Encoding a Transcript of the Beowulf Manuscript in SGML

Encoding a Transcript of the Beowulf Manuscript in
SGML

Elizabeth
Solopova
Department of English University of
Kentucky
esolop@pop.uky.edu

1999

University of Virginia

Charlottesville, VA

ACH/ALLC 1999

editor

encoder

Sara
A.
Schmidt

The Electronic Beowulf Project is a joint project of the University of Kentucky
and the British Library and has made available on CD-ROM high resolution images
of the manuscript and its early transcripts, together with commentary, glossary,
and searchable transcription and edition of the poem. The edition and the
transcript have been encoded in SGML to enable the users to search for editorial
decisions such as restorations and emendations in the edition, and for
palaeographical features and various types of scribal activity in the
transcript. Particular features which are now searchable as a result of encoding
the transcript include: scribal abbreviations, additions, deletions and
corrections, missing text and characters damaged or concealed by restoration
attempts.
The Beowulf manuscript suffered damage from the fire of the Cottonian library in
1731 which destroyed or damaged a significant proportion of the text, making
textual restoration a near impossible task. Quite apart from the fire damage the
manuscript presents various palaeographical and textual problems, and has been a
subject of considerable scholarly controversy in recent years. Individual
readings in the poem often depend on complex evidence from different sources
including seventeenth and nineteenth-century transcripts of Beowulf, from
back-lighting, ultraviolet photography and, more recently, digital image
processing, as well as the study of spelling and scribal habits throughout the
entire Nowell codex of which Beowulf is a part. The Electronic Beowulf Project
has brought together a wide range of textual information about the poem, making
it easily accessible for re-evaluation and further research. The textual
material has been encoded with SGML which, whilst not strictly TEI-conformant,
is indebted to the TEI for both the original inspiration and for individual
encoding decisions. The markup records a wealth of minute palaeographical and
textual detail in both the transcript and the edition of the poem. This paper
will briefly discuss the development of the DTD before looking at a selection of
the markup problems encountered in the encoding of the Beeowulf transcript.
Finally, I is hoped to demonstrate the usefulness of the encoding for specific
searches within the Electronic Beowulf CD-ROM.
The first group of encoding problems is represented by cases where the feature
which needs to be encoded is actually smaller than the smallest segment of the
electronic text - the character. Examples include: the erasure or deletion of a
character's minim by underdotting (or indeed added by the scribe); damaged or
partly-obscured letters, especially on the edges of a fire-damaged or
partly-restored folio. Any editorial restoration of damaged or concealed
characters needs to be accompanied by the evidence for a particular reading,
often incomplete and based on a range of sources. The editor's comments
referring to damaged letters range from 'only descender survives', to 'part of
the letter survives', to 'only traces are preserved'. The TEI Guidelines offer a
method for describing such instances within its primary documents tag set. The
element <DAMAGE>, for example, has an attribute EXTENT which, according to
the TEI Guidelines, can have values such as "half-letter", "minim" etc. However
a similar attribute is not available for other elements such as <DEL> (for
deletions). The Electronic Beowulf Project developed both descriptive notes and
customized elements and attributes to accommodate these features.
Multiple scribal alterations carried out in a particular sequence offer another
set of encoding problems. For example, the editorial note which accompanies the
reading, 'aet' in the transcript reads, 'Originally "seah", but "e" underdotted,
"eah" crossed out, and "aet" written over it in the same hand'. All types of
scribal activity mentioned in this context, such as the additions and various
types of deletions, are commonly encountered in the manuscript separately and
encoded with a corresponding set of elements and attributes. However,
multi-scribal activity not only defy conventions which work well for the large
majority of simpler cases, but present particular difficulties in the need to
record the order in which the alterations took place.
A third group of difficult cases concern the presence of ambiguity in the
material itself where the encoding had to reflect the unavailability of a
straightforward interpretation. An example of this is described in the following
editorial note: 'After "dream", traces of erased or faded letters, sometimes
restored as "ic", appear to be bottoms of "h" and "e" under ultraviolet light'.
The uncertainty expressed in the editorial note presents an encoding problem,
even though elements for both faded and erased text were broadly used in the
encoding of the Beowulf transcript. A similar difficulty occurs when a
particular feature falls under two or more categories distinguished within the
markup system. Thus a common method of deletion in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts is
underdotting a letter or a word. On the other hand a point beneath the line is
commonly used by one of the Beowulf scribes to indicate the place where
additions written above the line were intended to belong. There are cases
however, where it is impossible to say whether a point beneath the line is an
insertion or a deletion mark for in fact it stands for both.
Finally the paper will discuss the use of cross-referencing and the recording of
additional information in the markup to represent the complex evidence for
individual readings in Beowulf. Thus, the encoding may record that a particular
word is missing from the manuscript whilst also recording that its presence in
the edition is a result of an editorial restoration based on the
seventeenth-century Thorkelin transcripts. The markup, therefore, also serves to
indicate something of the status of the reading in the transcripts in order to
supply the reader with as much information as possible. This is particularly
important given that some readings in the Thorkelin transcripts appear to be a
later additions and so already lost from the manuscript when the transcripts
were made, casting doubt on usually reliable source of evidence. The paper will
discuss the integration of this essential but descriptive material into the
textual markup and the subsequent display of the search results on the
CD-ROM.