Abstract
This paper describes the electronic editing of the Middle English material housed in the Hunterian Collection at Glasgow University Library (GUL), a joint project undertaken by the universities of Málaga, Glasgow, Oviedo, Murcia and Jaén which pursues the compilation of an electronic corpus of mediaeval Fachprosa in the vernacular (http://hunter.filosofia.uma.es/manuscripts). The paper therefore addresses the concept of electronic editing as applied to The corpus of Late Middle English scientific prose with the following objectives: (a) to describe the editorial principles and the theoretical implications adopted; and (b) to present the digital layout and the tool implemented for data retrieval. A diplomatic approach is then proposed wherein the editorial intervention is kept to a minimum. Accordingly, features such as lineation, punctuation and emendations are every now and then accurately reproduced as by the scribe's hand whilst abbreviations are yet expanded in italics. GUL MS Hunter 497, holding a 15th-century English version of Aemilius Macer's De viribus herbarum, will be used as a sample demonstration (Calle-Martín - Miranda-García, forthcoming).
Funding
The present research has been funded by the Autonomous Government of Andalusia (project P07-HUM–02609) and by the Spanish Ministry of Education (project FFI2008-02336). These grants are hereby gratefully acknowledged. Special thanks are also due to Prof. Santiago González Fernández-Corugedo (University of Oviedo) for the reading of a previous draft of this paper and for his valuable feedback.
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