, (all) power is not. Tamburlaine is a powerful conqueror and is capable of exerting power as a theatrical figure as well, but this power has little if anything to do with his social position. In subtracting specifically positional power, however, Tamburlaine leaves only political power. Deducting positionality and character via vocabulary and metrics in a still-hypermediative medium, Marlowe subtracts positional “difference,” rendering power effectively immediate and affectively actualized.

V. By the mid-seventeenth century, blank verse had “aged” considerably and was no longer a new dramatic medium. It was by this point so much associated with the stage that Milton, in his “Note on the Verse” to Paradise Lost, seems to “forget” that the origins of English blank verse were not dramatic. Conveniently glossing over Surrey’s and Gascoigne’s century-old poems, Milton labels his own work “esteem’d an example set, the first in English” of nondramatic blank verse (Milton 1998, 352). Dramatic blank verse seems to begin to become naturalized, both in terms of how it belongs “naturally” to the stage and how it is for audiences a natural form of speaking, at the turn of the seventeenth century. At this point, some commentators still find blank verse to be “bombastic” and unnatural; for instance, in his anti-singing, dancing, playing, and poetry-writing tract Vertues

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common-wealth (1603), Henry Crosse, echoing Nashe’s and Greene’s earlier assessments but misunderstanding the form somewhat, complains that on the English stage, “hee that can but bombast out a blancke verse, and make bothe the ends iumpe together in a ryme, is forthwith a poet laureate” (Crosse 1603, 56). Meanwhile, others were beginning to view blank verse as a naturalistic medium appropriate to comedy. In 1602, Thomas Campion—one of the poets who had expressed nationalistic concerns about rhyming verse—argued that if blank verse could be “made a little more licentiate” so that it sounded like “common talke,” it would “excellently serve for comedies” (Hardison 1984, 268). The idea that blank verse could easily be made to sound “common” and was more appropriate to comedy than to politically charged tragedies or histories marks a significant departure from Nashe, who not only viewed blank verse as bombastic but also labeled dramatists who used it “alcumists of eloquence” offering no more than “a servile imitation of vainglorious tragedians” (Nashe 1973, 3) and Gascoigne, who, in his translations of the Italian plays Supposes and Jocasta, associated comedy with prose and tragedy with blank verse. At this stage in a “typical” media-naturalization narrative—the stage at which the medium is imagined to be naturally suited to a form or genre—commentators on the medium often begin to argue that we (or audiences) think like the medium. In the mid-1980s, for example, Friedrich Kittler claimed that humans had always thought cinematically and that the specific trope of “film projection as internal theater exists two years prior to its introduction” (Kittler 1999, 159). For Kittler, film is not only more “real” than writing but is also “more real than reality” (Kittler 1999, 145). Recently, Courtney Lehmann has contrasted film and theater productions of Henry V in order to argue that film’s capacity for Brechtian depsychologization may be limited by its status as a “relatively naturalistic medium”; she claims that in the theater productions, “alienation effects can serve as a distancing mechanism between actor and role” (Lehmann 2002, 197–98), while it is considerably difficult for film productions to escape what she believes is the medium’s inherent naturalism. In putting forth this argument, Lehmann clearly overlooks the fact that Brecht wrote about film-as-alienating technology when film was still new and not yet naturalized. Moreover, she assumes that naturalism is film’s essential mode even as she explores the relationship between film technology and heavily mediated memories in productions of Shakespeare’s plays. Lehmann goes so far as to connect film’s supposed naturalism with the ways in which auteurs can exert psychological control over their audiences’ thoughts, a phenomenon that she terms the “psychology of power.” This

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“psychology of power,” according to Lehmann, belongs (much unlike what we see in Deleuze’s conception of Brecht’s theories of theatrical power) to naturalistic film as opposed to the Brechtian metatheatrical stage. Specifically, she writes that “the psychology of power that the postmodern auteur exploits lies in an ability to engineer and control the way an audience receives a film, regardless of the message the film product actually delivers” (Lehmann 2002, 198); Lehmann thus reads film as a medium that easily links to and, in its more consumerist and commercial forms, even parasitizes consciousness. The (somewhat backhandedly determinist) idea of technology-as-consciousness, or full, “natural” psychological identification with the medium has also been adopted for theorizing digital media, which are themselves rapidly becoming naturalized. Tatjana Chorney (Chorney 2005) argues that early modern readers read hypertextually hundreds of years before the term “hypertext” was coined, suggesting that hypertext can serve as a highly accurate model of the way that cognition works for readers. While connectionism, a theory of cognitive psychology that holds that the brain operates almost exactly like a computer, has fallen out of favor with educational psychologists in recent years, those working with the competing “symbolic” approach to cognition have designed cognitive architectures such as ACT-R (Adaptive Control of Thought-Rational) that read like “programming language[s].” These architectures rely on the notion that computer programming languages and computer operations allow psychologists to accurately model cognitive processes, a notion which is, according to recent empirical research in the field, not a figment of a technologically determinist imagination.7 The medium has not changed the way that humans who encounter it think; rather, the humans who encounter it are beginning to believe (and are even able to put forth well-thought-out arguments) that the medium accurately describes the way that humans have always thought. Brecht conceived of film as a highly visible, palpable mediating technology that could easily serve to produce alienation-effects; more than two decades later, McLuhan contrasted television’s potential for sociopolitical critique with film’s inherent naturalism (a naturalism that he believed that Soviet filmmakers ignored); finally, Kittler and Lehmann both conflate film’s status as “natural” with its supposed capacity to serve as a model for how thought, cognition, and consciousness operate. Early modern English blank verse, however, does not seem to reach this final stage common to a number of new 7

See the ACT-R website for the software, hundreds of related articles and studies, and source code.

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media narratives. In 1668, John Dryden, responding to Sir Robert Howard’s claim that verse is too “improbable” (Howard 1665, 6) for drama,8 acknowledged that “no man ever spoke any kind of verse extempore” (Dryden 1912, 54), but, like many of his contemporaries and predecessors, explained away the realism factor, claiming that there was no reason that verse should sound “real.” He also argues that blank verse is more appropriate to comedy than tragedy because tragedy requires “heroic rhyme,” another obvious departure from the Marlovian association of blank verse with tragedy. Significantly, Dryden is one of few if any mid-seventeenth-century critics to comment on the relationship between blank verse’s perceived status as “natural” and human thought processes. First, like his predecessors, he addresses decorum, claiming that rhyme is intended to represent thought, not speech, and that heroic rhyme is the best, though not the most natural, way to represent the thoughts of a noble person; while a noble protagonist offstage would not actually speak in rhyme, it is the most appropriate, perhaps most decorous, form of onstage representation of such persons. Blank verse, on the other hand, is appropriate to comedy because it sounds like natural, comical speech (54–56). For Dryden, comedies, unlike tragedies, require the representation of speech, not thought, and blank verse is the best medium for “naturally” representing speech. Whereas Dryden associates the naturalistic medium with speech and the lessnaturalistic medium (rhyming verse) with the representation of thought, Kittler and McLuhan (for whom the “final phase” of development is “the technological simulation of consciousness” [McLuhan 1964, 3], a practice that would be, in Katherine Hayles’ view, a starting point for posthumanism) always associate the naturalistic medium with thought, valuing a naturalization so total that the medium becomes consciousness; we think like it and it thinks like us. Dryden, one of few to broach the subject of the relationship between “natural” blank verse and consciousness, reaches neither biological (the medium works because it just happens to match pre-existing thought 8

Though he finds verse “improbable,” Howard is nevertheless more concerned with decorum than realism. (In fact, his main concern, as he explains it in a note “To The Reader” appended to his play The Duke of Lerma, is that verse makes it too easy to make something out of nothing in drama [Howard 1668, 3].) He notes that England, unlike other nations, is “not so happily” known for indecorously “interweaving Mirth and Sadness” in its plays. He also advises that an event should not be “presented” onstage simply because it is “possible” offstage (and ironically, he labels the issue of “improbability” on which he bases his argument “trivial”) (Howard 1665, 4–5).

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patterns) nor technological determinist conclusions; the naturalization of blank verse happens for him only in terms of speech, not thought. The story of dramatic blank verse’s naturalization aligns to a large degree with naturalization narratives for later-arriving media, including film and digital technologies. Even the early English novel, which seems to have become naturalized so quickly that we see metanovels commenting on ethical and psychological problems with naturalization and uncritical audience reception within a half-century of its inception into English culture, was received as unnatural at first but was soon viewed as a natural way of telling a story and later became linked with character-based point-of-view and human consciousness. These naturalization narratives, in which a medium starts out as uncomfortably unnatural but well-suited to political and powerbased commentary, suggest that Shakespeare did not consciously set out to naturalize blank verse, and that the smooth, “even road” of his characters’ speech was not necessarily “better” than (or even comparable to) prior metamediative, strongly political dramas. But it is blank verse’s small but definitive departure from the naturalization narrative—its association with natural speech rather than thought—that stands as a useful counterexample to the assumption that there is necessarily a perceived or deterministic relationship between the operations of a naturalized medium and the operations of human consciousness. A medium can be considered natural without comparison to or equation with consciousness.

WORKS CITED ACT-R Research Group. ACT-R: Theory and architecture of cognition. Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University. 24 Jan. 2012. Web. http:// act-r.psy.cmu.edu/. 30 May 2012. Auslander, Philip. 1999. Liveness: Performance in a mediatized culture. London and New York: Routledge. Bernard, J.E. 1939. The prosody of the Tudor interlude. New Haven: Yale University Press. Bolter, Jay David and Richard Grusin. 2000. Remediation: Understanding new media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Brecht, Bertolt. 1964. Brecht on theatre: The development of an aesthetic. Ed. and trans. John Willett. New York: Hill and Wang.

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Buhler, Stephen M. 1996. “No spectre, no sceptre: The agon of materialist thought in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.” English Literary Renaissance 26:2: 313–32. Bullen, A.H., ed. 1885. The works of Christopher Marlowe. Vol. I. London: John C. Nimmo. Campion, Thomas. 1815. “Observation on the art of English poesie.” Facsimile of 1602 printing. In Ancient critical essays upon English poets and poesy, ed. Joseph Haslewood. London: Printed by T. Bensley for Robert Triphook. Chorney, Tatjana. 2005.“Interactive reading, early modern texts and hypertext: A lesson from the past.” Academic Commons 12 Dec. 2005. Web. http://www.academiccommons.org. 20 May 2009. Crosse, Henry. 1603. “Vertues common-wealth: Or the high-way to honour.” London: Thomas Creede for John Newberry. Early English Books 1475– 1640 1347:17. Cunningham, Francis, ed. 1870.“Introductory notice.” The works of Christopher Marlowe. London: Albert J. Crocker Brothers. Deleuze, Gilles. 1986. Cinema 1: The movement-image. Trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. __________ 1997. “One less manifesto.” In Mimesis, masochism, and mime: The politics of theatricality in contemporary French thought, ed. T. Murray, 239–58. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Dollimore, Jonathan. 2004. Radical tragedy: Religion, ideology, and power in the dramas of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. 3rd ed. Durham: Duke University Press. Dryden, John. 1912. “An essay on dramatic poesy” (1668). In Dramatic essays. London: J.M. Dent and Sons. Gascoigne, George. 1815. “Certayne notes of instruction concerning the making of verse or ryme in English” (1575). Facsimile. In Ancient critical essays upon English poets and poesy, ed. Haslewood. __________, and Francis Kinmelwersh. 1906. Jocasta (1566). Ed. John W. Cunliffe. Boston and London: Heath. Greenblatt, Stephen. 1983. Renaissance self-fashioning: From More to Shakespeare. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Hardison, O.B. 1984. “Blank verse before Milton.” Studies in Philology 81:3: 253–74. Holderness, Graham. 1985. Shakespeare’s history. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan. Howard, Robert. 1665. Four new plays. London: Henry Herringman. Early English Books 1475–1640 279:5. __________ 1668. The Duke of Lerma. The Savoy (London): Henry Herringman. Early English Books 1475–1640 279:6. Hunter, G.K. 1997. English drama 1586–1642: The age of Shakespeare. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Kttler, Friedrich. 1999. Gramophone, film, typewriter. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Liu, Alan. 2008. “Imagining the new media encounter.” In A Companion to digital literary studies, ed. Susan Schreibman and Ray Siemens, 3–25. Oxford: Blackwell. Lehmann, Courtney. 2002. Shakespeare remains: Theater to film, early modern to postmodern. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Levinson, Jill L. 1998. “ ‘Working Words’ ”: The verbal dynamic of Tamburlaine.” In “A Poet and filthy play-maker”: New essays on Christopher Marlowe, eds. Kenneth Friedenreich, Roma Gill, and Constance B. Kuriyama, 99–115. New York: AMS. Marlowe, Christopher. 1998. Tamburlaine the Great. Ed. J.S. Cunningham and Eithne Henson. Manchester: Manchester University Press. __________ 1999. Doctor Faustus. Ed. Arthur Kinney. In Renaissance drama: An anthology of plays and entertainments. Malden, MA.: Blackwell. __________ 2007. The Jew of Malta. London: Methuen. McDonald, Russ. 2004. “Marlowe and style.” In The Cambridge companion to Christopher Marlowe, ed. Patrick Cheney, 55–69. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McLuhan, Marshall. 1964. Understanding media. New York: McGraw Hill. Meres, Francis. 1815. “A comparative discourse of our English poets” (1598). Facsimile. Ancient critical essays upon English poets and poesy, ed. Joseph Haslewood.

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Milton, John. 1998. “Note on the verse to Paradise Lost.” In The Riverside Milton, ed. Roy Flannagan, 352. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin. Nashe, Thomas. 1973. Preface to Robert Greene’s Menaphon (1589). Ed. Arthur Freeman. New York: Garland. Puttenham, George (alias Webster). 1811. The arte of English poesie (1589). London: Harding and Wright. Ramsay, Robert L. 1910. “Changes in verse-technic in the sixteenth-century English drama.” American Journal of Philology 31:2: 175–202. Rhodes, Neil, and Jonathan Sawday, ed. 2000. The Renaissance computer: Knowledge technology in the first age of print. London: Routledge. Sackville, Thomas and Thomas Norton. 1883. Gorboduc, or Ferrex and Porrex (1561), ed. L. Toulmin Smith. Heilbronn: Henninger. Shakespeare, William. 2001. As you like it. Ed. Richard Proudfoot, Ann Thompson, and David Scott Kastan. The Arden Shakespeare complete works. London: Arden. __________ 2001. Hamlet. Ed. Richard Proudfoot, Ann Thompson, and David Scott Kastan. The Arden Shakespeare complete works. __________ 2001. Much ado about nothing. Ed. Richard Proudfoot, Ann Thompson, and David Scott Kastan. The Arden Shakespeare complete works. Steele, Timothy. 1999. All the fun’s in how you say a thing: An explanation of meter and versification. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. Thomas, Edward. 1909.“Introduction.” In The plays of Christopher Marlowe. ed. Ernest Rhys. London and Toronto: J.M. Dent and Sons. Vanhoutte, Jacqueline. 2000. “Community, authority, and the motherland in Sackville and Norton’s Gorboduc.” SEL Studies in English Literature 1500– 1900 40:2 : 227–39. Ward, Allyna E. 2008. “ ‘If the head be evill the body cannot be good’: Legitimate rebellion in Gascoigne and Kinmelwershe’s Jocasta.” Early Modern Literary Studies 14:1. http://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/14-1/article2.htm. Welsh, Alexander. 2001. Hamlet in his modern guises. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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Wright, George T. 1993. “Blank verse in the Jacobean theatre: Language that vanishes, language that keeps.” The Elizabethan Theatre 12, ed. A.L. Magnusson and C.E. McGee. Toronto: Meany.

