A new open access critical edition of Dante’s "commedia" fostering digital humanities projects. Collation of 580 MSS, provisional texts and apparatuses, and lexical updatings to the "Vocabolario Dantesco”

Abstract:

Risultati attesi: 

This interdisciplinary project represents a synthesis of two major scholarly endeavors in Dante studies, combining cutting-edge textual criticism with advanced lexicographical research. The initiative ambitiously integrates an innovative critical edition of Dante’s Commedia, developed through fifteen years of preparatory research by the Ferrara Group under the direction of Paolo
Trovato (Component A), with the Vocabolario Dantesco project (Dantesque Dictionary; VD), a collaborative effort between the Accademia della Crusca and the CNR Institute Opera del Vocabolario Italiano (OVI), co-directed by Paola Manni (Component B).
The project addresses a fundamental need in contemporary Dante scholarship: the creation of a thorough textual foundation that can serve both philological analysis and lexicographical investigation. By leveraging digital humanities methodologies and computational tools, this research establishes an unprecedented standard for medieval literary scholarship.
Component A: Digital Critical Edition and Manuscript Collation This component focuses on producing online Provisional New Reference Texts and Apparatuses (PRETs) of the Commedia. The edition begins with a partial, but very large (more than 600 places of variation) collation of over 580 manuscripts and the complete collation of 11 particularly authoritative witnesses, providing scholars with a detailed introductory essay that documents the history of the transmission of Dante’s masterwork. The digital format enables the comparison of textual variants and the consultation of critical apparatuses.
Component B: Enhanced Vocabolario Dantesco Implementation Building upon the new critical edition, this component involves the systematic enhancement and refinement of the Vocabolario Dantesco. The lexicographical work benefits directly from the new critical text provided by Component A, ensuring that lexical entries, semantic analyses, and etymological investigations are based on the most reliable textual evidence available. The different set of manuscripts adopted in the new edition makes it possible to retrieve alternative lessons compared to the text edited by Petrocchi, Sanguineti or Inglese. By this way a major goal will be achieved: to fulfill Giovanni Nencioni and Gianfranco Folena’s wish of a lexicography that takes into account even the rejected variants of at least the essential texts of our literature.