About This Course
The Mooc provides a comprehensive overview of all the key concepts of the philological method: text, error, edition, and apparatus. After an overview of the material media of text transmission, it introduces the most widely used ecdotic methodologies, illustrating the various models of edition and apparatus and illustrating the theoretical concepts with concrete examples drawn from manuscripts and printed texts.
The MOOC aims to provide participants with an overview of the main concepts and ideas of textual criticism applied to literary texts, focusing on their linguistic status, their transmission, and their manuscript and print tradition. The particular pitch of the module, aimed to beginners, will inspire participants with basic or limited knowledge of literary history, linguistics and textual criticism to engage with a new and innovative approach to literary texts.
The course is organised into four weeks, offering a journey through the creation, transmission, publication and amendment of texts.
- Week 1 – Text
- Week 2 – Error
- Week 3 – Edition
- Week 4 – Apparatus
Each week consists of several modules, comprising videos, written texts, infographics and assessment quizzes.
Target
The MOOC, designed as a preparatory course for students of Scholarly Editing and Digital Textuality in the Master's Degree Programme in Digital Humanities and Digital Knowledge (LM43), aims to accompany participants by providing them with the necessary foundations for analysing, studying and producing printed and digital editions.
Outcomes
Participants will be able to:
- understand the mechanisms of text transmission in relation to different material supports
- understand the main copying errors, recognise guiding errors and distinguish between errors and variants
- distinguish between the main types of editions: diplomatic, critical and genetic
- read an apparatus and distinguish between positive and negative, genetic and evolutionary types of apparatus.
Requirements
No prerequisite knowledge is required from the participants.
Each week includes an introductory video on the general topic, and each module features slides, images and three videos. At the end of each week, there will be a quiz to summarise and test your knowledge. Finally, each week will be accompanied by further reading on the topics covered.
Open Badge
Participants who complete the course will be awarded an Open Badge from BESTR. Participants who log in to the platform with University of Bologna, EDUGAIN, CIE or Spid authentication and answer correctly at least 60% of the questions in total, will receive an email with instructions to download their Open Badge from the BESTR website the day after the completion of the course.
Subtitles
English subtitles available.
For better understanding, subtitles are available for each video and can be activated or not. If you want to revise some crucial passages you can move through the video content and click on the attached text.
ISCED-F
0232 Literature and linguistics - Philology
SDGS
- SDG 4 - Quality Education
FAQ
For further information, see FAQ page.
Course Professors
Paola Italia
Paola Italia teaches Italian Philology and Digital Scholarly Editing at the University of Bologna. She has worked on various nineteenth- and twentieth-century authors and topics (including Manzoni, Leopardi, Savinio, Bassani, Gadda), with a particular focus on philological and linguistic issues related to editions of paper and digital texts (Editing Duemila, Salerno, 2020). She has published studies of authorial variants (What is authorial philology? OBP, Cambridge, 2021) and studies creativity in manuscripts (site.unibo.it/manoscrittidigitali/en). Website: www.unibo.it/sitoweb/paola.italia/en
Cecilia Salerno
Cecilia Salerno holds a Master’s degree in Italian Studies from the University of Bologna. Her work focuses on authorial philology, digital philology, and Italian theatrical literature.
Beatrice Nava
Beatrice Nava is University Assistant Postdoc at the University of Vienna (Digital Philology), where she teaches Introduction to DH tools and methods (Python), Digital Edition and Semantic Web, and Data Structures and Data Modelling. She is a member of the board of the European Society for Textual Scholarship. Her research interests include authorial philology and digital scholarly editing.
After her PhD in Literary and Philological Cultures (University of Bologna) she worked for two years as a researcher at the Huygens Institute in Amsterdam, contributing both to digital edition projects (The Mondrian Papers Edition) and to an infrastructure project for modular and sustainable digital editions (eDITem).
Collaborators
Ilaria Burattini
Ilaria Burattini is a research fellow at the University of Pavia and conducts her studies in the field of Italian literature, author philology, and digital philology. Her research interests focus on 16th-19th century literature, with particular attention to the papers of Francesco Guicciardini, to whom she dedicated the volume Il copialettere di Francesco Guicciardini. Una fonte per la Storia d'Italia, and Giacomo Leopardi. She is a member of DH.ARC and contributes to several academic journals.
Roberta Priore
Roberta Priore earned a PhD in Literary and Philological Cultures at the University of Bologna; her dissertation investigated the origins and early pages (1817–1819) of Giacomo Leopardi’s Zibaldone, based on manuscript research at the National Library of Naples. She currently serves as a research fellow at the University of Bologna (ADlab) and has coordinated and contributed to digital-editing projects such as Zibaldone100 and VaSto. Her technical expertise spans digital scholarly editing, TEI/XML encoding, creation and visualization of annotated digital editions (EVT), manuscript cataloguing (Manus Online). She has teaching and tutoring experience in digital editions and DH labs, and is the author of Una biografia dello Zibaldone: le prime cento pagine (1817–1820) (Mimesis, 2024).