Broadside Love: A Comparison of Reading with Digital Tools versus Deep Knowledge in the Ballads of Samuel Pepys Tassie Gniady

Indiana University [email protected]

Figure 1. “Constance of Cleveland” (Pepys 1:138–39) Printed by Permission of The Pepys Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge Samuel Pepys, one of the most famous diarists of the seventeenth century, chronicled the restoration of Charles II, the Great Fire of London in 1666, his duties as Secretary of the Admiralty, and, most importantly for this essay, his everyday life in which he attended the theater, had amorous excursions, and often played the lute as he sang the latest ballads. Pepys also collected these broadside ballads, arguably the most popular form of cheap print available. This essay explores the ways in which one portion of the ballads, those having to do with “Love Pleasant” (a category Pepys created and which was the largest in his collection), deal with the notion of love as typified in cheap © 2014 Iter Inc. and the Arizona Board of Regents for Arizona State University. All rights reserved ISBN 978-0-86698-516-1 (online) ISBN 978-0-86698-515-4 (print) New Technologies in Medieval and Renaissance Studies 4 (2014) 243–259

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print. This comparative analysis will be done through the use of digital tools and slow/deep reading.1 I will explore what digital textual analysis brings to the table when dealing with a large, but pre-selected, dataset in which the elements should share many common elements; how false data can be identified and winnowed out if one is just beginning work on broadside ballads; and, finally, what is the best way to interleave digital tools with slow reading. First some background about broadside ballads, the most ubiquitous and cheapest form of print available in the seventeenth century. As Tessa Watt has calculated, “an absolute minimum of 600,000 ballads [were] circulating in the second half of the sixteenth century” and totals probably reached “between 3 and 4 million” (1993, 11). The price of ballads, usually around a penny, was well within the reach of the working class. Eric Nebeker, in his essay on “The Heyday of the Broadside Ballad,” writes of the ballad phenomenon: … in seventeenth century England, broadside ballads were everywhere. Walk into an alehouse and you would see sheets pasted to the walls—the woodcuts of lords and ladies, shepherds, milkmaids, murderers, lovers, and even murderous lovers vying for your attention. Walk the streets of London and you would see the sheets held up by ballad mongers, with heavily inked black-letter type, waiting to be bought. (2009) The English Broadside Ballad Archive, housed at the University of CaliforniaSanta Barbara and directed by Patricia Fumerton, has taken on digitizing all extant ballads and making them available via a number of modes that facilitate interaction with the digital artifact. A citation, ballad sheet facsimile, facsimile transcription, text transcription, and recording have been made available for each ballad (although color images are not available for all ballads and tunes for some are unknown; please see “The Wanton Wife of Bath” for a ballad available via all of these modes: http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/ ballad/32447/image).

1

Jan Parker, in his editorial “Digital Humanities, Digital Futures,” questions the ways in which the digital can facilitate slow reading as the digital invokes a “dizzying plurality” (2011, 5).

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Figure 2. Home Page of the English Broadside Ballad Archive According to Richard Luckett, the Head Librarian of the Pepys Library, Samuel Pepys began his collection by purchasing that of John Selden and added to it beginning in the 1660s, but probably did most of his collecting in the 1680s (Luckett 2007). Pepys was a stickler for order and, just as he ran a tight ship as Secretary of the Admiralty, “so he tried to bring a meticulous order to his own constantly and evolving library.” In the case of broadside ballads, this meant that he renumbered his collection multiple times to accommodate new additions and reassigned them according to different categories he had devised (Fumerton, 2009). For those wishing to become familiar with broadside ballads, the Pepys Collection is a good place to start, and EBBA is a digital destination that not only provides access to the ballads but also contains a number of introductory essays with bibliographies for further reading, covering everything from ballad culture to black letter to the pictorial imprints that decorate most ballads. These texts serve as a quick primer for scholars familiar with seventeenth-century culture but who might not be familiar with this type of cheap print. Once a user has acquainted herself with the context of broadside

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culture, the Pepys collection and its divisions, she can then delve further into the mind of a seventeenth-century ballad collector. Let us begin with Pepys’ category “Love Pleasant.” Kris McAbee asserts that these are not necessarily “ ‘pleasant tales of requited love’ ” but “rather amiable and good-humored” ballads on the topic. Her essay concludes: The fact that “Love Pleasant” holds the largest selection of ballads in the collection seems to speak more to the shifting boundaries of Pepys’s categorizations than to anything inherent in the ballad that would make it ideal for cataloging under the pleasures of love. In fact, the “pleasant” nature of the ballads in “Love Pleasant” stems not necessarily from their depiction of successful, happy, or, even pleasing love, but rather from the rather amiable and goodhumored tone of the majority of these ballads, even in cases when the ballads depict love—or in many cases, lust—gone awry. Indeed, one of the most commonly repeated phrases in this category is not an exposition on love, but, rather, a self-referential phrase marking the “cream of the jest,” or the best part of the joke. (2005) Because the category is so large, the average user, even if she read the over six hundred ballads in the category, might have trouble focusing on particular trends as specifically played out in the section. However, the category, as Pepys delineated it, was obviously important to him and to the realm of inexpensive print in general. What to focus on then and how to do it? Almost one-third of the collection of 1,829 ballads, which are divided into ten categories according to topics Pepys created (eleven if one counts the “Promiscuous Supplement”), fall into the category “Love Pleasant,” which is the largest category and encompasses about one-third of the entire collection. If one takes into account the categories “Love Unfortunate” and “Marriage” the number rises to 775/1829, or about 43%. The current cataloguing team itself has used the keyword “love” 579 times and sex/sexuality 371 (of course some of these are overlapping). Fumerton has noted that the Pepys collection reflects his passion for both “work and sex” as he collected numerous sea ballads in addition to those about love. With these sea ballads numbering only 97, however interested in sea ballads Pepys was, not nearly as many were available as those concerning love in all its various guises. EBBA has now archived the British Library’s Roxburghe Collection, is currently archiving the ballad holdings of the Huntington Library as well as the Euing Collection at Glasgow Library, and, with the award of a fourth NEH

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grant, will digitize the Crawford ballads at the National Library of Scotland. I spent four years immersed in this archive as the project manager while the EBBA Team at UC-Santa Barbara worked to transcribe, sing, and mount the archive online—during which time we worked primarily with the Pepys Collection. In this essay, I reflect on what long-term immersion in this set of ballads has led me to believe about this collection, particularly ballads concerning love and how these insights compare to those generated by digital tools. Is there a way to facilitate introduction to new users to the archive with these tools? By turning to data visualization techniques, I hope to demonstrate the way in which a subjective category, defined by an eccentric seventeenth century collector, upholds McAbee’s assertion of “shifting boundaries of Pepys’s categorizations.” Although they are “shifting,” these categories still maintain some internal consistency that might not be apparent when reading the category in a linear, “usual” manner. Northrop Frye (1957) has spoken of “recurring conventional units of literature,” and, in “Knowing: Modeling in Literary Studies” (2008), Willard McCarty looks at the work of Jean-Claude Gardin testing Northrop Frye’s ideas about conventional units. Here computers are used to see if these units appear when doing a digital interrogation of a text: Gardin takes what he calls a “scientific” approach to scholarship, which means reduction of scholarly argument to a Turing-machine calculus, then use of simulation to test the strength of arguments. Frye’s interest is in studying the archetypes or “recurring conventional units” of literature; he directs attention to computer modeling techniques as the way to pursue this study. Similarly, I look at how visualizations of trends in the Pepys “Love Pleasant” ballads lend insight into the collection and may lead to additional higherlevel conclusions. The “Love Pleasant” category should contain more than one of Frye’s “recurring conventional units” or “pregeneric elements”: romance, irony, comedy and tragedy. This mixing of pre-genres will reveal that the selection is based on shifting grounds and expose an evolution in Pepys’s thinking about what the term “Love Pleasant” implies as he compiled the collection over several decades.2 2

Books in the Pepys library often have as many as nine different numbers written in and crossed out on their leaves (Nixon quoted in Fumerton, 2005). The ballads

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Figure 3 uses IBM’s Many Eyes Phrase Net to plot the occurrences of all the words in the “Love Pleasant” ballads that are joined with the conjunction “and.”3 Many Eyes recommends “and” as a good exploratory word because it “will often highlight key related concepts,” and the OED backs up the cognitive power of this conjunction as “simply connective.”

Figure 3. “* and *.” fared no better as Pepys rearranged them and rebound them several times (Fumerton, 2005). 3 Phrase Net “creates a network diagram of the words it finds as matches. Two words are connected if they occur in the same phrase. The size of a word is proportional to the number of times it occurs in a match; the thickness of an arrow between words tells you how many times those two words occur in the same phrase. The color of a word indicates whether it is more likely to be found in the first or second slot of a pattern. The darker the word, the more often it appears in the first position.” (http:// www-958.ibm.com/software/data/cognos/manyeyes/page/Phrase_Net.html)

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The upper left-hand corner of the figure reveals an expected cluster of words like “fair,” “honest,” and “constant” as adjectives that appear in the phrase “love and _________.” Similarly, in the upper right of the phrase net “love” connects with “joy,” “live,” “delight,” and “honour.” All of these words fit easily into the comic mythos as described by Frye: What normally happens is that a young man wants a young woman, that his desire is resisted by some opposition, usually paternal, and that near the end of the play some twist in the plot enables the hero to have his will (1957). While this structure may seem too sophisticated for ditties about love that span only a broadside, by looking at these keywords in context (KWIC), we find that the obstacle is rarely paternal, but is instead the woman herself. She must be persuaded that the suitor really does care for her, hence the laudatory words like “fair,” “honest,” and “constant.” Sometimes this desire is inverted, as in “The Bucksome Lass of Westminster” “Who has two hundred pound to her Portion ‘is said: / Any Young-Man may have it if he’ll open her hole, / But it lies at New-Castle, and all in Sea-Cole” (Pepys 3:241). However, these ballads are far outnumbered by those in which the suitor is male and spends his time cajoling the object of his affection—whether his object is marriage or sex. The word “love” itself appears and while “joy,” “live,” “delight,” and “honour” are connected to it, “live” leads to “dye” and “sigh.” While the tone of the last two connections is clearly different, these descriptions are still idealized versions of love; thus Frye’s grammar of literature is still being borne out by the romantic mode. The bottom right of the figure changes modes to reveal that a number of these ballads might be “amiable” as the words “play,” “sport,” “kiss,” and “laugh” appear in this cluster. Here the mythos of comedy seems a more apt description, but the words that dominate this portion of the net are “grief” and “sorrow.” It seems, then, that play and sport then lead to some unpleasant outcomes in the realm of love, and what might be amiable for one party is not for the other. A common theme, though, is expectations surrounding women.4 In fact, the word “coy” occurs 127 times in the category—never in relation to men. “Wench” occurs another 55 times both in positive and negative contexts, 4

McAbee’s essay “Love Pleasant” (2005) discusses this trope via a number of close readings.

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while the word “lewd,” though not as common, is associated with both the words “strumpet” and “harlot” among its eight hits (Figure 4).

Figure 4. A word tree of the word “lewd” generated by IBM’s Many Eyes For the sake of immediate discussion, let us focus on the eight uses of the term “lewd” which lend themselves well to a contained analysis. Notice that two are not gender‑specific (the “lewd ungodly liver” and those who “lewd lives they had led”); however while the “ungodly liver” does turn out to be a ballad about “murderers and blasphemers” (of the male persuasion, Pepys, 1:232–233v), the people living “lewd lives” turn out to be female ramblers or “the Three Buxome Lasses of Northampton-shire” (Pepys 3:294). However, when we consider that verso ballads are accidental inclusions in a given category because of the material printed on the recto side, the strange topic of murderers and blasphemers becomes apparent.5 This is a false hit for “lewd” in the “Love Pleasant” category that requires the reader to have deep knowledge about the manner in which the collection was assembled, although one may argue that this implies there is an implicit conversation between the recto and the verso of a ballad—that one side is not simply waste paper being recycled. But, of the seven recto hits, all concern women: women who are strumpets, harlots, or inconstant. Thus, the scholar is able to look at the phrase net and realize that ribaldry in the ballads is gendered—and given that issues of gender are not contained to ballad studies, here the digital tool can either reinforce both the knowledgeable ballad scholar’s hunch and the gender-minded scholar’s intuition, pointing them to specific ballads worthy of slow reading. 5

Ballads were often printed on both sides of a sheet. This often occurred when a ballad did not sell well and the printer wanted to reuse the paper.

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Another interesting graphic to look at is the phrase net generated by “* is *” because the verb “to be” implies not only a relationship but an equating of the two words joined by this verb. This phrase net allows the scholar to investigate what essential qualities are linked in the seventeenth century by the most basic statement of being (Figure 5).

Figure 5. “Love is *” and “heart is *” portion of phrase net generated by IBM’s Many Eyes For example, “love” also feeds into these same four words, “firm” (3 times), “fixed” (3 times), “true” (11 times) and “void” (2 times). “Heart” feeds into four words —“firm” (3 times), “fixed” (3 times), “true” (11 times), and then the unexpected “void” (1 time). However, here is where a careful researcher would again look for more context than a three-word phrase. It turns out that the unexpected “void” refers not to negative connotations, but into positive attributes. The double hit for “love is” comes from two copies of the same ballad, not an uncommon occurrence in the collection, as ballads were often reprinted. In “The Vertuous Maids Resolution” the full context of the quotation is: Only for wealth let no man chuse, for constant love is void 6of care; A vertuous wife will ne’r destroy, Your freedom but will be your joy. (Pepys 3:37, 3:54) 6

I have bolded each phrase from the phrase net to make the context more apparent.

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Thus, “void” becomes a positive term, as does “destroy” in the next line, and a “vertuous wife” does not destroy “freedom” but creates “joy.” Perhaps then, this example should be a cautionary tale about contextual searching and the pitfalls of building simple two-word concordances. Similarly, it turns out that the “heart” that is “void” is also joyful, but in a celebration of inconstancy. In an instance of the bawdy nature of some ballads, in “Rare News for the Female Sex” a girl of fifteen years reflects: For what’s a greater plague than a heavy maidenhead And must I still endure it, I’d rather sure be dead, Since this good news I hear, my heart is void of fear, Neither Friend nor Foe, shall say me no, for ile be puncht this year. (Pepys 3:184) The “good news” that she has heard is “Now e’ery Lass that means to pass must all be puncht this Year” (ca. 1672–1696). This is not the greensickness of Jessica Murphy’s essay in this volume that can be cured only by sex after marriage—rather it is a free expression of the “near 17 or more” women in town discussing the inability of the men to meet their sexual needs. Even though this is the only use of the word “puncht” in this context in the collection, the ballad is reprinted in 1696 with slight variation in the text: the group of women has grown from 17 to 27. This ballad is not simply another copy of the same ballad as occurred with “The Vertuous Maids Resolution” above. Instead, the woodcuts are completely different, as is the layout. In the first, Pepys 3:184, the style is reflective of ballads from the earlier part of the century (Figure 6). A deep knowledge of ballad culture allows me to analyze the layout as mid‑ to late seventeenth century (without looking at the citation, I would have guessed 1660–1680) based on the half-folio size of the broadside (earlier broadsides were usually folio‑sized) and the pictorial woodcuts.

