[tei-council] Suppressed text: summary of position (FR 2242434)

Elena Pierazzo elena.pierazzo at kcl.ac.uk
Tue Nov 3 03:26:36 EST 2009


They are not for two reasons:

1. We don't know who actually did the adding, we cannot be sure it is 
the responsibility of the scribe of the manuscript we are transcribing 
or of his predecessor (the manuscript from which he copy from) or of 
another predecessor we have lost, so which scribe? In some cases the 
text is a transcription done by memory from an oral tradition and the 
insertion could have been done by anybody. It would be therefore really 
wrong to attribute that addition to someone in particular. Another 
example: there is a branch of the tradition of the Inferno of Dante that 
has 8 interpolated verses in Canto 33. What would you do in his case? 
use the <add> for each of the manuscripts (8) that contain the 
interpolation as they all did independently from each other?

2. We cannot document (i.e. we do not have the evidences), a part from 
very very occasional cases (where I would actually use <add>) for the 
act of adding, the only thing that an editor can say is that  *in his 
opinion* there is an interpolation for this and this reason, meaning 
that the treatment of interpolation documents an act of the editor and 
not an act of the scribe (or whoever), where again <add> is not 
appropriate as it refer to the scribe (or someone else which interfered 
with the source).

Make sense?
Elena

Lou Burnard wrote:
> Why are they not <add resp="scribe" type="interpolation"> then?
>
> Elena Pierazzo wrote:
>   
>> Gabby also says this would not solve the case "for interpolated verses"
>> which is quite possibly true, but (if I understand his reason for saying
>> so) the same would apply to any phrase-level element you might invent.
>>
>>
>>
>> The point is that interpolated segments (and the consequent need for an editor to mark them as superfluous) are quite common in medieval texts. This is a standard practice in editorial work and I think that a standard practice should not be left to the invention of single editors (with consequent proliferation of element, as it is now, by the way), but TEI should provide a standard solution for it.
>>
>> Interpolations are not errors of the scribes (so sic cannot be used), but texts that have been added by someone (a scribe, a reader of the text), perhaps initially as a gloss and then have been incorporated to the text. The editor might want, in those cases, to espunge them altogether, or mark them as superfluous, or say 'possibly interpolated' (so a @cert attribute would be required).
>>
>> Elena
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> Dr Elena Pierazzo
>>
>> Research Associate
>>
>> Centre for Computing in the Humanities
>>
>> King's College London
>>
>> 26-29 Drury Lane
>>
>> London WC2B 5RL
>>
>>
>> Phone: 0207-848-1949
>>
>> Fax: 0207-848-2980
>>
>> elena.pierazzo[at]kcl.ac.uk
>>
>> www.kcl.ac.uk/cch<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/cch>
>>
>>     
>
>   

-- 
Dr Elena Pierazzo
Research Associate
Centre for Computing in the Humanities
King's College London
26-29 Drury Lane
London WC2B 5RL

Phone: 0207-848-1949
Fax: 0207-848-2980
elena.pierazzo at kcl.ac.uk
www.kcl.ac.uk



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