Section 3.1b
Critical editions
by Dino Buzzetti

outline of the chapter

SCHOLARLY CRITICAL EDITIONS
Dino Buzzetti


Scholarly critical editions provide a good example of the 
methodological implications brought about by the application 
of computing methods to traditional disciplines in the 
humanities. An edition can be thought of as a type of text 
representation. Its preferable form is obviously dependent 
on the research purposes to which it is devoted and its 
adequacy is to be judged on the grounds of the analytical 
results which it affords. Now, to state but a basic fact, 
a digital form of representation of textual information 
is processable and is not necessarily linear. Accordingly, 
the very nature of a digital text representation makes it 
immediately clear, that its formal properties can 
significantly enhance the functional value of an edition. 

In a digital edition, for instance, visual and textual 
information can easily be combined. This mere possibility 
changes the essential function of a diplomatic transcription. 
Diplomatic transcriptions were devised to substitute for 
the original documents, which can now be shown by reliable 
images. But the availability of an image does not supersede 
the usefulness of a transcription. It just changes its 
purposes and assigns it a different function. A transcipt 
does not aim any more at replicating the original, but 
it becomes essential to extracting information from the 
document and to representing it in a processable form. 
Diacritics and markup are not thought of any more as an 
aid to visualizing an absent document, but as a suitable 
means of modelling both physical and textual information 
contained in the original for further processing. A 
transcription aims at representing a possible data model 
for graphical and textual information. The image itself 
is digital data and can be exploited as logical information 
available for formal processing--to test the authenticity 
of the document, or to improve its readability.

It is also apparent, on the same grounds, that a non-linear 
form of representation of textual information can be more 
suitable than the canonical printed one to the purposes 
of editorial and exegetical work. A non-linear data model 
can bring together multiple layers of textual information, 
or different witnesses of a complex textual tradition, in 
a consistent and unique form of textual representation, 
whence they can all be individually severed and displayed, 
as well as mutally collated and compared. Likewise, a 
non-linear model of textual information can afford a 
connected and comprehensive description of distinct 
interpretational reconstructions, by assigning different 
explicit and processable forms to implicit and possibly 
conflicting structural properties of the same textual 
features. 

The advantages of a processable form of text representation, 
such as can be provided by a scholarly digital edition, can 
hardly be overemphasized and unmistakably prove their deep 
methodological impact on the long established practices of 
the traditional disciplines in the humanities.