The Archivio Testuale del Siciliano Antico (ARTESIA) and the Vocabolario del Siciliano Medievale (VSM), established by
Mario Pagano at the University of Catania, stand as pioneering resources for
delving into the early centuries of Sicilian vernacular.
Inaugurated in 2008, the ARTESIA Project,
led by Mario Pagano at the Department of Humanities of the University of
Catania in collaboration with the Center for Philological and Linguistic Studies of Sicily in Palermo, focuses on documenting Sicilian vernacular from
the late 13th century to the first half of the 16th century. This period marked
the gradual shift from Sicilian to Tuscan as the language of administration and
public communication.
The initial resource developed in 2008 was
the GattoWeb ARTESIA Corpus, under the guidance of Mario Pagano (with vice directors
Salvatore Arcidiacono and Ferdinando Raffaele). This collaboration involved
both Sicilian institutions and the OVI.
Beyond the Quaderni di ARTESIA, an editorial series showcasing research outcomes, the project includes
the Vocabolario del Siciliano Medievale (VSM), a diachronic electronic web-based
dictionary of Sicilian spanning until the mid-16th century. Modeled on the TLIO with LexiCad© tools by Salvatore Arcidiacono, the VSM relies on a comprehensive
analysis of primary sources cataloged in the ARTESIA Corpus. It also entails
systematic consultation of two sixteenth-century dictionaries - Lucio
Cristoforo Scobar's Sicilian-Latin Vocabulary (1519) and Nicolò Valla's
Vallilium (1500-1522).
The 2023 staff:
Director: Mario Pagano (University of Catania)
Vice Director and IT Manager: Salvatore Arcidiacono (University of Catania / CNR-OVI)
Vice Director and Editorial Manager: Rossella Mosti (CNR-OVI)
ARTESIA Corpus Vice Director: Ferdinando Raffaele (University of Enna Kore)
Text Encoding Manager: Tecla Chiarenza
Editorial Team members: Laura Ingallinella (University of Toronto), Anael Intelisano (UniCt), Sara Ravani (CNR-OVI), Roberta Romeo (CSFLS), Fiorenza Tomarchio (UniCt), Giuseppe Zappalà (UniCt).