For a Dynamic Model of Textual Variation: What Do We Need?

The idea of organizing a joint discussion on a dynamic model of textual variation stems from the observation that previous work carried out independently
by Malte Rehbein and the Signum centre in Pisa could
be related in a more comprehensive framework. Malte
Rehbein had shown that the chronological succession
of the variations introduced in the handwritten records
of the statutes of the city of Göttingen in the course of
the 15th century could be established by means of structured external information stored in a database. In their
turn, results obtained at the Signum centre on the semantic structure of Giordano Bruno’s De gli eroici furori,
showing the diachronic variation across successive parts
of the work, could be analysed through the textualization of a comprehensive structural representation. So it
was possible to observe that the process of textual variation would refer to semantically structured information
on the one hand, and that the transition across distinct
interpretational variants would invoke a textualized representation of its overall process on the other. And from
these mutual observations a tentative model of textual
dynamics could be elicited.
By a joint presentation of three related papers we intend
to provide no more than a simple illustration of the problems to be solved in order to build a viable model of
textual dynamics and variation, without presuming that
the tentative solutions here proposed would be the only
possible ones, not even to say the best. We would only
like to contend that finding an effective solution to these
problems would render digital editions a far more appealing means of representing and studying textual materials than their conventional counterparts.
A further observation is here in order. In their case studies, Malte Rehbein and the Signum team shall in turn
present a model of textual and interpretational variation,
but each applied to a different text. In the final paper I
shall try to show how these respective models can be
related in an overall model of textual variation and I shall
try to provide an example of its application to the same
text by referring to a very simple textual fragment.