Call For Papers: Co-editors for a Network Graph Edition of the Anglo-Saxon Exeter Book
This project seeks to put some of the theoretical principles that have developed out of the New Philology in recent years into practice by creating a thematically structured, interactive and open-access digital online edition of the Exeter Book.
As a compilation manuscript whose texts interact on a wide variety of thematic and generic levels, the Exeter Book is ideally suited to illustrating the ways in which digital graphs can move us beyond the metaphor of the printed book to forms of textual edition that introduce readers to the kaleidoscopic aspects of medieval compilation manuscripts.
The edition produced will be available online, hosted by Wiki-Projects and it make the texts of the Exeter Book freely accessible in both a digitized image of the facsimile, as well as a high-quality edited print text and a modern English translation. It will allow both undergraduates and more advanced scholars to navigate the texts thematically rather than chronologically and make it possible to move beyond the disputed generic divisions between the riddles, the elegies and the devotional and wisdom literature toward a more inclusive picture of how the texts of the manuscript are interrelated.
How it will work
We will be asking potential co-editors to choose between two and four of the shorter texts from the Exeter Book and to edit and translate them, as well as creating a keyword list of themes and generic features the texts contain. We will then be processing and homogenizing these keywords across the texts to identify thematic sub-networks of texts within the manuscript, which we will then turn into a visual interactive network using principal component analysis and which the readers will eventually be able to access by clicking on thematic words within the texts or by clicking on genre keywords alongside the texts. If you are interested in editing one of the longer texts that constitute the first half of the manuscript, please contact me directly.
Quality and peer review
The edition will not be subject to traditional peer review, but I am currently in touch with some senior scholars of Exeter Book texts to put together an advisory board to ensure that the edition adheres to academic standards of accuracy and transparency.
Deadlines
If you would like to co-edit this edition, please email me with your CV and list up to four texts that you would be interested in editing. We will be assigning the texts on a first come first served basis and we will soon be updating this website with a database that lets you know which texts are still available.
If you have any questions or suggestions, please contact Miriam Edlich-Muth of the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf at: exeteredition@gmail.com
Miriam Edlich-Muth 