What?
This site contains the results of the following research projects:
«Electronic Corpus of Early Modern English Scientific Manuscripts (1500-1700)», funded by the Autonomous Government of Andalusia (reference P11-HUM7597), supervised by Dr. Javier Calle Martín.
«An Electronic Corpus of Scientific Manuscripts in English: the Early Modern Period (1500-1700)”, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (reference FFI2014-57963-P), supervised by Dr. Javier Calle Martín..
These projects have the following objectives: a) the electronic edition of unedited Early Modern English scientific manuscripts housed in the Hunterian Collection at Glasgow University Library, the Wellcome collection at the Wellcome Library in London and the Rylands Collection at the University Manchester Library, displaying both the digitized images along with the corresponding diplomatic transcription; and b) the compilation of an POS-tagged corpus of Early Modern English Fachprosa.
This project is a follow up of previous projects entitled «The Compilation of an Electronic Corpus of Late Middle English Scientific Manuscripts», funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology under the supervision of Dr Antonio Miranda-García (referenced HUM20074-01075FILO, FFI2008-02336 and FFI2011-26492). These fundings are hereby gratefully acknowledged.
From the very beginning, we have benefited from the advice and expertise of Professor Graham Caie, from the University of Glasgow (U.K.), who is responsible for the online digital edition of Chaucer’s Romaunt of the Rose (G.U.L. MS Hunter 409 V.3.7.), and of Professor Santiago González Fernández-Corugedo, from the University of Oviedo (Spain), who is the author of an edition of the Middle English The Owl and the Nightingale (1990) and of Edmund Spenser’s Amoretti and Epithalamion (1983), among others.
Who and where?
This project is the result of the collaborative effort of a research team from five different universities (Málaga, Murcia, Oviedo, Glasgow and Jaén), coordinated by Drs Antonio Miranda-García (until 2012) and Javier Calle-Martín (from January 2012). For further information on the members, follow the links below.
- Javier Calle Martín (Supervisor)
- Antonio Miranda García
- David Moreno Olalla
- Laura Esteban Segura
- Jesús Romero Barranco
- Joaquín Garrido Garrido (computer technician)
- Juan Camilo Conde Silvestre
- Teresa Marqués Aguado
- Santiago Gonzalez Fernandez-Corugedo
- Graham D. Caie
- Jacob Thaisen
- Hanna Rutkowska
- Jukka Tyrkkö
- Laura C. Wright
- Paul Rayson
When?
The schedule of the project spans from 2012 to 2017. Four main stages can be distinguished: a) manuscript selection and digitization; b) diplomatic transcription and physical description of the treatises under scrutiny; c) linguistic analysis and corpus annotation; and d) electronic publication of the editions.
Why?
Traditionally, Fachprosa has been the Cinderella of textual studies, which have been mostly devoted to the edition and study of literary texts. Recently, there has been a renewed interest in scientific material for two different reasons, one linguistic and the other extra-linguistic. On linguistic grounds, scientific prose in the vernacular is now considered to be less artificial than poetry, being an appropriate input for linguistic analysis and the process of vernacularization of English. Extra-linguistically, on the other hand, most of this material is hitherto unedited, hence the limited access to these treatises for the research community.
All in all, the present project undertakes the electronic edition of several early modern treatises in the vernacular, many of them never-before-published, belonging to the Hunterian Collection at Glasgow University Library, the Wellcome Collection at the Wellcome Library in London as well as the Rylands Collection at The University of Manchester Library. It thus grants free online access to these unedited material together with the diplomatic transcription for those not fully acquainted with the basics of historical Palaeography.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank David Weston (Keeper of Special Collections, Glasgow University Library), Natalie Costaras and Crestina Forcina (Picture Researchers, The Wellcome Lbrary) and Carol Burrows (Project Manager, The University of Manchester Library) for the help and for granting us permission to use these unique collections of manuscripts.