Using my recently completed dissertation as a starting point, I’d like to explore how the approach I’ve adopted might be improved upon, extended, or simply serve as a discussion point for other projects.
For my dissertation, I digitized and marked up a 1794 English blank-verse translation of Virgil’s Aeneid using a customized TEI schema to identify common poetic figures and tropes used by the translator. Once complete, the XML document was rendered separately within two different content management systems (also customized) to display the various encoded features for assistance in poetic analysis.
How viable is the sharing of my schema with other texts or projects for poetic figure analysis? I know how I would apply it to more texts, but knowing how others might use it could vastly change the customization (most likely for the better!). If the schema itself lacks applicability to others’ projects, at least the project’s single-source model and the process I followed could prove of use to others, specifically: 1) digitization of a physical artifact; 2) production of a custom TEI schema; 3) production of a TEI-encoded document; 4) insertion of said TEI-document into content management systems such as XTF and TEI Boilerplate; and 5) customization of content management systems to display desired textual features.
Thanks, Will, for this great session proposal.It will be neat to see colleagues from classics, languages/literatures, and English think with us about how this scheme might work for other poetic figure analysis!
Sounds like a great project. I wonder why you chose James Beresford’s translation and whether or not you are considering marking up other translations of Virgil for comparative analysis?
Thanks for the interest! I already had a copy of Beresford’s translation and decided I would accomplish both preserving and analyzing it at once. Also, a comparative analysis of other translations would absolutely be of interest, though I don’t have any definite future plans for the schema yet.