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Figure 6. “An Excellent New SONG, Called, / Rare News for the Female Sex. / Or, Good Luck at last.” (Pepys 3:184) Printed by Permission of The Pepys Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge The second ballad, although not categorized as “Love Pleasant” by Pepys, is in volume 5 of the collection and instead falls into the vague “Various Subjects,” most of which post‑date the ballads in other volumes and are not as stringently categorized as the rest of the collection. Additionally, the ballad reveals a trend common to very late seventeenth‑century ballads, the main title is in black letter and the body is in white letter—the opposite of the font choices made for Pepys 3:184 (Figures 6 and 7). This trend continues until ballads are often entirely white letter and devoid of woodcuts. This ballad, however, seems to be transitional in that it still has woodcut decorations, but only one has figures in it, and they appear to be male. Two are of wheat or some grain—which bears little relation to the ballad other than the fact that it begins at a “Country Bakers door”—and the third is simply a floral pattern. None seem to represent the ribald nature of the ballad in contrast to the earlier version which mentions the “Punching-Office” in the caption!

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Figure 7. “An Excellent New SONG, / CALL’D / Rare News For the Female Sex, / OR/ Good Luck at Last.” (Pepys 5:426) Printed by Permission of The Pepys Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge Thus, the term “void” led to virtue in one instance and rollicking sex in another, pointing out the need for context when creating phrase nets. The link between “cupid” and “devil”, however, is more straightforward in that it does finally point to some of the pitfalls (or tragedy, to use Frye’s term) presented by love. In the phrase net “* is *” there is the following link between “cupid” (3 occurrences) and the devil (6 occurrences) with the word “blind” (Figure 8).

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Figure 8. “Cupid is” and “devil is” “blind” from the * is * phrasenet We are all familiar with the phrase “love is blind,” and it is one that is demonstrated to excess through the machinations of Oberon and Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but the explicit connection between the devil and that same sort of blindness is surprising. However, in “THE CUCKOLD’S Calamity” a cuckholded husband hopes for his wife to be blinded by the devil as punishment. And when one follows up on the other hits, such as “The young-mans Resolution to the Maidens Request…”, the phrase refers to an event that will never come to pass : Good sir, since you have told me when you are resolved for to marry, I wish with all my heart till then that for a Wife you still might tarry; For if all Young-men were of your mind, and Maids no better were preferred, I think it would be when the Devil is blind7 that we and our Lovers should be marryed. (Pepys 3:212) Similarly, in “The Countrey Lasses Good Counsel to all her Fellow-Maids” the country lass advises:

Some Men will crack and say they have house and land, But when they go forth upon other mens ground it doth stand, And all that they promise you true you shall find, But that you shall see when the Devil is blind … (Pepys 3:20)

However, the tables can turn as a young man laments in another ballad “The Youngmans careless Wooing”: 7

This phrase which occurs with some variation 33 times throughout the archive, pointing to its common usage at the time. Thus, while time has preserved for us the phrase “Cupid is blind,” the seventeenth century currency of the “Devil is blind” is one that is highlighted by the digital tool.

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[Most] Maids are false tho some seem holyer [y]et I believe they are all of one mind, [Like] unto like, quoth the Dee’l to the Collier: [an]d they’l prove true when the Devil is blind, Let no Man yield to their desire For the burn’d Child doth dread the fire … (Pepys 3:130)

However, despite this young man’s affirmation that women are to be feared, men do have sexual appetites as the word “lusty” appears 57 times and is associated with “farmer,” butcher”, and, most prominently, the alliterative “lad” (Figure 9).

Figure 9. “Lusty” word tree with zoom on “lusty lad”

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The false hits for lewdness when analyzing “Love Pleasant” reveal aspects of Pepys’s method of collection that would not be apparent to the casual user. They also point to the need to refine language parsing—and not take results at face value, without investigating trends for validity via more extensive reading of the primary texts. Having done a quick tour of balladry, Pepys, the man and his collection, and finally the category of “Love Pleasant,” with an eye to the more bawdy ballads, what can we conclude? Are there happy or unhappy outcomes for lovers? What became clear as I worked on this essay is that 1,800 separate XML files are not ideal for most of the text‑analysis engines currently available. Add to this the problem that natural language parsing is not an option for these seventeenth‑century ballads. I did find a program called AntConc, used by Jessica Murphy in her essay, which was very helpful in generating concordances for the entire collection, and had a handy file view so that I could click on the highlighted term and read the ballad from which the term came in full. This activity, reading in full, brought me full circle to the thesis of my abstract—what is the role of data mining when dealing with fully textencoded environments? The temptation when faced with an archive as large as the Pepys is to let the computer narrow results and then begin reading. Instead I would caution a hybrid approach in which the introductory essays might lead one to consider a Pepys category as more pertinent to one’s field of inquiry (in this case “Love Pleasant”), then the application of some text analysis tools to hypothesize about some trends, but, finally, the scholar must sit down and read the ballads in the category. At this point it is also time to question Pepys’ own categorizations and use the advanced search at EBBA where there is a category for sex/sexuality. Looking at the 388 hits for the Pepys Ballads, it is clear that they run the gamut from the most innocent of the “Love Pleasant” ballads to hits outside the category involving concubines and “A Lamentable Ballad of a Ladies Fall” in Pepys’ “Promiscuous Supplement.” Thus a fair amount of human selection and collation is needed, whether it comes in the form of building these datasets, possibly using different hierarchies to do so, and then comparing results. It helps to understand Pepys and his collecting habits to determine if the prevalence of love ballads is idiosyncratic, and one must read for content because natural language analysis does not work well on seventeenth‑century cheap print. In a world in which so much is now available via the bright screens many of us spend our days

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in front of, the role of reading and the way in which it is done is evolving. Matthew Jockers sums up this interplay well: Micro-oriented approaches to literature, highly interpretive readings of literature, remain fundamentally important. Just as microeconomics offers important perspectives on the economy. It is the exact interplay between the macro and micro scale that promises a new, enhanced, and perhaps even better understanding of the literary record. The two approaches work in tandem and inform each other. Human interpretation of the “data,” whether it be mined at the macro or micro level, remains essential. While the methods of enquiry, of evidence gathering, are different, they are not antithetical, and they share the same ultimate goal of informing our understanding of the literary record, be it writ large or small. The most fundamental and important difference in the two approaches is that the macroanalytic approach reveals details about texts that are for all intents and purposes unavailable to close-readers of the texts. (2011) This essay has also revealed details about the Pepys collection that were not available to me before I began macro-processing them, despite years of immersion in this collection. It is hoped that this work will encourage others to avail themselves of the push and pull that comes from applying both close and distant reading techniques to their own work.

WORKS CITED English Broadside Ballad Archive. 2014. http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/. 9 February 2014. Frye, Northrop. 1957. The anatomy of criticism: Four essays. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Fumerton, Patricia. “Recollecting Samuel Pepys: His Life, His Library, and His Legacy.” UCSB English Broadside Ballad Archive . 2009. Web. http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/page/heyday-of-the-broadside-ballad. 3 August 2009. Jockers, Matthew. 2011. “On distant reading and macroanalysis.” 1 July 2011. Web. http://www.matthewjockers.net/2011/07/01/on-distantreading-and-macroanalysis/. 15 March 2013.

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Luckett, Richard. 2007. Interview by Patricia Fumerton. July 10. Magdalene College, Cambridge. Many Eyes. 2011. Phrase Net. 15 July 2011. Web. http://www-958.ibm.com/ software/data/cognos/manyeyes/page/Phrase_Net.html. 2 August 2012. McAbee, Kris. “Love Pleasant: Constancy and craftiness.” UCSB English Broadside Ballad Archive. 2009. Web. http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/ page/love-pleasant. 2 March 2013. McCarty, Willard. 2008. “Knowing: Modeling in literary studies.” In A companion to digital literary studies, eds. Susan Schreibman and Ray Siemens, 391–401. Oxford: Blackwell. http://www.digitalhumanties. org/companionDLS/. Nebeker, Eric. “The heyday of the broadside ballad.” UCSB English Broadside Ballad Archive. 2009. Web. http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/page/ heyday-of-the-broadside-ballad. 3 August 2012. Oxford English Dictionary. 2011. Web. http://oed.com. 2 July 2011. Parker, Jan. 2012. “Digital humanities, digital futures.” Arts and humanities in higher education 11:3: 3–7. Watt, Tessa. 1991. Cheap print and popular piety, 1550–1640. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Emblematica Online: A Case Study in Humanities Research Projects Kathleen Marie Smith*

Stanford University Libraries [email protected] Within the field of emblem studies, there is a significant need for critical editions of emblematic texts to promote scholarship. Emblem books, and the information they reveal about emblematic modes of communication and cognitive structures, are essential to understanding the early modern European context. These texts functioned as interdisciplinary nodes of exchange, and similarly interdisciplinary resources are required to study them. Emblematica Online, a joint project between the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign and the Herzog-August-Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel, Germany, is a research site designed to serve as a single point of access for researchers in emblem studies as well as an entry point for those unfamiliar with this area of scholarship. There are significant challenges involved in building a research infrastructure of this type, but the nature of emblem studies makes it a particularly suitable subject for digital development. Many of the issues involved in the creation of Emblematica Online can be useful for other research projects in the humanities. Moreover, one fundamental issue for humanities projects in the digital realm is how to recreate a suitable context for these works in a way that provides useful information, interpretations, and links to other resources, and in general takes full advantage of the possibilities of online scholarship. This new context must also reflect the initial context of these works in order to ensure that they remain valuable, and, as with any digital project, must reflect the needs of its user communities in order to be successful.

Understanding the emblematic text The advent of emblem books as a genre is considered to have begun in 1531 with the publication of Andrea Alciato’s Emblematum liber, a collection of *

At the time this article was written, the author was a PhD student in the Department of Germanic Languages & Literatures at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. © 2014 Iter Inc. and the Arizona Board of Regents for Arizona State University. All rights reserved ISBN 978-0-86698-516-1 (online) ISBN 978-0-86698-515-4 (print) New Technologies in Medieval and Renaissance Studies 4 (2014) 261–284

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illustrated epigrams that was printed in over 150 editions by the end of the eighteenth century (Russell 1999, 265). Other authors began to produce their own emblem books on all aspects of life, from politics to religion to love. These works were extremely popular and widely disseminated; numerous editions were printed throughout Europe in many languages such as Latin, Greek, French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, and Polish. They frequently focused on a specific theme and contained a mixture of both existing and newly-created emblems. In addition to printed texts, emblematic imagery was widely used in every aspect of life, on material objects and buildings, and as personal devices and family mottos. (The breadth of emblem studies is represented in scholarly research on this subject, which deals with topics as diverse as emblematic illustrations in paintings and in architecture, emblematic imagery in literary texts, emblematic themes on objects such as tapestries and coins, in heraldry, and on warships, and even aspects of cognitive science.)1 Emblems appear to have been omnipresent in the cultural context of the early modern period. As Peter Daly has described them, emblems are essential in interpreting all methods of communication of this period as well.2 Emblem books and the widespread use of emblematic imagery fell out of favor by the mid-eighteenth century, however, and the texts and objects that are available to scholars today represent only a small number of those that actually existed. Possible reasons for this decline include the late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century view of emblems as suitable primarily for the instruction of morality, a perspective which was distinctly at odds with many of the earlier emblem writers such as Alciato (Manning 2010, 16–17), or the perception of emblems as “old-fashioned,” arcane, and esoteric systems of meaning that were in contrast to the ideals of the Enlightenment. The scarcity of surviving sources, and the corresponding difficulty in gaining access to them, contributed to the relative anonymity of emblem studies until approximately fifty years ago, when emblematics began to receive more recognition as an important aspect of early modern European culture. The emblem in its ideal form consists of three parts: a motto (inscriptio), an image (pictura), and an epigram or text (subscriptio). The interaction of these components generates meaning. Indeed, the purpose of an emblem is 1

See, for example, Stafford 2008, Raasveld 1991, Young 1988, Bath 2007, and Van Dongen 2007. 2 “The emblem informed and helped to shape virtually every form of verbal and visual communication during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries” (Daly 1984, 53).

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to communicate meaning through the combination of its individual components, a function that disappears when each part is analyzed separately. For example, in Emblem XXX of Mundi Lapis Lydius, oder: Der Welt Probier-Stein/ Das ist/ Emblematische Sitten-Lehren (1712) by Antoine de Bourgogne, the emblem pictura or image depicts a richly-dressed man sitting at a table, painting fake food (see Figure 1). The German inscriptio or motto, “von der grossen ansehnlichen Bibliothec [sic],” or “concerning the large beautiful library,” refers however to a library, a subject that does not appear in the image at all. The subscriptio or accompanying epigrammatic text explains the meaning of this juxtaposition: painted food pleases the eyes but does not satisfy the appetite, just as a large and attractive library is a feast for the eyes but does not lead to the possession of true knowledge: “A lazy man who owns many books without reading a single page with diligence and intelligence is and remains ignorant” (“Ein Fauler/ der viel Bücher hat/ Und nicht recht list ein einig Blat [sic]/ Mit strengem Fleiß und mit Verstand/ Der ist und bleibt ein Ignorant”). The combination of the motto, the image, and the text leads to interpretations of the emblem as a whole. Each individual element of an emblem often requires knowledge of a complex frame of references that determine its significance—information which may seem esoteric to us but would have been familiar to the educated early modern reader. For example, this emblem contains a reference to “Heliogabali,” or Elagabalus, a Roman emperor often associated with debauchery, particularly sexual appetites and decadently luxurious banquets, which adds an additional layer of meaning to possible interpretations of this emblem.3 Without the underlying knowledge relating to each individual element, the meaning of the entire emblem can remain obscure. 3

In volume 1 of his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–1789), for example, Edward Gibbon’s description of this emperor make it clear what kinds of infamous connotations had been associated with the name Elagabalus or Heliogabali: “But Elagabalus, […] corrupted by his youth, his country, and his fortune, abandoned himself to the grossest pleasures with ungoverned fury, and soon found disgust and satiety in the midst of his enjoyments. The inflammatory powers of art were summoned to his aid: the confused multitude of women, of wines, and of dishes, and the studied variety of attitude and sauces, served to revive his languid appetites. […] It may seem probable, the vices and follies of Elagabalus have been adorned by fancy, and blackened by prejudice. Yet, confining ourselves to the public scenes displayed before the Roman people, and attested by grave and contemporary historians, their inexpressible infamy surpasses that of any other age or country.”

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Emblems are also dependent on their context, requiring researchers who work on emblems not only to be aware of the potential interpretations for each particular element, but also to be able to recognize and identify how and why a particular emblem was chosen and for what purpose. The emblem book in which this emblem appears has a specific pedagogic function that is laid out in the subtitle: “Touchstone of the World, That is, Emblematic Ethics.” Emblem XXX appears in a series of fifty-one emblems in Mundi Lapis Lydius that contrast the deception and vanity of worldly life with the truth and virtue of the “real” world (vanitas and veritas, or “Eitelkeit” and “Wahrheit”).4 The final emblem depicts Jesus and the Virgin Mary judging humanity—clearly a context that is relevant for interpreting the individual emblems in this series. These emblems in their combined context are meant to encourage the reader to contemplate the world as a whole and to consider the consequences of vanity and vice. The underlying meaning of an emblem in its historical context can thus generate meaning for the reader on many levels, none of which are directly stated in the emblem inscriptio, pictura, or subscriptio. Thus the reader is required to decipher the message of the emblem, which is often extremely complex and intricate, by drawing upon a network of information that is external to the emblem itself. Yet the boundaries of emblem studies remain resistant to precise definition. As many scholars have pointed out, the construction of emblems varies widely. The emblem in its idealized form (inscriptio, pictura, and subscriptio) is by no means the only format in which emblems are found; for example, a title page may contain multiple emblems in a single image. There are emblems with multiple picturae, there are emblems with no subscriptio, and the challenge for those compiling reference works and scholarly resources for emblematic studies begins with the decision about how to define an emblem book and how to define an emblem. For example, there is some question as to whether specific sources should be defined as “emblem books” or “books with emblems” (Peil 2004, 45). Frequently the most interesting emblems for scholarship are those that do not reflect the ideal (Billings 2004, 187–88). Our understanding of the way in which meaning was derived from emblems, and how they were meant to be read, is complicated further by their complex nature. As Peter Daly asks, “The question is not so much whether emblems have three parts, or two, or more, but what is the nature of the collaboration 4

Many of these emblems deal with themes that require aid in interpretation, particularly for a modern audience, such as Emblem XXXIX, which compares having grandchildren to lancing an infected wound: in both situations the process involves much worry and pain, and the outcome is uncertain.

