Computer - Assisted Processing of Intertextuality in Ancient Languages

Abstract

The production of digital critical editions of texts using TEI is now a widely-adopted procedure within digital humanities. The work described in this paper extends this approach to the publication of gnomologia (anthologies of wise sayings) , which formed a widespread literary genre in many cultures of the medieval Mediterranean. These texts are challenging because they were rarely copied straightforwardly ; rather , sayings were selected , reorganised , modified or re-attributed between manuscripts , resulting in a highly interconnected corpus for which a standard approach to digital publication is insufficient. Focusing on Greek and Arabic collections , we address this challenge using semantic web techniques to create an ecosystem of texts , relationships and annotations , and consider a new model – organic , collaborative , interconnected , and open-ended – of what constitutes an edition. This semantic web-based approach allows scholars to add their own materials and annotations to the network of information and to explore the conceptual networks that arise from these interconnected sayings .

Keywords

• tei
• gnomologia
• rdf
• manuscripts
• ontology
• linked data
• semantic web
• digital edition
• anthologies
• [shs.class] humanities and social sciences/classical studies
• [shs.info] humanities and social sciences/library and information sciences