Abstract
The ParaText project aims: (a) to carry out an in-depth investigation on the relationship between literary text and exegetical paratext in the manuscript transmission of ancient Greek poetry; (b) to develop, and make available to the community of scholars, a prototype tool of hypertextual transcription that allows to describe, understand and further explore this cultural phenomenon; and (c) to enhance the book heritage of a renowned Italian library by a public exhibition of important medieval manuscript witnesses of ancient Greek poetry and related exegesis. (a) The ParaText team brings together scholars expert in text and transmission of ancient Greek poetry and related exegesis from Antiquity to the Byzantine era, with the purpose of achieving new goals in the field in terms of both method and knowledge. The study of ancient scholarship concerning poetic works which were at the core of Greek civilisation – archaic epic and lyric, Attic theatre, Hellenistic poetry – will enable us to draw a diachronic and a synchronic map of exegetical strategies and a description of their typological and functional features. We will dedicate particular attention to the logical and structural organisation of the exegetical paratexts: linear commentary (e.g. hypomnemata, continuous commentaries); ‘hypertext’ commentary (e.g. scholia, lexica). We will also explore the relations between the two types of products, i.e. motives, dynamics and effects of transforming an arrangement as linear source into a hypertextual one and vice versa. The results will be published in articles on academic journals, in books and in a final conference with its proceedings. These publications will be destined to scholars and advanced students specialized in the field, as well as to scholars who may be interested in the issue from an interdisciplinary perspective. (b) The research also aims to design an innovative standard for textual analysis, by producing the prototype of a hypertextual tool enabling scholars to represent and explain the relationship between literary text and exegetical paratext in ancient books. This prototype will consist of a Repertoire of Hypertext Transcriptions (RHT) of case studies, each of them provided with introductory information, Italian and English translation, commentary and bibliography. It will be accompanied by a lexicon of ancient Greek exegesis and a critical bibliography on the topic. The Repertoire and all its complements will be published online as open access tools, available to scholars, advanced university students and non-specialist cultivated people interested in the knowledge and understanding of literature and book heritage. (c) Some of the most significant manuscripts being studied belong to the Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milano. They will be the core of a public exhibition, both physical (housed in the rooms of that Library) and digital (hosted in the website of the project), destined to scholars, students and educated people.
Project details
Unibo Team Leader: Camillo Neri
Unibo involved Department/s:
Dipartimento di Filologia Classica e Italianistica
Coordinator:
Università degli Studi di PAVIA(Italy)
Total Unibo Contribution: Euro (EUR) 50.370,00
Project Duration in months: 24
Start Date:
17/10/2023
End Date:
30/11/2025