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between the visual and the verbal. […] [Is] an emblem […] a product or a process?” (Daly 2010, 525). Is the emblem as it was created a finished product, and its audience meant to reach the same interpretation as the editor or author of a particular emblem book intended, or did its contemporaries understand it as a continuing process that accumulated meaning through further interpretation? The enormous problem of tracing the precise origin of a particular motive or theme, of an image or metaphor, particularly when the emblem involves so much interplay among various texts, themes, and sources, calls the concept of emblem authorship into question.5 John Manning writes that emblems exist in a network of references, and the importance and relevance of this network would have been clear to their creators.6 Divorcing emblem studies from their cultural context and placing them in a separate “genre” therefore risks faulty interpretation. Emblem studies are and have always been interdisciplinary by nature. Indeed, the act of reading and interpreting emblems is in many ways more similar to our present-day ideas about how engaging with information occurs online in a format in which multiple sources interact, rather than as a single, cohesive narrative. Understanding how contemporaries would have read an emblem is a complex task. As David Graham describes, an emblematic “mode of reading” is “allegorical, non-linear, highly deictic and ekphrastic, [and] only occasionally narrative” (Graham 2004, 104). To engage with these complex and complicated questions surrounding the origin, the function, the interpretation, and the meaning of emblems means that emblem scholarship demands an awareness of, and attention to, larger sources of information about the historical context in which they existed. 5

Daly calls traditional conceptions of authorship and audience into question when dealing with the emblem: “An historical approach will attempt to answer the simple-sounding question: what does a given emblem communicate, and to whom? To insist on the obvious, the emblem must be seen in its historical context […] [Also, w] ho ‘wrote’ the emblem? The notion of a ‘creator’ of an emblem presents us with the problem of authority in the emblem” (Daly 2010, 529–30). 6 Manning cites the example of Otto Vaenius (1556–1629), the author of several emblem books and the instructor of Peter Paul Rubens, to demonstrate the far-reaching cultural influence of emblematics: “Vaenius saw the emblem as only part of a bigger picture, an inset within a larger design. Emblems, thus, should be studied within a larger intellectual, cultural, historical, geographical framework. They cannot and should not be seen as a discrete form with no reference to a broader literary and cultural context” (Manning 2010, 6–7).

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Emblem scholarship remains underdeveloped in the larger context of European early modern studies, owing largely to the inaccessibility (in many senses of the term) of emblems and emblematic texts.7 Not only is this a difficult type of text with which to interact, compared with texts such as personal narratives and treatises, but the sources remain difficult to find and to use. In order to place emblem studies in its proper context as a key to understanding early modern culture, future scholarship needs a corpus of critical editions upon which scholars and researchers can build. The digital medium appears to offer a solution to this problem, since digital resources present a richer and more comprehensive way to explore emblematic systems of meaning. The advantage of online over print-based resources is that online texts can be linked to each other actively, instantly, and immediately, creating a “web” of meaning that is similar to the non-linear process of reading and interpreting an emblem. As Peter Robinson describes, electronic text editions can offer incredible benefits for research, and “finding new ways to show the network of intricate relations which defines a text” will lead to editions that move beyond simply imitating the printed book in the digital medium (Robinson 2004). According to Robinson, these new scholarly editions can revolutionize the possibilities available to the reader by providing innovative tools for analyzing texts as well as for collaborative interaction and exchange, which will also ensure the long-term usability of digital editions. Providing access in a digital medium raises other questions, however. As Kristian Jensen points out, research questions are shaped both by access to sources and materials, and by the way in which that access is structured (Jensen 2007, 77–78). Jensen warns against viewing digital facsimiles as an easy solution to the question of providing research access, since researchers working with a digital object necessarily have a different relationship to it than to a printed object. Digital images mask the original purpose and context of the text, abstracting it from the world in which it was created. For this reason, creators of digital resources must enable their users to move beyond the text itself and to engage the multiple sources of information that contribute to its meaning. Authors and printers of texts (such as emblem books) could not have anticipated the myriad ways in which those texts would be 7

“The emblem is becoming increasingly important in the study of Renaissance and Baroque culture, but research is still hampered by the relative inaccessibility of emblem books themselves […] The interpretation of older literary texts is almost invariably based on historical-critical editions. There are virtually no historical-critical editions of emblem books” (Daly 2010, 527–28).

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studied by later researchers, just as today’s creators of digital editions and resources cannot predict the needs of future scholars. Only by making use of the intertextual capabilities available through digital technologies will electronic publication fully realize its revolutionary potential.

The digitization of the emblem Researchers interested in emblem studies quickly comprehended the possibilities offered by digital technologies in dealing with the challenges they faced. The initial focus was on providing and improving preservation and access, since digital facsimiles offered a way to address the most pressing concerns of access and preservation by protecting fragile texts while enabling scholars across the globe to easily access research materials. Image reproduction for the purposes of publication was also a significant advantage of online editions, since they are not limited by the size of the page and the cost of high-quality illustrations—deciding factors in printed resources (Price 2008). Providing direct access to digital images was only part of the process, however. In Mesotext: Digitised Emblems, Modelled Annotations and Humanities Scholarship, Peter Boot describes the need for emblem scholars to become actively involved in the process of developing digital resources for emblem studies, noting that “Google is not a charity” (Boot 2009, 217–18). A digital facsimile will not introduce scholars to any of the issues mentioned earlier, and it can create the false impression that a book can be interpreted independent of its context. Another early priority was to expand upon interpretive guides and reference works. The nature of the emblem itself resists unmediated interpretation since emblems exist in an intricate network of associations and symbolic allusions. Existing print-based resources, such as iconographical indexes, bibliographies, and finding aids, that were necessary to navigate this complex system of meaning were limited in their search capacities and could be only updated periodically. Mara Wade explores how these print-based works can shape the direction of scholarship in her discussion of one important research resource, Arthur Henkel and Albrecht Schöne’s Emblemata: Handbuch zur Sinnbildkunst des XVI. und XVII. Jahrhunderts (1967), and its influential role in emblem studies (Wade 2011, 25–27). Henkel and Schöne’s Handbuch was a pioneering work and remains tremendously useful in emblematic scholarship, yet like any index or bibliography it has its limitations and particular areas of emphasis. Wade notes, for example, that this work reflects an orientation towards the (primarily Lutheran) collections held at institutions in the German state of Lower Saxony, and that there are no emblem books listed

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that were published after 1640 (Wade 2011, 26–27). In researching emblems, as in the creation of research resources, it is important to be aware of these boundaries.8 David Graham has categorized emblem digitization into three phases. The first phase from 1983 to 1993 involved exploratory efforts, which remained at an individual level because the technology was not sufficiently evolved and there were no established standards on which to build (Graham 2004, 13). The second phase from 1993 to 2003 saw movement towards establishing standards and laying the foundations for collaborative efforts. By 2002 there were multiple projects offering digital images of emblems in various forms and with varying levels of interpretive framework.9 These projects operated independently of each other for the most part, and during the development process, the emblem community had already begun to realize the benefit of expanded opportunities for scholarly cooperation.10 The current stage, the third phase of emblem digitization, has shifted towards creating portals and databases to support combined research and scholarly exchange (Graham 2004, 13). In creating an emblem database resource, the potential field of research questions merely grows more complex, since so much of the process of digitizing emblem books is in itself an interpretive act. Assigning a particular meaning to an emblem, for example, might make it easier to classify and search but might also discourage other, perhaps equally valid interpretations. For this reason, it is important to maintain the “open” nature of the emblem form while translating it into a digital context. As Hans Brandhorst explains, one purpose of digitizing emblems is to “understand the web-like 8

Online resources that build on these resources without reflecting on them risk creating an incomplete picture of the texts that existed. In digitizing emblematic works, “very careful attention must be paid to prejudices inherent in projects establishing a canon of digital emblematica” (Wade 2011, 27). 9 In 2002, Peter Daly listed 19 separate project websites featuring scanned emblems from universities and commercial entities in the United States, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, and Scotland; see Daly 2002, 61–129. Carsten Wilmes (2006, 42–44) notes that the various projects differ widely in their approaches and target audiences, and the Emblematica Online project is therefore not intended to replace existing websites, but rather to link them in a way that will make them more accessible to everyone. 10 Early awareness of the importance of collaboration is reflected in conferences such as the Society for Emblem Studies Emblem Digitization Project Workshop that took place on June 21–22, 2001, and focused on core topics such as the development of standards and increasing scholarly communication (http://www.emblems.arts.gla. ac.uk/SES/workshop.htm).

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connections between emblems, and between emblems and other historical phenomena” (Brandhorst 2004, 32). The goal of an emblematic resource such as Emblematica Online is to create new possibilities of interpretation, not to restrict them.

Emblematica Online as a central research access point Emblematica Online will offer a single-access entry point to link and facilitate access to the resources already developed, but, more than that, it may serve to create an online meeting point for collaboration regardless of location. Emblematica Online will allow researchers to perform metadata searches on a large body of emblem books in Latin, German, French, English, Italian, and Dutch from emblem digitization projects worldwide (Emblematica Online: Emblem Digitization) (see Figures 2–3). The interface will also enable scholars to search the metadata of German emblems and access bibliographies and a union catalogue of emblem mottos. Emblematica Online began development with a TransCoop grant from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation from 2002 to 2005 that supported workshops, conferences, publications, along with institutional support from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Herzog-August-Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel (Wade 2004, 115). As part of the NEH/DFG-funded grant Emblematica Online, both libraries received support for the period November 2009–November 2011, and the grant period was then extended through May 2012, to support digitization, markup, and the further expansion of the research infrastructure of the portal (Emblematica Online: Emblem Digitization).11 The participating projects of Emblematica Online consist of both large-scale and “fine-grained” projects; in other words, projects that concentrate on providing broader access to a much larger body of texts as well as projects that focus on intensive analysis of a smaller number of works. These two different goals require very different methodologies and approaches that can be difficult to reconcile. On a broader scope is the project at the University of Illinois and the HerzogAugust-Bibliothek. The University of Illinois Library holds approximately 750 original emblem imprints from 1540 to 1800, published in Germany, France, Italy, Spain and England. The Herzog-August-Bibliothek also holds 11

Recently PI Mara R. Wade and researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign received a two-year grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities in the Program Historical Collections and Reference Resources; please see https://securegrants.neh.gov/publicquery/main.aspx?f=1&gn=PW-51454-13.

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approximately 700 emblem books from 1540 to 1800 (Emblematica Online). The aim of the project is to digitize the entire collection except those books already digitized by other projects or books whose present condition does not make them suitable candidates for digitization (for example, books that are too fragile or too tightly bound). As of May 2012, Illinois had digitised 350 books and the Herzog-August-Bibliothek approximately 269. The total emblem count in all books will be over 25,000, and the project expects to produce circa 10,000 searchable individual emblems. Book-level and emblem-level metadata will also be searchable. An Open Archives Initiative (OAI) interface for emblems will enable data harvesting and aggregation.12 The union catalogue of emblem mottos is already under development at the Herzog-August-Bibliothek and contained 8673 mottos as of May 2012.13 Users can search these mottos by keyword or language (in German, English, Spanish, French, Greek, Italian, Latin and Dutch). The “fine-grain” approach is represented by the Emblem Project Utrecht and the project “French Emblems at Glasgow.” The Emblem Project Utrecht digitized and currently has available 27 books of Dutch love emblems published in 1600–1725 (Emblem Project Utrecht). These works are available both as page facsimiles and as transcriptions, with full translations, including most of the Latin texts into English, indexes, search options, and editorial information such as references, sources, parallels and notes. The “French Emblems at Glasgow” Digitization Project at Glasgow University in Glasgow, Scotland, has 27 browsable French emblem books from the sixteenth century, in both transcribed and facsimile versions, with the ability to search by image classification, proper name, keyword, words in languages such as Greek that require transliteration, and even by versification (French Emblems at Glasgow).

Standards and best practices in emblem digitization In order to deal with the complex nature of the emblem as well as the differences in the goals and methods of these projects, Emblematica Online participants have worked together to develop a set of standards and best practices. These standards allow for flexibility in decision-making on an individual project level as well as for cooperation on a higher level, and they can be loosely categorized into three levels: 1) selection and collection, or 12

See “OAI Request Results: Wolfenbüttel Digital Library” on the Wolfenbüttel Digital Library website: http://dbs.hab.de/oai/emblem/. 13 See “The Emblem Union Catalog-Motto” on the Wolfenbüttel Digital Library website: http://dbs.hab.de/emblem/unioncat/.

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deciding which texts and collections to include; 2) syntax, or how to encode them; and 3) semantics, or how to link them. Level 1: Selection and collection, or deciding which texts and collections to include. Each digitization project naturally is responsible for determining its own focus and scope based on the resources available, including the expertise of the principal investigators. These basic parameters include decisions about which works to include, such as all emblem books in a certain language, from a certain time period, from a set geographic territory, with a certain thematic focus, and so forth, as well as the level of markup possible and preferable. Projects that focus on a large body of texts are less likely to begin with intensive full-text markup, for example. Relying exclusively upon standard reference sources in the field of emblem studies to determine which works to digitize is problematic for several reasons: the lack of accepted standards for critical editions of emblem books, which is linked to the difficulty in precisely defining an emblem book, and the limitations of existing handbooks and guides to emblem books. Complicating factors in selecting works include the lack of an emblematic canon of works that is agreed upon by all, the geographic and linguistic distribution of surviving texts, and the question of authenticity in emblem books (a work that has been translated from Latin into a vernacular language may or may not be counted as a unique emblem book in its own right). In addition, the fragility of rare books often determines which works can be digitized and which are not in good enough condition. The advantage of including not only individual works, but also information about their context as part of a collection, has been recognized by the Emblematica Online project. In addition to analyzing emblems and emblem books, scholars are increasingly discovering new ways to investigate these texts that take advantage of new digitally-enhanced methods of performing research. New perspectives and new methods of interpretation have become easier through resources that enable different types of interconnectivity. As Mara Wade describes, the emblem studies community has thrived in this new environment that incorporates the possibilities of investigating the broader context of the emblem: “emblem scholars have embraced the digital world in their research needs. Scholars with similar interests gathered around mutually interesting research questions involving access of remote collections, questions of bibliography and book history, presentation of rare books in the web-based environment, and making rare and sometimes unique texts freely accessible through rich metadata for both texts and images” (Wade 2012).

