Some of the features talked about in this discussion thread have been
or are being implemented in WordHoard.
WordHoard 'knows' a lot about each of the word occurrences in a
given text, e.g. the Faerie Queene. This information is invisible but
can be summoned at different levels of detail.
A prototype of WordHoard that is operational at Northwestern, but not
yet publicly released, includes user generated annotation. The public
release shows how this will look: if you look at the Iliad you can
decide to display or not display the scholia to the Iliad. They have
not been displayed as true marginalia since the first printing of the
Venetus A manuscript 500 years ago.
We have been working on doing this for the Shepherd's Calendar, and
integration of the Shepherds Calendar is on our do-list, but it is a
very pesky poem that resists algorithms....
We have implemented a form of 'location-bound annotation', in which a
user attaches annotation to a word or phrase. We are also about to
implement a simple version of 'concept-bound' annotation, where a
user attaches annotation to something that has more than one
location--such as a word wherever it occurs.
On Apr 15, 2006, at 7:02 AM, David L. Miller wrote:
> A digital text, not being confined to the dimensions of page and
> book, can offer both options at once: the look of a clean, text-
> only page with quick access to a virtual library of reliable
> scholarship.
>
> The text can appear initially unannotated because links to
> annotations appear only when you drag a cursor across them, or only
> when you select a certain menu option--say, all word-glosses to be
> marked.
>
> Then the reader can consult glosses selectively. Hypertext digital
> archives eliminate the shotgun effect of googling, can incorporate
> links to other sites as well as internal links to a potentially
> endless array of resources, and can continue to be extended and
> reconstructed by successive generations of editors. They can
> incorporate features that enable them to support high-end scholarly
> research while leaving them user-friendly enough for high school
> students or anyone with access to the net.
>
> My guess would be that this is the form in which the work of our
> most distinguished editors will live on. Someday their glosses,
> articles from the Spenser encyclopedia, and who knows what else,
> will be incorporated into a digital archive and variouslly linked
> to the text.
>
> The editors of the Oxford edition currently in preparation are
> trying to build the first version of such an archive. We figure it
> may take a while . . .
>
>
>
>>>> [log in to unmask] 04/15 4:56 AM >>>
> I certainly didn't mean to suggest that we should *abandon*
> glosses; I am
> simply wondering how the practice of annotating might, or should,
> change
> in an age where access to information is readier (if still slightly
> unreliable, as many note) than ever. I can almost imagine, now, an
> extreme
> case where an editor simply flags ('anchors') words that the student
> should, or might like to, chase up; but of course I wouldn't want
> to do
> without the kinds of annotation that not only explain, but connect.
>
> I declare my need for and indebtedness to heavily-annotated
> editions like
> Variorum, Hamilton, Fowler, etc. But of course these editions also
> *restrict* our readings, and *direct* them. In the pluralistic
> interpretative world of the Googlian age, is it not time to experiment
> again not only with the 'unedited' text, but the 'unannotated' text? I
> don't mean to suggest a new practical criticism, but rather, as David
> Miller reminded me recently, to restore the thrill and pleasure of the
> reader's own itinerary of discovery. Annotated editions can be
> *deflating*, where the experience of *growing* to love a poet like
> Spenser
> or Milton should be, I'd have thought, *invigorating*. My students
> often
> feel overwhelmed by Spenser, which I think is partly a response to the
> *edition* in which they encounter him, rather than to the poems
> themselves; they are never given the opportunity to latch onto and
> love
> the poetry for its successively-revealing simplicities, before being
> whelmed and clobbered with its complexity, allusiveness, philosophical
> depth, and so on.
>
> A 'plain text' edition should not be taken as a licence for
> indolence, but
> rather an invitation to discovery. Are we forestalling discovery?
>
> Just wondering. One a penny, two a penny.
>
> az
>
>
> Andrew Zurcher
> Tutor and Director of Studies in English
> Queens' College
> Cambridge CB3 9ET
> United Kingdom
> +44 1223 335 572
>
> hast hast post hast for lyfe
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