The Open Critical Edition of Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Traditional Editions

Traditional Editions

• Privately owned/copyrighted by for-profit insitutions
• Contain errors (“geen”/“green”) that can’t be corrected
• Notes and backgrounds are limited by the size of the paper and book

Open Critical Edition

• Belongs to everyone (copyleft)
• Errors are correctable
• Margins are virtually infinite
• Readers can choose what notes to show/hide
• Computer readable; really good for computer analysis

Semantic Markup

• Written in TEI XML (Text Encoding Initiative eXtensible Markup Language)
• Semantic markup is a way to describe literary features.

Plain Text

—Madam, I never eat muscatel grapes.

TEI Text

<said who="Edmond Dantès">
    —Madam, I never eat muscatel grapes.
</said>

Allows Easy Answers to Questions

• How many times does Stephen use the word “art”?
• What books of the Bible are cited or quoted most often?
• What are the distinctive words of each character?
  
• What does Stephen’s walk look like, on a map of Dublin?

Example: Languages

Example: Songs

Who can contribute?

• Anyone!
• No technical knowledge necessary

Types of Contributions

• Mark up literary features in the text
• Attribute dialog to speakers
• Annotate the text with background information or explanatory notes
• Geocode places mentioned in the text with their latitude and longitude
• Help with technical things

Why Contribute?

• You know, like, for science
• Great way to closely read the novel
• Looks good on your CV/resume ("Contributing Editor, Open Critical Edition of Joyce’s Portrait")

Links

• Prototype at bit.ly/portrait-xslt
• Project homepage at bit.ly/portrait-home
• Contribution instructions at bit.ly/portrait-contributing
• This presentation at jonreeve.com/presentations/portrait-xml