Literary drafts, genetic criticism and computational technology. The Beckett Digital Manuscript Project

Abstract

This article addresses the Beckett Digital Manuscript Project, an evolving project, currently comprising a series of digital genetic editions of Samuel Beckett’s bilingual literary drafts and a digital library. Following the genetic school of editing, the project’s goal is to explore and represent as fully as possible the evolutionary dynamics of Beckett’s composition process. The robust editorial framework alongside the sophisticated technical development and design of the project succeed to manage a vast amount of complex primary material and to offer an insight into Beckett's writing, by enabling multiple processing of facsimiles, transcriptions and comparisons of variants in a user-friendly way. The 'Beckett Digital Library' further enables a comprehensive approach to the concept of textual genesis and to Beckett's intellectual influences. Moreover, the project contains exemplary documentation as well as a number of spin-off outputs. However, key improvements could still be made mainly to its publication and business strategies, currently a subscription model, in order to increase the access to the project and its further contribution to the scholarly community.

Keywords

• 20th century
• archive
• edition series
• genetic edition
• modernism
• variant