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This perspective also raises awareness of the process of creating a collection, whether of physical objects or of digital items, and draws attention to the way in which these materials were selected for inclusion in a collection, preserved, and then made available. Since no collection is infinite or comprehensive, there are inevitably works that were not selected and preserved. Interacting with emblems and emblem books in this way also draws attention to underrepresented topics and research areas that invite investigation and future study. Level 2: Syntax, or how to encode them. In selecting a corpus of works for digitization and markup, the challenges of encoding texts that are as fluid and elusive as emblems, with varying formats and a relationship between text and image that is open to multiple interpretations, require special decisions to be made. The level of difficulty in encoding a body of works that are designed to be elusive and challenging, and in representing relationships between emblems and among emblems, such as those collected in a book that is centered around a particular theme, means that there is a need for common standards and guidelines. A general guideline for minimal and optimal XML markup in encoding emblematic works is provided by the Template (formerly known as the “Spine of Information Headings”) (Rawles 2003). This Template is based on a flexible terminology that categorizes an emblem into four basic components (the inscriptio, pictura, subscriptio, and commentatio).14 The Template provides guidelines for creating separate “Information Headings” for books and for individual emblems. Within these headers, fields are marked as either “minimal” or “optional.” Seven fields are considered minimal, or required, for the book level, but at the emblem level there are only three. At the book level, these fields are “Work Identifier,” Digitisation Details,” “Digitisation” (complete or incomplete), “Copy/copies identifier(s),” “National Code,” “Title,” and “Languages Used.” For the emblem level, these fields are “Unique identifier,” Access point(s) to images of individual emblem,” and “Motto(es), original language(s) and spelling” (Rawles 2003). This system allows for a great deal of flexibility when dealing with resources that vary widely, such as books with unknown authors and emblems that do not have picturae or subscriptiones. It also allows individual projects to decide on the level of markup they will use while still allowing them to exchange their data with other projects. 14

In addition to the three elements of an emblem mentioned earlier, the Template adds a category for commentatio, indicating a text that comments on the three primary elements.

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Once the scope of the project has been determined, and the desired level of markup determined, translating the physical object and its digital facsimile into a searchable format requires compatible systems. A specialized standard for encoding emblems is being developed, and bibliographic data will be encoded, preferably in MODS or in TEI headers.15 The text of emblem books frequently appears in Latin and in non-standardized contemporary vernacular translations side by side (see Figure 1). In order to make the vernacular text useful, it must be normalized and ideally translated into English as well. Texts in Gothic or Blackletter typeface are transcribed by hand (since there is as present no reliable option for OCR) and transcriptions must be doublechecked and linked to the corresponding page. Variations between editions of the same or similar works (such as missing pages or renumbering) also need to be taken into account in the encoding. Linking the texts, and accurately representing the relationship and interplay between image and text, presents a further challenge since the images themselves are highly allegorical. Representing the meaning of a particular image, such as the man painting wooden food in Figure 1, is as complicated as deciding how best to encode the components of the image (which is in itself a very problematic task of interpretation). One person viewing Emblem XXX might choose to highlight the human figure, another the room furnishings, another the action in which the human figure is engaged. For encoding and interpreting images, the Iconclass classification system provides a standardized controlled vocabulary for describing images, allowing for systematic indexing and searching.16 Not only is there a guideline for the encoding of images that provides a standardized framework and representation of hierarchy that aids searching, this guideline specifically allows for the inclusion of abstract ideas. Since emblems require a high level of knowledge in their markup, in order to make them useful for searches, there is a great deal of interpretation required both in identifying important themes and in using the best terminology to mark them up. The multiple interpretations and variations on themes 15

See the Emblem XML-Schema (current version dated 2 October 2011) at the Wolfenbüttel Digital Library website: http://diglib.hab.de/rules/schema/emblem/. 16 The Iconclass classification system “is a subject-specific classification system [… which is] a collection of definitions of objects, people, events and abstract ideas that serve as the subject of an image.” It “consists of 28,000 hierarchically ordered definitions ordered into 10 main divisions,” along with an alphabetical index of 14,000 keywords and a bibliography (not yet online) (Iconclass).

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and subjects mean that there are often multiple ways to “read” an emblem so that those who are involved in this type of encoding must have subject expertise in the language in which the book was written, in the history of symbols and themes, in the interpretation of early modern orthography, and a basic understanding of the early modern context, in which emblems could serve as coded symbols to convey various meanings. It is not simply a question of choosing which subject keywords to assign to a particular emblem; as in the case of Emblem XXX, there is simply so much information available, from the literal to the metaphorical, that encoding everything that could possibly be of interest is impossible. Therefore, decisions about priorities are essential. Iconclass, and the creation of standard guidelines for encoding emblem texts, help to guide those decisions. Level 3: Semantics, or how to link them. This level is about how to make emblematic texts searchable above and beyond the levels of the individual work or project—in effect, to take advantage of the possibilities of the digital medium to compare larger bodies of works. The value of online resources lies in their ability to interlink and connect resources above and beyond the internal boundaries of the individual work, the collection, or the institution. It is precisely this multi-faceted appeal that makes many online works so accessible. The ability to search multiple works for common words, names, and themes is increasingly recognized as one new way in which to engage with texts and compare them. The researcher can therefore engage with large numbers of texts simultaneously. The challenge for the project, then, is to make this type of interconnection not only possible but meaningful. In the case of emblems, not only does this act of transformation from a printbased work to an online edition require an in-depth knowledge of a complicated frame of reference encompassing areas such as classical, medieval, and early modern literature, history, theology, art, architecture, and music, along with the ability to read and understand the languages and fonts of these works themselves, it also involves the need to anticipate and understand how users from multiple disciplines and varying levels of expertise might use the search functions in a unified interface. In the case of keyword searches, for example, one person might search for “stork” and another for “crane” in seeking an emblem. The Iconclass controlled vocabulary will provide one solution to these types of terminology variations. Since emblem books were created in a variety of languages in which the early modern orthography

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and vocabulary often varies from the present, normalized forms are also required along with an English translation. Linking resources (be they books, institutions, or collections) requires the use of standards, which, as we have seen, have been developed by projects in emblem studies. The participants in Emblematica Online will be able to make use of the specialized emblem XML schema for exporting data. This system is compliant with TEI and Dublin Core, and it will allow for easier linking of individually created markup. The use of the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) will allow the project to link with search engines and provides a consistent framework for an infrastructure that still allows the user community flexibility as far as decisions involving content are concerned (Stäcker 2004, 90). These guidelines and recommendations will mean that the project-level decisions and information made available will be able to be shared and linked in the Emblematica Online interface regardless of the varying nature of the projects themselves. Projects with differing text corpora will be able to interlink and interact on a higher level than would be possible with each individual project on its own.

The emblem studies community and digital research environments One significant aspect relevant to all digital projects in all fields is the social element. After all, a project without users can by no means be considered a successful one, no matter how technologically well-supported or designed it may be. The report Virtual Research Environment Collaborative Landscape Study issued by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) in January of 2010 examined current projects and initiatives working to develop multidisciplinary collaborative online support structures for research around the world (Carusi and Reimer 2010). The findings emphasized the need for the development of social communities as well as technological capabilities in order to best serve research. The report recommended that these types of projects should be conceived as community development projects in addition to technology projects in order to be effective. One major stumbling block in the development of multidisciplinary online cooperative efforts has been the problem of communication between different communities with different languages, methodologies and priorities (Carusi and Reimer 2010). In the case of emblem studies, and particularly Emblematica Online, the knowledge necessary to work with these texts has always depended on the type of interdisciplinary collaboration and exchange of information that online research interfaces seek to create and support. In

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other words, the field of emblem studies is particularly well situated to move digital publication beyond the “incunabula” stage because it has always required a multi-disciplinary, interlinked methodology. Emblems and emblem books have always gained meaning through their interpretation by means of a network of references.17 They have themselves served, and continue to serve, as a means of communicating meaning among scholars from diverse disciplines on a variety of levels.

Conclusion In discussing the implications of digitisation, Kristian Jensen warns of the growing digital divide facing textual scholarship in the digital environment: If we do not grasp the opportunity posed by the unprecedented expansion in access to texts, and fail to enable our teaching and researching colleagues to go beyond digital facsimiles, to use them as a marvellous gateway to further information, the study of the disembodied, decontextual historical text may be the future for all but a handful of privileged researchers. […] [We could contribute to a] deeply split research environment where a small, exclusive group of researchers could understand the original material, whereas others would only be encouraged to engage with that with which has been pre-selected for them, a very partial view of the rich evidence which we store (Jensen 2007, 80). Jensen’s call to action directly addresses the need for context in creating scholarly resources. Digitizing emblem books, as with many texts, is most valuable when the resources that are created move beyond digital facsimiles to include information about context and interpretative guides. Since the field of emblem studies currently lacks critical editions, well-designed online editions encourage scholarship by making available reliable, useful, and diverse resources that create new possibilities for research questions rather than restricting them. Part of this process requires providing access to the rich webs of meaning that underlie the interpretation of emblems. This interpretative act, however, has always depended on interdisciplinary knowledge and shared contexts of information. 17

As Peter Boot notes, “[a]nnotation is a practice with a long history behind it. It is almost as old as writing itself. It is only since the advent of hypertext, however, that we can create live connections between annotations and the texts they annotate or prepare” (Boot 2009, 226).

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In her discussion of the social networks that shape digital scholarly research infrastructures, Susan Borgman points out that the idea of transforming the world of information is hardly unique to the early twenty-first century. The development of the printing press and the expansion of ocean trade routes in fifteenth-century Europe offered scholars revolutionary access to sources and opportunities for collaborative exchanges (Borgman 2007, 13). These innovations, and the possibilities they represented, shaped the culture of the European early modern era, the period that first produced the emblem with all its richness of meaning and innovative style of communication. Today digital technologies offer another revolutionary transformation. Yet the digitization of printed texts can also reduce, rather than enhance, the depth and breadth of information available to the user. In creating a research framework that focuses on expanding these interpretive possibilities and helps the user to understand the larger context necessarily surrounding the individual emblem, the Emblematica Online project demonstrates how digital humanities projects can provide access to meaning as well as to material, integrating exploration of contexts as well as content into research in the digital realm.

WORKS CITED Bath, Michael. 2007. “Embroidered Emblems: Mary Stuart’s Bed of State.” Emblematica: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Emblem Studies 15: 5–32. Billings, Marshall. 2004. “Digital Emblematica: The Scholarly Background of ‘Digital Emblematica’ and its New Direction.” In Florilegio de Estudios de Emblemática/ A Florilegium of Studies on Emblematics: Actas del VI Congreso Internacional de Emblemática de The Society for Emblem Studies/Proceedings of the 6th International Conference of The Society of Emblem Studies, Coruña, 2002, 185–91. Ferrol: Sociedad de Cultura Valle Inclán. Boot, Peter. 2009. Mesotext: Digitised Emblems, Modelled Annotations and Humanities Scholarship. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. GoogleBooks. 2009. Web. http://books.google.com/books?id=lC-2P-6r9 y8C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onep age&q&f=false. 6 May 2012. Borgman, Christine L. 2007. Scholarship in the Digital Age: Information, Infrastructure, and the Internet. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

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Bourgogne, Antoine de. 1712. Mundi Lapis Lydius, oder: Der Welt Probier-Stein/ Das ist/ Emblematische Sitten=Lehren. Emblematica Online. 18 April 2012. Web. http://www.archive.org/stream/mundilapislydius01bour. 18 April 2012. Brandhorst, Hans. 2004. “Using Iconclass for the Iconographic Indexing of Emblems.” In Digicult. Digital Collections and the Management of Knowledge: Renaissance Emblem Literature as a Case Study for the Digitization of Rare Texts and Images, ed. Mara R. Wade, 29–44. DigiCULT, Feb. 2004. Web. http://www.digicult.info/downloads/dc_emblemsbook_lowres.pdf. 9 May 2012. Carusi, Annamaria, and Torsten Reimer. 2010. Virtual Research Environment Collaborative Landscape Study. Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), Jan. 2010. Web. http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/ publications/vrelandscapereport.pdf. 2 May 2012. Daly, Peter M. 1984. “The Emblematic Tradition and Baroque Poetry.” In German Baroque Literature: The European Perspective, ed. Gerhart Hoffmeister, 52–71. New York: Frederick Ungar. __________ 2002. Digitizing the European Emblem: Issues and Prospects. New York: AMS. __________ 2010. “Emblem Studies: Achievements and Challenges.” In The International Emblem: From Incunabula to the Internet. Selected Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference of the Society for Emblem Studies, 28th July–1st August, 2008, Winchester College, ed. Simon McKeown, 523–32. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars. Emblem Project Utrecht. Dutch Love Emblems of the Seventeenth Century. Faculty of Arts of the University of Utrecht, the Research Institute for Culture and History of the University of Utrecht (OGC), the University Library of Utrecht, the Royal Library (KB, The Hague), the Digital Library for Dutch Language and Literature (DBNL, Leiden) and the Emblem Digitisation Research Group (Glasgow University). 1 May 2012. Web. http://emblems.let.uu.nl/index.html. 10 May 2012. Emblematica Online: Emblem Digitization, The German Emblem Database, and The OpenEmblem Portal. 2010. National Endowment for the Humanities: Office of Digital Humanities. Resource Library: Library of Funded Projects. 2012. Web. https://securegrants.neh.gov/PublicQuery/main. aspx?f=1&gn=HG-50004-09. 11 May 2012.

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Emblematica Online. University of Illinois Board of Trustees and Herzog August Bibliothek. Wolfenbüttel. 30 April 2012. Web. http://emblematica. grainger.illinois.edu/. 9 May 2012. French Emblems at Glasgow. University of Glasgow. 2012. Web. http://www. emblems.arts.gla.ac.uk/french/help.php. 10 May 2012. Gibbon, Edward. 1776. “Chapter VI: Death of Severus, Tyranny of Caracalla, Usurpation of Marcinus. –Part III.” In The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume 1, produced by David Reed and Dale R. Fredrickson. Project Gutenberg, 7 June 2008. Web. http://www.gutenberg. org/8/9/890. 2 May 2012. Graham, David. 2004. “Three Phases of Emblem Digitization: The First Twenty Years, The Next Five.” In Digicult, ed. Wade, 13–18. DigiCULT. Feb. 2004. Web. http://www.digicult.info/downloads/dc_emblemsbook_lowres. pdf. 9 May 2012. Henkel, Arthur, and Albrecht Schöne, eds. 1996. Emblemata: Handbuch zur Sinnbildkunst des XVI. und XVII. Jahrhunderts. Stuttgart: Metzler. Iconclass. Netherlands Institute for Art History, 2012. Web. http://www.iconclass. nl/. 7 May 2012. Jensen, Kristian. 2007. “Old Books in New Libraries: Democratisation of Access or a Digital Divide.” In Imprints and Owners: Recording the Cultural Geography of Europe. Papers Presented on 10 November 2006 at the CERL Seminar hosted by the National Széchényi Library, Budapest, ed. David Shaw, 67–82. London: Consortium of European Research Libraries. Landwehr, John. 1962. Dutch Emblem Books: A Bibliography. Utrecht: Haentjens Dekker & Gumbert. __________ 1970. Emblem Books in the Low Countries 1554–1949: A Bibliography. Utrecht: Haentjens Dekker & Gumbert. __________ 1972. German Emblem Books 1531–1888: A Bibliography. Utrecht: Haentjens Dekker & Gumbert. __________ 1976. French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese Books of Devises and Emblems 1534–1827: A Bibliography. Utrecht: Haentjens Dekker & Gumbert.

