URT in Pisa
The URT is based on the project "Texts and manuscripts of ancient
Italian: from the corpus to a model of digital philology". The project aims
to promote an innovative model of digital philology in which the corpora set up
by OVI can be integrated, starting from the "Corpus OVI of early
Italian", which collects texts written in any Italo Romance variety from
the origins up to the end of 14th century for 30 million words (
http://gattoweb.ovi.cnr.it/
).
This model is based on the possibility of establishing connections,
between texts and their tradition (interoperability), between texts and other
texts and images of manuscripts (hypertextuality) and between words
(lemmatization).
The construction of connections according to these three strategic lines
will constitute the heart of the project's activities:
a) the connection with the main online repertories on the tradition of
vulgar texts in the Middle Ages will be improved;
b) hypertextuality will be guaranteed by new links between the texts,
vertical (you can read a translation text with its model, Latin or novel) and
horizontal (you can compare the corresponding passages of several translations
of the same work or the variants between multiple editions of the same text);
c) the extraordinary investment of resources in lemmatization will lead
to the replacement of numerous editions already present in the corpus, now
dated and outdated, with new and more reliable editions, to the integration of
new texts and more generally to the strengthening of indexing as regards
homogeneity and extension.
The digital philology model that we intend to pursue will also be usable
for new born-digital editions; the final goal is the integration of a huge
intangible cultural heritage linked to medieval Italian vulgar in large European infrastructures projects, in particular DARIAH (Digital
Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities), whose Italian node is
based at OVI.
From March 2020, following the resolution of the CNR Board of Directors no. 30/2020 of 20.1.2020, OVI has activated a Temporary Research Unit (URT) at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa to carry out the research project Testi e manoscritti dell’italiano antico: dal corpus a un modello di filologia digitale. At the end of the three-year period, the structure was extended for a further three-year period with resolution no. 175/2023 of 23.5.2023 of the CNR Board of Directors.
This project is connected to the 2017 PRIN project RENOVO (Regenerating the OVI Corpus: renewal and optimization of methods, contents and tools) coordinated by Lino Leonardi, professor at Scuola Normale and former Director of OVI (2014-2018). Now also to the PNRR PE CHANGES project (Cultural Heritage Active Innovation for Next-Gen Sustainable Society), and in particular to WP3 (Creating a digital
philology environment and digital libraries of authorized texts) of which the Scuola Normale Superiore is the leader with the coordination of Leonardi, and PNRR IR H2IOSC (Humanities
and cultural Heritage Italian Open Science Cloud), coordinated by OVI researcher Emiliano Degl'Innocenti (Italian scientific director of DARIAH).
Two people work at the URT: Elena Artale (researcher) and Sara Ravani (researcher).
It is based in Pisa in the
Polvani Complex
(Via della Faggiola 19), in the building where Giacomo Leopardi stayed from November 1827.
