Criteria

The CEMP digital archive offers diplomatic, semidiplomatic, and modernised editions of the classical and early modern paradoxes printed in England (1500-1700) and has been created within the Project of Excellence “Digital Humanities Applied to Foreign Languages and Literatures (2018-2022)” of the University of Verona. The rationale is to allow a glimpse into the main features of these early modern printed books as they circulated in the early modern period with the editorial resources of scholarly digital editions allowing for textual and hypertextual navigation.

In the case of printed books, we have used as initial basis open-access transcriptions, when available, which have been corrected following autoptic reading of each witness. While diplomatic editions have been uploaded as single pdf files, semidiplomatic and modernised editions have been transcribed in TEI language by means of Oxygen Editor (licence purchased by the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures of the University of Verona). Each text is accompanied by a general introduction, a description of the witnesses, and a bibliography.

Criteria for the diplomatic edition

Diplomatic editions of more than one witness have been supplied only when 1) there is a large number of accidental variants, and/or 2) there are substantial variants between the witnesses of a text. The CEMP editor has signalled the existence of reprints in the introduction to the text.

Since the purpose of a diplomatic edition is to produce a transcription which is as faithful to the original as possible, all spelling choices including mistakes, anomalous spaces, and special symbols have been preserved. Catchwords, page numbers, and running headers have also been preserved.

However, the following alterations have been introduced. Instead of reproducing an illustration or a decorative element, we have indicated these features by {illustration} and {ornament}, respectively. Ornate initials are written in the same character size as the rest of the text, but are distanced from the rest of the text by blanks, also considering the indent of the lines which they occupy in the original. Three asterisks (***) signal a lacuna; one asterisk (*) signals a missing character. In case of hardly legible characters, the letters have been transcribed in bold and as superscript (e.g. viuesse). In case of completely illegible characters, each character is signalled by a slash. Handwritten notes are placed between two maniculae ( … ). Handwritten underlining is simply signalled by underlining the characters. Page numbers and signatures as well as whether the page is a recto or a verso are always reproduced even when they are missing in the original: such insertions are signalled by angle brackets. Angle brackets are not used for added line numbers. Blackletter is rendered as bold type.

Criteria for the semidiplomatic edition

The purpose of our semidiplomatic editions is to enable the user to carry out orthographic and lexical searches. Any element which hinders such operations has been deleted. Thus, whereas the spelling of the diplomatic edition has been preserved, ornate initials have been joined to the rest of the word and

we have omitted all running headers, catchwords, page numbers and signatures, line numbers, anomalous spaces, markers of illustrations and ornaments, and handwritten notes. Words have not been hyphenated; italics and bold type have been normalised; authorial notes appear as pop-ups. Blatant printing mistakes, illegible characters, and lacunae have been corrected.

Criteria for the modernised edition

The modernised edition has been created on the basis of the semidiplomatic edition. In case of several witnesses, one copytext has been selected, and variants have been added as pop-ups (see below). Spelling has been modernised, following these criteria:

· Latin:

• - Digraphs have been separated (e.g. æ > ae; œ > oe); j>i (e.g. ijs > iis).
• - The ‘u’/‘v’ alternance (both uppercase and lowercase) has been normalised (e.g. uiuit > vivit; Uideor > Videor; Vbi > Ubi).
• - Assimilations have been corrected (e.g. affecit > adfecit; iusticia > iustitia; quanquam > quamquam).
• - All diacritics have been omitted (e.g. modò > modo; quísquam > quisquam; vestrûm i.e. vestrorum > vestrum). When a diactric represents a nasal sound, this has been spelt out (e.g. omniū > omnium).
• - Dieresis placed over false diphthongs has been eliminated: oë > oe.
• - Early modern spellings have been modernised (e.g. juridicus > iuridicus; quum > cum, since it is a false archaism), but forms such as a) ‘volt’ instead of ‘vult’ (which can already be found in Cicero); b) ‘-is’ as the ending of the plural accusative of the third declension (more frequently ‘-es’); c) ‘-os’ instead of ‘-us’ as the ending of singular masculine proper nouns (even when the name is not Greek) are retained, since they reflect a stylistic intention and/or can indirectly reprise a quotation of an older author. In the case of proper names showing various spellings (e.g. Alcidamus, gen. Alcidami, instead of Alcidamas, gen. Alcidamantis), such forms are retained if ancient, medieval, or Neo-Latin attestations are extant. Each case has been verified on a one-by-one basis also with regard to early modern proper names coming from another language: for instance, Grimod, Grimoauld(us), or Grimauld have not been modernised as Grimaud.
• - Ethnonyms have been capitalised (e.g. latinus > Latinus)

· English:

• - British spelling has been privileged.
• - Spelling has not been modernised in the case of obsolete grammatical forms (e.g. shalt, doth, hath, declareth, taketh, oughtst, shoon, altogethers, narrowlier, understanded).
• - Superscripts and special symbols have been normalised.
• - Normalisation of ‘i’/’j’ and ‘u’/’v’ differentiation (e.g. obiect > object; vnkind > unkind; selues > selves).
• - vv > w (e.g. VVar→ War).
• - Uppercase has been used after a full stop; apart from that, it has been used only in the case of proper names and personifications.
• - Abbreviations have been expanded (e.g. hon.ble > honourable).
• - Punctuation has been altered only in the case of considerable interpretative difficulty.

Three types of notes have been added as pop-ups (see How to Navigate).

• 1) Glosses: these are marginal notes or footnotes which were already featured in the early modern text.
• 2) Variants: the critical apparatus is positive and substantial variants have been indicated by using the original spelling.
• 3) Editorial notes: these are explanatory and contextual notes written by the CEMP editor. When an editorial note has been added to a gloss, the editorial note has been inserted within the gloss between square brackets.