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__________ 1988. Emblem and Fable Books Printed in the Low Countries 1542–1813. Utrecht: HES Publishers. Manning, John. 2010. “Emblems and Their Context: A Generic Overview.” In The International Emblem, ed. McKeown, 2–20. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars. Praz, Mario. 1964. “Bibliography of Emblem Books.” In Studies in SeventeenthCentury Imagery. 2nd ed. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura. __________ 1974. Studies in Seventeenth-Century Imagery, Part II. 1. Mario Praz, Addenda et Corrigenda. 2. Hilary M.J. Sayles, Chronological List of Emblem Books. Rome: Edizoni di Storia e Letturatura. Peil, Dietmar. 2004. “Nobody’s Perfect: Problems in Constructing an Emblem Database.” In Digicult, ed. Wade, 45–64. DigiCULT. Feb 2004. Web. http://www.digicult.info/downloads/dc_emblemsbook_lowres.pdf. 9 May 2012. Price, Kenneth M. 2008. “Electronic Scholarly Editions.” In A Companion to digital literary studies, eds. Ray Siemens and Susan Schreibman, 434– 50. Oxford: Blackwell. 2008. Web. http://www.digitalhumanities.org/ companionDLS/. 12 May 2012. Raasveld, Paul Peter. 1991. “Musical Notation in Emblems.” Emblematica: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Emblem Studies 5.1: 31–56. Rawles, Stephen. 2009. “A Spine of Information Headings for Emblem-Related Electronic Resources.” In Digicult, ed. Wade, 19–28. DigiCULT, Feb. 2004. Web. http://www.digicult.info/downloads/dc_emblemsbook_lowres. pdf. 9 May 2012. Robinson, Peter. 2004. “Where We Are with Scholarly Editions, and Where We Want to Be.” Jahrbuch für Computerphilologie, 24 March 2004. Web. http://computerphilologie.uni-muenchen.de/jg03/robinson.html. 5 May 2012. Russell, Daniel. 2:1999. “Emblem.” In Encyclopedia of the Renaissance, ed. Paul F. Grendler, 265–67. New York: Scribner. Stafford, Barbara Maria. 2008. “Compressed Forms: The Symbolic Compound as Emblem of Neural Correlation.” Emblematica: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Emblem Studies 16: 415–442.

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Stäcker, Thomas. 2004. “Transporting Emblem Metadata with OAI.” In Digicult, ed. Wade, 89–96. DigiCULT, Feb. 2004. Web. http://www.digicult.info/ downloads/dc_emblemsbook_lowres.pdf. 9 May 2012. Van Dongen, Wim. 2007. “A Torrid Threesome: Investigating Form and Function of the Tripartite Emblem Structure in Mid-TwentiethCentury American Paperback Covers.” Emblematica: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Emblem Studies 15: 111–44. Wade, Mara R. 2004. “Towards an Emblem Portal: Local and Global Portal Construction.” In Digicult, ed. Wade, 115–20. DigiCULT, Feb. 2004. Web. http://www.digicult.info/downloads/dc_emblemsbook_lowres.pdf. 9 May 2012. __________ 2011. “Emblems in Context: From the Early-Modern to the Post-Modern.” In Transmigrations: Essays in Honour of Alison Adams and Stephen Rawles, ed. Laurence Grove and Alison Saunders, 1–30. Glasgow: Glasgow Centre for Emblem Studies. __________ 2012. “Introduction,” In Emblem Digitization: Conducting Digital Research with Renaissance Texts and Images, ed. Mara R. Wade. Early Modern Literary Studies Special Issue 20:1. Web. http://purl.oclc.org/ emls/si-20/WADE_INTRO_EMLS.htm. 9 May 2012. Wilmes, Carsten. 2006. “Embleme im Internet: Ein Überblick.” Wolfenbütteler Barock-Nachrichten 33: 29–44. Wolfenbüttel Digital Library. HAB Wolfenbüttel, 12 Dec. 2008. Web. http://www. hab.de/bibliothek/wdb/index-e.htm. 12 May 2012. Young, Alan R. 1988. “The Emblematic Decoration of Queen Elizabeth’s Warship the White Bear.” Emblematica: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Emblem Studies 3.1: 65–78.

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Figure 1a. “Das XXX. Sinnbild / Emblema XXX” with the motto “Von der grossen ansehnlichen Bibliothec [sic]” [Concerning the large beautiful library] in Antoine de Bourgogne, Mundi lapis Lydius, oder Der Welt Probier-Stein (Augsburg, 1712), with a close-up of the emblem pictura showing a richlydressed man engaged in the act of painting wooden food (http://www.archive.org/stream/mundilapislydius01bour) (Used with permission from Emblematica Online, The University of Illinois)

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Figure 1b. Close-up of the emblem pictura showing a richly-dressed man engaged in the act of painting wooden food from “Das XXX. Sinnbild / Emblema XXX” in Antoine de Bourgogne, Mundi lapis Lydius, oder Der Welt Probier-Stein (http://www.archive.org/stream/mundilapislydius01bour) (Augsburg, 1712) (Used with permission from Emblematica Online, The University of Illinois)

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Figure 2. The updated website for Emblematica Online as of 2010 (http://emblematica.grainger.illinois.edu/)

Figure 3. Screenshot of Emblematica Online and its search interface that enables searching on multiple levels. The Iconclass categories are visible in the lower right (http://emblematica.grainger.illinois.edu/OEBP/UI/SearchForm)

A Modest Proposal for Scholarly Publishing: 21st-Century Ideas for a 19th-Century System Shawn Martin

University of Pennsylvania [email protected]

Introduction In 1729 Jonathan Swift wrote A Modest Proposal, which suggested (albeit sarcastically), that Irish peasants could solve their economic problems by selling their children to the rich to be eaten. The point Swift was making, with an admittedly morbid sense of humor, was that Ireland was facing serious problems and that transformational change was needed. Similarly, the scholarly publishing and communication system is also in need of such changes in order to continue. Most recently Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s Planned Obsolescence details the history of peer review and publishing extremely thoroughly (2011). Additionally, organizations like the Modern Language Association, the Association for Research Libraries, the Ithaka Foundation, and the Scholarly Publishing and Research Coalition have issued numerous reports on sustainable scholarly publishing. Nonetheless, all of these reports agree that the economics of scholarly publishing are not working and that models which worked in the print world do not seem to be working in the electronic age. At the end of her book, Fitzpatrick poses several questions: “What would a viable economic model for non-profit scholarly publishing look like? How should presses, libraries, and information technology centers negotiate their relationships? How can we get scholars to accept and participate in these new publishing and review processes?” She also notes that to date these questions remain unanswered. (Fitzpatrick 2011, 195) This “modest proposal” is an initial attempt at answering those questions, particularly within the context of early modern studies. By looking at some larger background issues, and applying them in particular to two projects, Iter and the Text Creation Partnership (TCP), it may be possible to propose some new solutions to a very complex problem.

© 2014 Iter Inc. and the Arizona Board of Regents for Arizona State University. All rights reserved ISBN 978-0-86698-516-1 (online) ISBN 978-0-86698-515-4 (print) New Technologies in Medieval and Renaissance Studies 4 (2014) 285–304

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How did we get here? It is hard to argue against the fact that the current system of disseminating scholarship, through a print-based method of scholarly journals and monographs largely developed in the nineteenth century, needs to be reformed. From a scholar’s point of view, ideas cannot be as freely distributed to colleagues where only small numbers of readers have subscriptions to fairly expensive collections of journals and databases. Scholars ideally want as wide a readership as possible. The internet allows this theoretically, but the current subscription-based model of scholarly publishing heavily limits who is able to read academic works. From the perspective of professional societies, research centers, and other scholarly communities, publishing forms the cornerstone of an economic model which in turn supports conferences, workshops, professional development, and other activities; the falling revenues from publishing jeopardize their ability to perform such activities. From a funder’s perspective (like the National Endowment for the Humanities), it would seem that immediate access to the scholarship they have supported is a benefit, especially when taxpayers have bankrolled the process. From a publisher’s point of view the cost of distributing scholarly work is higher than the demand that libraries and scholars can generally provide. This in turn means publishers either cannot make the profits needed to maintain the scholarly publishing system, or they need to substantially raise prices in order to get needed revenues. From a university administration’s point of view, it is economically unsustainable to pay a salary to a scholar for writing a book or an article, paying a publisher to buy that article back, and then paying a library to organize and distribute that article on campus, especially when, in faster-moving scientific fields, ideas become dated very quickly. So how did we get to this current state of affairs in scholarly publishing where a tension exists between openly distributing information on the one hand and heavily restricting it on the other? Philosophically, people often cite Stewart Brand’s quotation “Information wants to be free” as the mantra for the open internet. Yet the second half of that quotation in its entirety bears repeating: Information also wants to be expensive. Information wants to be free because it has become so cheap to distribute, copy, and recombine—too cheap to meter. It wants to be expensive because it can be immeasurably valuable to the recipient. That tension will not go away. It leads to endless wrenching debate about price, copyright, “intellectual property,” [and] the moral rightness of causal

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distribution because each round of new devices makes the tension worse, not better. (Brand 1987, 202) On the one hand, it is very easy to make information available to others (who might profit from it) through the internet or even through print. On the other hand, information (particularly scientific and scholarly information) requires a great deal of work, verification, and review by many people. Therefore it is extremely expensive to produce information and extremely easy to reproduce and utilize the same information. Thus Brand was not the first to write about this tension. In fact scholars such as Adrian Johns (2009, 429) have traced this sentiment back to the mid-twentieth century. Even as early as the eighteenth century, Benjamin Franklin, discussing a pamphlet regarding his recently invented stove, once said, “As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously.” Moreover, he said this despite the fact that a man in England patented his idea and profited from it, to which he responded, “This is not the only instance of patents taken out for my inventions by others, tho’ not always with the same success, which I never contested, as having no desire of profiting by patents myself, and hating disputes” (1909). Along the same lines, Thomas Jefferson is famous for saying in slightly more lofty terms: He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. (1813) Brand, Franklin, and Jefferson are all pointing out an inherent tension in ideas, that in order to advance knowledge, it is essential that ideas be freely available. Yet at the same time knowledge can bring financial profit, and that potential for profit must be utilized in order to sustain and create more knowledge.

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A system that no doubt all of these authors would understand is the practice of scholarly associations printing circulars to update their members on current news in the field. In fact, the Journal des Sçavans and the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society first published in 1664/5 served exactly this purpose. Members of the association would update their colleagues on what they were doing; those fellow practitioners could then build on that work, experiment themselves, and in turn update the society. In the nineteenth century, with the proliferation of professional scholarly associations and hence the increased need to print journals, commercial publishers like Springer (founded in 1842) filled a need to create economies of scale. Rather than hundreds of scholarly societies each supporting their own publishing infrastructure, societies could outsource that work to commercial publishers who would then take care of printing and distribution costs. Yet these publishers had a different motive from scholars, namely profit, and many universities felt that there was a need to create entities that would publish works which might not have a large enough audience to interest commercial publishers. Hence university presses like Cornell University Press (the first American university press, founded in 1869) filled that void. With subsidies from their institutions, university presses could distribute scholarship that had great scholarly value, though not enough economic value to warrant distribution in the commercial marketplace. (A good general overview of historical trends in publishing is available in Abel and Newlin 2002.) Thus, at the dawn of the twentieth century, a rather complex ecosystem had evolved in scholarly publishing. Scholars, employed by universities though more strongly affiliated with scholarly communities and other similar groups, produced work which they would submit either to a journal (often though not always outsourced to a commercial publisher) or, depending on marketability, to a university press. The primary audience for such works was other scholars employed by universities. Therefore, academic libraries became one of the biggest markets for scholarly journals and books since they could redistribute to a large number of scholars. Complicating this picture even more was the importation (largely from German institutions) of a professional model for university professors. This professionalization scheme rested on tenure and promotion that was determined by publication in peer-reviewed journals which in turn assured that other scholars in one’s field could verify the quality of the work produced. Additionally in the twentieth century, government and private foundations began to fund research for particular purposes and relied on the peer review system to validate their research results. This is in essence the system that still exists

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in the twenty-first century. As early as 1959, however, the American Council of Learned Societies recognized that this structure was beginning to break down and concluded that: Our survey of scholarly publishing points to three main conclusions. The first, and in some ways the most important, is the fact that scholarly publication is not and cannot realistically be expected to become self-supporting … the second of our conclusions, that at the present time in most humanities and social sciences the uncomplicated scholarly manuscript of good quality can usually count upon early publication at no expense to its author… . Our third conclusion is equally significant: certain kinds of scholarly manuscripts present unusual difficulties to publishers and therefore run extra hazards in competing for available funds. (Welter 1959, 66).

Where are we now? To a degree, many of the American Council of Learned Societies’ conclusions are still valid, but there have been additional developments. First, profitmaking commercial publishers have in many cases taken over society publishers; yet despite that, these publishers have had difficulty making their scholarly monographs and articles self-supporting profit-driven ventures. As a result, publishers have had to merge in order to create economies of scale large enough that academic publishing is profitable; currently only a handful of publishers control the vast majority of scholarly content. At the same time, the number of specialties within academic fields has increased, and therefore the number of journals supporting those fields has also increased. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, higher education has been continually cut back financially which means that the primary markets for scholarly books—libraries—have been unable to keep up with the proliferation of content and there is an increased competition for a limited number of tenured professorships which in turn has increased the need for junior faculty to publish. (The “crisis in scholarly publishing” is well documented, with perhaps the most detailed and referenced analysis in Roberts 1999.) This complicated system is the result of several interrelated components. The linchpin and largest player in the entire system is the university, which subsidizes scholars in terms of salary and subsidizes libraries which purchase the material necessary for scholars to do their work. Universities also subsidize university presses (from which libraries purchase materials), and in some cases universities handle the distribution of money paid to scholars

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from funders. Additionally, funders like the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Mellon Foundation, and scores of others support scholars to do their research. Traditionally these agencies have expected their recipients to publish their work in a peer-reviewed academic book or journal handled either by a university press or by a commercial publisher. Moreover, the foundation of the entire system—scholars—do research and produce articles, books, websites, databases, and other materials that reflect their academic interests. Yet scholars often feel a closer attachment to their colleagues at other universities and (perhaps unwittingly) to the publishers who produce work in their field rather than to the university that employs them. Often, scholarly communities and professional organizations which are made up of individual scholars serve as a professional outlet for scholarship, and their members serve as the peer reviewers for the journals on which university departments rely to determine tenure and promotion. Commercial publishers often act as distributors for the academic output of these scholarly communities and in many cases provide a share of their revenues to them. Concurrently, university presses (at least traditionally) produce scholarship that commercial publishers are unable to distribute, but in fact are often asked to act as commercial revenue streams for the university. Therefore, they increasingly have to operate more like commercial publishers. Finally, university libraries, which like university presses are subsidized by the university, act as a kind of purchasing agent for the university to archive and distribute scholarship. Obviously this is a very complicated arrangement of at least seven players, all of whom are receiving and distributing money. Perhaps a better way of thinking about this system would be to map it out graphically. The picture might look something like this (arrows representing where money is flowing and boxes representing who is paying that money):

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Two questions arise from this graph: who is giving the most money into the scholarly publishing system, and who is receiving the most money from the scholarly publishing system? The tally would look something like this: • University

◦ Giving to—University Press, Library, Scholar ◦ Receiving from—Funders

• Funders

◦ Giving to—University ◦ Receiving from—None of the players noted above

• Scholars

◦ Giving

to—University Press, Scholarly Groups, Commercial Publishers

◦ Receiving from—University or other funder (such as fellowship donor, private patron, museum, or scholarly society)

• Scholarly Communities (Societies, Professional Associations, Re-

search Centers, etc.)

