Textual Variation, Electronic Editions and Hypertext

The advent of the electronic paradigm to the field of scholarly editing and textual criticism opens up new possibilities for both the production process and the delivery of products which may herald a new era in scholarly editing. A new practice including text encoding, automated tagging, automatic collation, the use of scripting languages, etc. creates new kinds of editions in which the record of textual variation becomes a central point of attention, both on the markup- and on the delivery-side. In this paper I will address both sides through a problematization of the apparatus criticus or variorum as an essential part of an electronic edition.

The new reality of scholarly editing in which for instance archives become editions and editions include archives (McGann 1996 and Robinson 1996), and hybrid editions come into being as a combination of critical, diplomatic, facsimile and reading editions (De Smedt & Vanhoutte 2000), calls for a new theoretical framework and a thorough critique of the theory and practice of paper-based critical philology. The existing rationales of textual criticism cannot simply be transposed from the hard-copy to the electronic paradigm. This would for instance mean a transposition of the unpracticality and illegibility of the apparatus criticus or variorum to a medium which is essentially structured differently. The editor of a paper-based edition tries to design the apparatus as an economic and compact model in which to store textual variety, often through a combination of variants. This more than once results in an unsuperable density and thus a malfunctioning of a tool which should above all be transparent and consultable. The apparatus criticus or apparatus variorum of a printed critical edition fails, through its form and formality, in what it intends to do, that is to provide a substitute and a documentation of each complex source in such a physical form that it is usable for the interested scholar (Vanhoutte 1998). The possibility to include digital facsimiles in an electronic edition discharges the apparatus from the theoretical imperative of being a substitute. The need for documentation of textual variety, however, remains, but in electronic editions, compactness is being overruled by explicitness. On the markup-side, this means the use of a system which can tag every reading as well as genetic commentary, meta-data variation and variation over structural boundaries (Smith 1999). On the delivery-side, this means the use of a system which can supply the user with the possibility to consult every witness on its own and - facultatively - in combination with a suggested orientation text to an acceptable level of granularity.

Over the past couple of years, several gentle solutions have been put into practice, which either function on the markup- or on the delivery-side (corresponding roughly with what Vanhoutte 1999 respectively calls the Archive- and Museum-function), but none of which provides a full answer to this documentation-maxim. Taking the three fundamental requirements of electronic scholarly editions - accessibility, longevity and intellectual integrity (Sperberg-McQueen 1994) - as parameters for an evaluation of possible designs of electronic editions, I will argue that there are at least three sorts of editions in the electronic paradigm: electronic editions, electronic editions with hypertext functionality and hypertext editions which do not meet the requirements of electronic editions. Further, this paper will (re)formulate additions to these requirements, focussing on modern literature.

Because hypertext is the visualization of linking which DeRose & Van Dam (1999) define as "the ability to express relationships between places in a universe of information" and which are explicitly marked or can be generated automatically by making use of some sort of markup, the syntax of this markup and the markup-language become essential in designing a hypertext and/or an electronic edition.

On the basis of the three fundamental requirements for electronic editions, the syntax of the markup (language) and the orientation towards a markup- or a delivery-side, I distinguish three sorts of editions in the electronic paradigm:

A. hypertext editions:

Are only concerned with accessibility: they explicitly link apparatus to base text, digital facsimile to base text, several versions to orientation text.
Make use of (a combination of) HTML, JavaScript (for pop-up boxes), frames.
Are being designed from a display point of view and are useful for didactic purposes and on-sight consulting. Hypertext editions of this sort are acceptable as a formatted output with a specific purpose for a specific audience, but are for visual purposes only.
B. electronic editions:
Are concerned with accessibility, longevity and intellectual integrity by making use of generic markup schemes in their design, such as those provided by the TEI (cf. chapter 19 of the P3 Guidelines), the MASTER scheme (Robinson, Burnard, Proffitt & Driscoll 1999), or a project specific SGML DTD.
Can be concerned with linking external or internal apparatus to a base or an orientation text.
Can be concerned with providing alternative views of the same document.
Are being designed from a markup point of view and are useful to the scholarly community.
Can be used to generate several spin-off products (including editions of category A).
C. electronic editions with hypertext functionality:
Same as B, but make extensive use of Pointer and Reference syntax to explicitly express relationships which can also be viewed in a browser, or make use of the present markup to programmatically generate linking.

From B and C it follows that the explicit documentation of textual variation in an apparatus criticus or variorum linked to a base text is no prerequisite anymore for an electronic edition. Textual variation can be documented implicitly by the textual description of each witness or document source. The extraction of alternative views of the witnesses, facultatively projected together with one version which functions as an orientation text, can be a possible solution to the problems concerning the instability of a (base) text. This paper will conclude with some notes on the use of XML and XSL in a construct which both caters for the markup- and the display-side.

References

DeRose, Steven, J. and Van Dam, A. (1999). Document Structure and markup in the FRESS hypertext system. Markup Languages: Theory & Practice. 1/1, 7-32.
De Smedt, Marcel and Vanhoutte, E. (2000). Stijn Streuvels. De teleurgang van den Waterhoek. Elektronisch-kritische editie. KANTL/Amsterdam University Press, Gent/Amsterdam.
Sperberg-McQueen, C.M. (1994). Textual Criticism and the Text Encoding Initiative. Paper presented at MLA '94, San Diego, 1994 <http://www.uic.edu:80/orgs/tei/talks/mla94.html>.
Sperberg-McQueen, C.M. and Burnard, L. (1994). Guidelines for Electronic Text Encoding and Interchange. (P3). Text Encoding Initiative, Chicago and Oxford.
McGann, J. (1996). "The Rationale of HyperText.", TEXT, 9, 11-32.
Robinson, P. (1996). Geoffrey Chaucer. The Wife of Bath's Prologue. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Robinson, P., Burnard, L., Proffitt, M. and Driscoll, M. (1999). Initiatives Towards a Standard Encoding for Manuscript Descriptions. Session at DRH99, London, 1999.
Smith, D. (1999). "Textual Variation and Version Control in the TEI.", Computers and the Humanities, 33, 103-112.
Vanhoutte, E. (1998). "Where is the editor? Resistance in the creation of an electronic critical edition." Paper presented at DRH98, Glasgow, 1998.