◦ Giving to—None of the players noted above ◦ Receiving from—Scholars

• Commercial Publishers

◦ Giving to—Scholarly Groups ◦ Receiving from—Libraries, Scholars

• University Presses

◦ Giving to—None of the players noted above ◦ Receiving from—University, Library, Scholars

• University Library

◦ Giving to—Commercial Publishers, University Press ◦ Receiving from—University

One then notices several imbalances. Some would appear to be giving more to sources than they are receiving, and similarly it would seem that others are receiving more than they are giving. On the giving side, universities give to three sources but receive from only one, scholars give to three sources but receive from only one, and libraries give to two sources but receive from only one. On the other side of the balance sheet, university presses receive money from three sources but are not giving money to any of them, publishers

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receive from two sources but give only to one, and scholarly communities receive from two sources but give to none. At first glance it would seem that university presses are the serial receivers of money and universities and scholars are the serial givers. Obviously this is a bit deceptive. Unlike commercial publishers, which are comparatively small in number (at least in the academic market), nearly every university has a university press and as a result university presses sell a fairly small number of books to a limited market (libraries and scholars). Therefore they receive less money than a commercial publisher who has a very large number of books, articles, and other scholarship to sell to exactly the same market. So whereas the revenue streams coming into university presses are small, the amount of money flowing to commercial publishers is fairly large. Also, given that scholars, university libraries, and university presses are all subsidized by a larger entity, the university, and since the university serves as the broker between funders and scholars, one can simplify the graph of relationships between the major players, namely the university, scholarly communities, and commercial publishers, all of whom are largely independent of each other:

Under this scenario the serial giver is the university, giving both to scholarly communities (through their scholars) and to commercial publishers (through scholars and the library), but it receives nothing in return. Scholarly communities receive both from universities and commercial publishers, but put nothing back into the system. This is not to suggest that scholarly communities are rolling in money and not doing anything. They do a great deal of good by producing scholarship, sponsoring conferences, advocating for their profession, and performing many other worthy endeavors. What I am suggesting is that scholarly communities are a key player in the publishing system that is often overlooked and needs to be addressed more thoroughly. Additionally, in terms of actual dollars, the subscription fees and book/

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journal purchases from libraries and scholars to commercial publishers is far higher than the money that scholarly communities receive from their members. Therefore, the real issue of the economics in scholarly publishing is the relationship between scholarly communities and commercial publishers. So, what functions do scholarly communities provide in creating scholarship and what role do commercial publishers offer? Fundamentally each of these groups does two things that are essential to the functioning of the system. Scholarly communities provide the peer reviewers and quality assurance for the content within their journals. Next, and perhaps more importantly their journals/websites/databases serve as a guide to other scholars that the content contained within their resources is of reliable quality (Lamont 2009, 159). This guidance helps scholars navigate an increasing sea of digital content by providing a kind of “seal of approval” which scholars can use to sift through the various pieces of information that they have to use for their research. Publishers on the other hand also provide two essential functions. They oversee and manage the peer review, copyediting, and formatting of these articles into something presentable for publication. Publishers also oversee the distribution of these articles either by creating print copies and selling them or by creating reliable locations electronically for articles which in turn they sell primarily to libraries (for more information on the economics of digital distribution see Zhu and MacQuarrie 2003).

What does all of this have to do with Medieval and Renaissance Studies? Medieval and Renaissance studies is a field which in many ways has been at the forefront of transforming scholarly practices. Two good examples of particular projects in the field are Iter, a coalition of partners including centers, foundations, and scholarly societies, and the Text Creation Partnership (TCP), a coalition of publishers and libraries. Both of these projects are providing access to scholarship in some unique ways that may suggest future directions for a new scholarly publishing system. In fact both of these projects show how unique coalitions can form to solve particular scholarly problems. Iter Iter started out as a bibliography of resources in Medieval and Renaissance studies that became so useful to scholarship that it has undergone great expansion. After adding issues of Medieval and Renaissance Quarterly and the publication of the Renaissance Society of America, Iter went on to publish other journals, other databases of primary materials, books, and to give rise to an online community of scholars who participate in discussions; this

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would have not been possible utilizing only print media. Perhaps notably, the Iter project grew out of conversations within a scholarly association (the Renaissance Society of America) and gradually grew to include centers for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at other institutions and the libraries at the University of Toronto. Iter was developed to solve a particular problem (the need for a bibliography of Renaissance studies) and has now branched into many other related projects. In other words, the collaboration between partners showed that there were in fact many other related issues which also needed to be solved, and the Iter partnership grew to fit that need (a more detailed discussion of these collaborations can be found in Bowen 2008). TCP Like Iter, the Text Creation Partnership (TCP) also endeavored to solve a particular problem. Within ProQuest’s Early English Books Online (EEBO) database, there was no way to do full text searching or to create more in-depth scholarship (such as edited editions, text mining analyses, and other scholarship which required textual precision). So the Universities of Michigan and Oxford formed an initial partnership to create fully searchable text for books in EEBO (for more history on the TCP project see Sandler 2004). Over time, those two initial partners joined with other institutions to expand the project, and when the corpus of searchable text was large enough, scholarly projects became interested in using those texts for particular purposes. For example, Martin Mueller at Northwestern University wanted to use TCP text for his own projects on mapping variant spellings in early modern English. So he began downloading and working with TCP texts originally for his own research. Yet he also realized that the work he was doing might be useful to others, and his original scholarly research helped to create the orthographic standardization tool (a search function developed by ProQuest and the Committee of Institutional Cooperation which allows users of the EEBO database to search variant spellings of words like king, kyng, and kinge). Mueller’s work also fit well with the MONK (Metadata Offer New Knowledge, http://monkproject.org/) and he is now working with Project Bamboo to integrate text into larger humanities cyberinfrastructure projects (Mueller 2011). Again, it is worth noting that TCP has expanded into other areas in a way similar to how Iter expanded. The founders of the TCP project had no idea that their text would be useful for research on variant spellings. TCP did, however, become an important part of the several initiatives related to such research, and as a result of that collaboration recognized a need for text in

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other areas. The TCP has now expanded to two other databases: Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) and Early American Imprints. No doubt as these projects develop TCP will help to fulfill the needs of many other scholarly projects.

Where do we go from here? It is important to note, however, that these two projects, even though they have contributed greatly to their respective fields, have not solved the overall problem of scholarly publishing. Medieval and Renaissance scholars still publish in traditional journals with traditional publishers in a system that is still economically untenable. Iter and TCP have created a kind of supplement to more traditional publishing, although it should also be noted that they too rely on financial models similar to the subscription models that commercial publishers use; in a digital world, it may not make sense to rely on subscription fees from institutions which in essence create problems similar to print subscription models, precluding some scholars from having access because their universities cannot afford to pay for access. Projects like Iter and TCP can no doubt help to inform the kind of future system for scholarly publishing we may want to construct, but to do so we still have to ask some important questions. What constitutes scholarship? In the print world there were often only two types of product: books and articles. Now, it is possible to create websites, databases, and dynamic wikis in addition to more traditional books and articles, albeit in an online format. Also, how should this new system of scholarly publishing be sustained economically? What constitutes scholarship? As with all other questions related to scholarly activity, the question of what scholarship is cannot easily be answered. Every field is different, and depending on how research is performed in that field, the answer could vary tremendously. With electronic technology scholars can create dynamic arguments in which they add new details and information as a project unfolds, as many of the other essays in this volume exemplify. In turn, as new information is entered into a database, secondary research both about the content and within the project itself grows. Additionally, scholars can create tools for others to use in order to answer particular questions. An example of such a tool is TCP. TCP enables scholars to search texts and to ask particular questions. It does not, however, provide any particular interpretation of text. TCP also helped to develop another tool: the orthographic standardization project which allows people searching

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within EEBO or other databases to search on a single spelling and see multiple variations. In other words one can search on “king” and find “kyng” “kinge” or other early modern variations (see Mueller 2005). By standardizing the spelling in the TCP corpus many new questions can be answered, including how language evolved over time, whether variant spellings had meanings different from the standard words used today, and how words relate to each other (were the words “God” and “King” used together frequently or not?), but the creation of a tool to standardize early modern spellings is not necessarily scholarship in the same way as a traditionally published article or book is. Is a “tool” scholarship? It does not fit our usual modes of scholarly inquiry, but also requires a great deal of work and knowledge of scholarly methodologies. Therefore it perhaps should count, though to do so would require new standards of scholarly recognition. It is a bit redundant to say that scholarship is assessed for quality by other scholars, but print and electronic review do work differently. A book or article has to be reviewed only once, whereas a scholarly website, like the various projects associated with Martin Mueller’s work, which often is in the hands of a team of scholars who may go from university to university and who may or may not remain interested in the project over time, must be reviewed differently in order to determine whether it has kept up to date with current scholarship and whether it still represents quality research in the field. One can assume that an article from 1955 was (at least by the standards of its day) a quality item. One cannot make the same assumption for a website from 1995. So, particularly for electronic scholarship, a different system of peer review is necessary. (An overall review of what constitutes “digital scholarship” is available in Unsworth et al. 2006; see also Cross 2008.) It is certainly true, for example, that the work Martin Mueller and his team put into creating orthographic standardization required a great deal of scholarship. Nonetheless, that project brings up specific issues that one does not traditionally associate with a book. Servers have to be maintained over time. The longer that server (and the content of the archive) are maintained, scholarly activity will continue to reinterpret the ballads, and therefore it is necessary to incorporate those comments. Furthermore, one needs to find money to maintain the server and a community to sustain the scholarship in that project over time. Also, how does one assess a project that is constantly changing? Does the Modern Language Association do it or someone else? The MLA did produce a report (http://www.mla.org/guidelines_evaluation_digital) on how it might be done, but that report does

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not discuss some of the larger issues of how digital technology really has transformed scholarship, as many of the comments submitted by readers of the report point out. The Ithaka Foundation grappled with these exact questions in the report Sustainability and Revenue Models for Online Academic Resources. The points raised in these reports discuss, though do not answer, the important question of sustainability. How do the various parties in the scholarly publishing system distribute money in order to continue publishing? The print system was facing breakdowns fifty years ago; new technologies and economic problems since then have only made the situation worse. How should the entire scholarly system be sustained? Stuart Sheiber, the director of the Office for Scholarly Communications and professor of computer science at Harvard University, has recommended, and other people have agreed, that the answer to solving the problems in scholarly communication is to create an open access fund whereby universities, most likely through library funds, would pay publishers to disseminate their scholarship publicly on the web rather than through subscriptions as is currently practiced (Sheiber 2011). Other solutions have included creating revenue streams through subscriptions, foundation money, institutional subsidies, and other means (see Maron 2009 and Crow 2009).

How could the current system be changed? How do solutions like those proposed by Suart Sheiber, Ithaka, or SPARC really help projects like Iter or TCP, and, more importantly the field of medieval and Renaissance studies? Under the print system, a scholar would get a grant to provide research help, and submit research to a journal or book sponsored by a scholarly community, which would often outsource to a publisher who relied on libraries to preserve that content over time. Electronic scholarship, on the other hand, puts much more work in the hands of scholars. To sustain an electronic piece of scholarship (such as a website), scholars need a continuous flow of money that pays for upkeep of servers, updating the site with new materials, migrating old content to new web systems, and the many other duties associated with keeping websites current. Additionally scholars need to rely on word of mouth from other scholars about “good websites.” Since there is no standard peer review system in place for most websites, and most of the peer review for websites (such as Romantic Circles, http://www.rc.umd.edu/, or the journal Early Modern Literary Studies, http://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/emlshome.html) rely on particular institutions for their funding, one might question how long

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such websites will last if institutions decide to cease funding such projects. So it takes a great deal of time and effort for individual scholars to assess the quality of the ever-proliferating number of potential sources for their needs. With print-based media, there is an already existing system whereby scholars can be sure that the content of quality is likely to appear only in particular journals or with particular presses. With print media, scholars often relied on libraries and archives to preserve the scholarly record. With electronic media these same duties often fall to individual scholars rather than libraries or other institutions. The current scholarly publishing system is not set up to meet these challenges. It may be possible for it to do so, but for the scholarly publishing system to manage these increasing demands, it will need to change its business and distribution models. Some scholarly associations have tried to address this problem. For instance, the Modern Language Association developed guidelines for digital scholarship, http://www.mla.org/guidelines_evaluation_digital, along with the American Association for History and Computing, http://theaahc.org/tenure_guidelines.htm. Additionally, NINES or Nineteenth-Century Scholarship online has tried to create an alternative system (http://www.nines.org/), but none of these has achieved wide adoption. The roles of scholarly communities and publishers has already been discussed, but it might be best to summarize them one more time: Scholarly Communities • Provide expertise to publishers • Evaluate ideas of scholars • Provide a “seal of approval” through the brands of their journals

which verify quality of content

Commercial Publishers and University Presses • Oversee process of peer review, copyediting, and distribution • Provide location for research

Therefore, the fundamental question still remains how all of these players can utilize their talents under a digital publishing system. The answer lies in a new structure designed to capitalize on the strengths of electronic media while at the same time retaining their traditional strengths. The reason the system has become so untenable at present is that print business models are being applied to the internet, to the detriment of all involved.

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How could it be changed? First, the seven major players need to go back to their core strengths and re-evaluate how they do things given that this new electronic medium has emerged. Second, they need to create a new economic relationship that allows these transactions to occur smoothly. So in order for that to happen, it is necessary to change the economic model that looks like this:

into something that is more manageable. The problem with the above system is that the relationship among the university, scholarly communities, and commercial publishers has grown unbalanced. “The university” has the most economic power in this model, but by definition universities are decentralized internally (among departments and schools, libraries, university presses) and therefore unable to make unilateral decisions. Publishers, particularly since they have combined into large corporate entities, are able to use their power more effectively. How have they done that? They have courted scholarly communities who really have very little economic or political power, but control the content (whether print or electronic) which commands the most loyalty from the employees of universities (scholars). As a result, commercial publishers now really have more economic power than anyone else in the system. It is necessary to redress this. How? First, given that electronic scholarship is forever changing, it seems less necessary to create and review content in the same way that we think of material in print. In essence peer review denotes a “seal of approval” that separates higher quality content from other material on the web and allows scholars to easily sift through a large variety of scholarly materials. Granting “seals of approval” online in a more methodical way could eliminate the increasing costs of producing print runs of books and journals to ever smaller groups of people. Second, it seems to make little sense that the university is paying for electronic content in the same way that it pays for print content

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(through personal and institutional subscriptions). Since peer review needs to be done differently for websites and databases it stands to reason that subscription models should also change. Third, the “seals of approval” for scholarship need to be taken out of the hands of commercial publishers and put back in the hands of scholarly communities. Publishers need to make money from their strengths (managing process and distribution) on a feefor-service basis; they should not be making money and providing major incentives for scholarly communities to keep the system the same as it currently is. Therefore, a modest proposal might be for universities to calculate exactly how much money they are providing through institutional subscriptions and book purchases, and, rather than individually giving that money to publishers (thus having no power to really change the system), they should collectively create an “approval agency” which would gather that money and distribute it to the scholarly communities who in turn could use that money to pay publishers for the services they provide. Such content could be open access since they would be making money not from the content they provide (as things are currently) but rather for the service they provide (dissemination, peer review management, etc.). This “approval agency” would need to have representatives from scholarly societies, publishers, and universities to keep it accountable. In other words it would look very like the governance structures Iter and TCP use currently. Additionally, the economic value of the “seals of approval” that scholarly societies provide would need to be measured. This could be done through a combination of usage statistics, bibliometric values, surveys of perceived quality by scholars, and any number of other measurements. So the economic system would look something like this:

If it is possible to shift to an economic framework similar to the graph above, it may be possible to change the way we discuss scholarly publishing. The scholarly publishing system at its heart is about who pays for what services and how best to distribute the money that facilitates that exchange. Scholarship is undoubtedly valuable, but the market price for scholarship is small

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and of more value to society than to private individuals. Therefore, all involved parties must act together on this issue. Because of the scale of scholarly publishing, individual universities cannot make meaningful changes alone. Through an “approval agency” or proper “middleman” that is controlled by universities and scholarly communities (the primary beneficiaries of scholarship), rather than commercial publishers, it may be possible to effect real change that will bring the costs of producing scholarly content more into line with what they should be. Such a proposal may also open up more competition since scholarly communities would be free to use many “publishers” for different kinds of services. Such competition might even spark the invention of new tools or new ways of producing scholarship. Libraries also have an important role in this new system. When a “seal of approval” is withdrawn either because the content has become outdated or is no longer relevant, libraries will be essential in placing that material into their repositories and preserving it for future generations. Thus, libraries retain their traditional role as a repository for material rather than the role they have taken on recently, that of a purchaser of services for the university. Scholars would be able to focus on research, not on creating websites. Publishers should be able to focus on what they do best: managing and disseminating information. Many publishers are currently in a situation where they have invested tremendous amounts of money in creating new technologies that mimic an old distribution model which is increasingly becoming harder to maintain. Such a model as described above could take all the major players in this system back to their traditional roles while at the same time utilizing the best strengths of electronic technology. How would the “approval agency” work? Fortunately, projects like Iter and the TCP already provide an excellent model for this kind of governance. Both Iter and TCP were collaborative endeavors meant to solve particular problems. The approval agency mentioned here is also meant to solve a particular problem: the economics of scholarly publishing, particularly when it comes to sustaining and evaluating electronic resources, is not working. By getting all of the important stakeholders (funding agencies, scholarly societies, libraries, publishers, and other interested parties) together to discuss how to work through these problems, it may be possible to work through the larger issues and, in the same way that TCP and Iter grew to accommodate other, related issues, so too the approval agency may morph into other areas that will help understand many interrelated problems. So, in some ways, the models Iter and TCP have created may serve as a framework for a much larger conversation.

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Conclusions It is not an understatement to say that unless the framework of scholarly publishing is changed the system will collapse in on itself. Currently, many of the players within the scholarly publishing system are acting like a Greek chorus complaining that things are going to be catastrophic, yet they are unwilling to specify how things might change. As with all Greek tragedy, unless our own “deus ex machina” comes to provide a solution, everything will end badly. In the same way that Iter and TCP formed to solve a seemingly unsolvable problem, it may be possible that the approval agency proposed could become a “deus ex machina,” even on a small scale, though one hopes with a more probable solution than what often happens in Greek tragedy. Digital medievalists and renaissance scholars already have a way of making this happen by utilizing governance structures they have already created and applying them to a larger context. It is essential that we find, a “deus ex machina,” an “approval agency,” an Iter, or a TCP that will change the publishing system and take into account a variety of factors. It is also important that this be done soon, so the worst of tragedies (collapse of the scholarly publishing system) can be averted. Swift’s Modest Proposal brought light to the very serious issue of starvation in Ireland, and proposed a drastic, albeit sarcastic, solution. The ideas here too are a drastic, though not sarcastic, solution to another serious issue, the possible collapse of the scholarly publishing system. It is hoped that such ideas can generate more discussions about the future of scholarly publishing, not just for medieval and Renaissance studies but for the entire academy.

WORKS CITED Abel, Richard, and Lyman Newlin, eds. 2002. Scholarly publishing: Books, journals, publishers and libraries in the twentieth century. New York: Wiley and Sons. Bowen, William. 2008. “Iter: Building an effective knowledge base.” In New Technologies in Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Volume 1: 101–109. Iter and the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. 29 Jan. 2013. Web. http://cf.itergateway.org/ntmrs/pdf/NTMRS1bowen.pdf. 29 Jan. 2013. Brand, Stewart. 1987. The Media Lab: Inventing the future at MIT. New York: Penguin Books.

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Cross, Jeanne Glaubitz. 2008. “Reviewing digital scholarship: The need for discipline-based peer review.” Journal of web librarianship 2.4: 549–66. Crow, Raym. 2009. Income models for Open Access: An overview of current practice. Washington, DC: Scholarly Publishing and Resource Coalition. 29 Jan. 2013. Web. http://www.arl.org/sparc/publications/papers/imguide. shtml. 29 Jan. 2013. Fitzpatrick, Kathleen. 2011. Planned obsolescence: Publishing, technology, and the future of the academy. New York: New York University Press. Franklin, Benjamin. 1909. The autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library. Jan. 2013. Web. http:// etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/Fra2Aut.html. 29 Jan. 2013. Guthrie, Kevin, Rebecca Griffiths, and Nancy Maron. 2008. Sustainability and revenue models for online academic resources. New York: Ithaka Foundation. Jan. 2013. Web. http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/ themes/eresources/sca_ithaka_sustainability_report-final.pdf. 29 Jan. 2013. Jefferson, Thomas. 1813. Letter to Isaac McPherson, 1813 in The Founders’ Constitution Volume 3, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8, Document 12. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Jan. 2013. Web. http://press-pubs. uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12.html. 29 Jan. 2013. Johns, Adrian. 2009. Piracy: The intellectual property wars from Gutenberg to Gates. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lamont, Michele. 2009. How professors think: Inside the curious world of academic judgement. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Maron, Nancy L., K. Kirby Smith, and Matthew Loy. 2009. Sustaining digital resources: An on-the-ground view of projects today, New York: Ithaka Foundation. 29 Jan. 2013. Web. http://www.ithaka.org/ithaka-s-r/ research/ithaka-case-studies-in-sustainability/report/SCA_Ithaka_ SustainingDigitalResources_Report.pdf. 29 Jan. 2013. McCarty, Willard. 2005. Humanities computing. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Mueller, Martin. 2005. “The nameless Shakespeare.” Computing in the Humanities Working Papers. University of Toronto. 29 Jan. 2013. Web.

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http://projects.chass.utoronto.ca/chwp/Casta02/Mueller_casta02. htm. 29 Jan. 2013. __________ 2011. “The TCP texts and the query potential of the digital surrogate.” Project Bamboo Website. 28 Nov. 2011. http://www. projectbamboo.org/the-tcp-texts-and-the-query-potential-of-thedigital-surrogate/. 29 Jan. 2013. Roberts, Peter. 1999. “Scholarly publishing, peer review, and the Internet.” First Monday 1.4. 29 Jan. 2013. Web. http://firstmonday.org/htbin/ cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/661/576. 29 Jan. 2013. Sandler, Mark. 2004. “New uses for the world’s oldest books: Democratizing access to historic corpora,” Association of Research Libraries Bi-Monthly Report 232. 4 Feb. 2004. Web. http://www.arl.org/newsltr/232/ textcreation.html. 29 Jan. 2013. Sheiber, Stuart. 2011. “How should funding agencies pay open-access fees?” The Occasional Pamphlet, 16 Nov. 2011. Web. http://blogs.law.harvard. edu/pamphlet/2011/11/16/how-should-funding-agencies-pay-openaccess-fees/. 29 Jan. 2013. Unsworth, John, Paul N. Courant, Sarah E. Fraser, Michael F. Goodchild, Margaret Hedstrom, Charles Henry, Peter B. Kaufman, Jerome McGann, Roy Rosenzweig, and Bruce Zuckerman. 2006. “Our cultural commonwealth.” The Report of the American Council of Learned Societies Commission on Cyberinfrastructure for the Humanities and Social Sciences report from the American Council of Learned Societies. Washington, DC: American Council of Learned Societies. 29 Jan. 2013. Web. http://www. acls.org/cyberinfrastructure/OurCulturalCommonwealth.pdf. 29 Jan. 2013. Welter, Rush. 1959. Problems of scholarly publication in the humanities and social sciences. New York: American Council of Learned Societies. Zhu, Kevin, and MacQuarrie, Bryan. 2003. “Economics of digital bundling: The impacts of digitization on the music industry.” Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery, 46.9: 264–70. 29 Jan. 2013. Web. http://ssrn.com/abstract=526562. 29 Jan. 2013.

Contributors Diane Cole Ahl is the Arthur J. ’55 and Barbara S. Rothkopf Professor of Art History at Lafayette College, Easton, PA.  She has received many awards and fellowships for her research, most recently serving as the James S. Ackerman Scholar in Residence at the American Academy in Rome (2012) and Visiting Scholar at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence (2013). She is the author of the award-winning Benozzo Gozzoli (Yale University Press) and Fra Angelico (Phaidon Press), editor of The Cambridge Companion to Masaccio (Cambridge University Press) and Leonardo da Vinci’s Sforza Monument Horse: The Art and the Engineering (Associated University Presses), and co-editor of Confraternities and the Visual Arts in Renaissance Italy: Ritual, Spectacle, Image (Cambridge University Press). She presently is writing the Yale/Pelican History of Art Fifteenth-Century Painting in Italy (Yale University Press). Carsten Blüm has studied Cultural Sciences, Musicology, and History of Arts, but was employed as a web developer even before finishing university. Blüm worked several years as a freelancer before becoming one of the Sandrart. net project initiators. Since the end of the project in 2012, he has continued to develop web-based applications as employee and freelancer. Toby Burrows has a PhD in history from the University of Western Australia and an MA with distinction from King’s College London. Between 2005 and 2010 he directed the digital services of the Australian Research Council’s Network for Early European Research. He is currently Manager, eResearch Support and Digital Developments, in the Information Services Division at the University of Western Australia, where he also holds an Honorary Research Fellowship in the School of Humanities. He has held visiting fellowships at University College London; Churchill College, Cambridge; and the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. Tassie Gniady has a PhD in English from the University of California at Santa Barbara. From 2003 to 2007, she worked as the technical and project manager for the English Broadside Ballad Archive. She has just completed a Masters in Information Science at Indiana University and is working in the field of emerging technologies within library settings. Tanya Hagen started at the Records of Early English Drama project in 1996, serving first as a graduate assistant and subsequently as the staff bibliographer. © 2014 Iter Inc. and the Arizona Board of Regents for Arizona State University. All rights reserved ISBN 978-0-86698-516-1 (online) ISBN 978-0-86698-515-4 (print) New Technologies in Medieval and Renaissance Studies 4 (2014) 305–304

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She has been involved with EMLoT since its earliest beginnings in 2003, and in 2006 assumed the role of lead bibliographer, compiler, and editor. Her particular research interest is in eighteenth-century treatments of the preRestoration English theatre. William H. Hsu is an associate professor of computer science at Kansas State University.  His research areas are intelligent systems and machine learning, with applications to relational data mining and IE.  Hsu’s relevant specialization topics are statistical relational learning, time series, graphical models of probability and social networks.  In projects funded (1995–2002) by the Office of Naval Research (ONR), Naval Research Lab (NRL), and Army Research Lab (ARL), he has applied automated reasoning and learning approaches to simulation and modeling in the domains of immersive training, multimedia scenario generation, and predictive validation for crisis management; computational information and knowledge management (CIKM); and decision support systems in personnel management.  In projects funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and its Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) program in Kansas (2002–present), he has applied probabilistic reasoning and machine learning to data mining problems in bioinformatics, particularly gene regulatory modeling.  Finally, in collaboration with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) and University of Texas San Antonio (UTSA), he has helped to develop the Data Sciences Summer Institue (DSSI) on Multimodal Information Access and Synthesis (MIAS) that serves as both a summer research experience for undergraduates and an integrative research and graduate traineeship.   Jim Kuhn is the Joseph N. Lambert and Harold B. Schleifer Director of Rare Books Special Collections & Preservation, at the River Campus Libraries of the University of Rochester. Jim worked at the Folger Shakespeare Library from 1997 through 2013, most recently as Interim Eric Weinmann Librarian and Head of Collection Information Services. In addition to an MLS, Jim has a Master of Arts in Philosophy. Farrah Lehman Den is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the New York Institute of Technology. Her research focuses on connections between present-day posthumanist theory and the pre-humanist Early Modern English stage. She is currently working on a book project that considers Early Modern sensory encounter in terms of both posthumanist and antihumanist thought, and has an essay on that topic in the Autumn 2011 issue of Cahiers Elisabéthains.

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Sally-Beth MacLean is General Editor and Director of Research for the Records of Early English Drama, an international humanities research project based at the University of Toronto where she is Professor Emerita in the Department of English. She has published several books, notably The Queen’s Men and Their Plays with Scott McMillin, as well as articles on Elizabethan patronage, acting companies, mapping tour routes, and provincial folk customs. For the past decade she has dedicated much of her time to the digital development of new research and educational tools on the web, with the goal of moving all of REED’s data online as an interoperable, open-access hub of resources for the study of early modern theatre. Shawn Martin is Scholarly Communication Librarian at the Van Pelt Library of the University of Pennsylvania. He has a BA in history from Ohio State University and an MA in history from the College of William and Mary. He has worked for several years in digital libraries including the Digital Library Project at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, the Ohio Memory Project at the Ohio Historical Society, and, most recently, the Text Creation Partnership at the University of Michigan. Shawn is also active in several library and scholarly associations and serves as the Executive Director of the American Association for History and Computing. Kris McAbee is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, where she is also Director of the annual Shakespeare Scene Festival. Dr. McAbee has published on the printing practices and archival of broadside ballads, as well as on the sonnet sequences of Michael Drayton. Her current work explores the formation of the sonneteer as character type in early modern texts outside of sonnet sequences themselves. She is the project manager for UALR’s partnership in the English Broadside Ballad Archive (http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu) and co-founder of UALR’s Digital Humanities Collective. Jessica C. Murphy is Assistant Professor of Literary Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas. Her publications include two journal articles on gender in early modern literature and culture, and four chapters in edited collections (two of which are co-written). Most recently, she completed the manuscript for her first book, Virtuous Necessity: Conduct Literature and the Making of the Virtuous Woman in Early Modern England. She is the project manager for UTD’s partnership in the English Broadside Ballad Archive (http://ebba.english. ucsb.edu).

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Contributors

Michele Pasin is an information architect currently working for Nature Publishing Group. His work revolves around issues at the intersection of information architecture, data architecture, and semantic publishing. He obtained a PhD from the Knowledge Media Institute (part of the Open University, UK) with a thesis on the application of semantic web technologies to e-learning and the humanities. After that he worked as a research associate at King’s College Department of Digital Humanities (London), where has been involved with a number of cultural informatics projects including the People of Medieval Scotland (www.poms.ac.uk) and the Art of Making in Antiquity (www.artofmaking.ac.uk). Anna Schreurs-Morét is Professor of Early Modern Art History at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau. From 2007 to its end at 2012, she has directed the international research project Sandrart.net (www.sandrart.net), an annotated online-edition of the “Teutsche Academie der edlen Bau-, Bild- und Mahlerey-Künste” (1675–1680) by Joachim von Sandrart, based at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz. She is an expert on the Italian and German early modern historiography of art and has also widely published on the cosmopolitan artistic environment of Rome. Ray Siemens (http://web.uvic.ca/~siemens) led the team-based work for the Renaissance English Knowledgebase (REKn) and Professional Reading Environment (PReE) Projects.  Siemens is Canada Research Chair in Humanities Computing and Distinguished Professor in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Victoria, in English and Computer Science.  He is founding editor of the electronic scholarly journal Early Modern Literary Studies, and his publications include, among others, Blackwell’s Companion to Digital Humanities (with Schreibman and Unsworth), Blackwell’s Companion to Digital Literary Studies (with Schreibman), the collaborative wikibooks edition Social Edition of the Devonshire MS, and Literary Studies in the Digital Age (MLA, with Price). He directs the Implementing New Knowledge Environments project, the Digital Humanities Summer Institute, and the Electronic Textual Cultures Lab, and serves as Vice President of the Canadian Federation of the Humanities and Social Sciences for Research Dissemination, recently serving also as Chair of the international Alliance of Digital Humanities Organisations’ Steering Committee. Kathleen M. Smith is the curator for Germanic collections at Stanford University Libraries. She holds an MLS from the University of Texas at Austin and a PhD in Germanic Literatures from the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign. Before coming to Stanford, she worked in the Research and

Contributors

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Development Department of the Göttingen State and University Library in Germany. Thorsten Wübbena has studied Cultural Sciences, Art History, and History, and did work at the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie in Karlsruhe (ZKM), before joining the Kunstgeschichtliches Institut of the Goethe University Frankfurt in 2000 as a member of research staff. From 2007 to 2012 he worked at the Sandrart.net project in a managerial capacity. His main interests are new media (esp. music videos) and Digital Humanities (e.g. ConedaKOR, Sandrart.net).