We're going to welcome now
Martyna Urbaniak to the podium.
She's a research fellow
in Italian literature
at the Scuola Normale in Pisa,
where she received her PhD
in Italian history
with a dissertation on images
and ways of representing
the rural world in Tuscan
literature.
Her publications now are
in literary criticism,
and they have been in the area
of 14th and 15th century
literature,
particularly on Franco Sacchetti
and Anton Francesco Doni.
She's been associated
with several research projects
under the aegis of the CTL,
which is a laboratory
at the Scuola Normale founded
and directed by Lina Bolzoni,
and I'm going to let her
describe it now to you.
Her project she'll talk about
in particular
will be the center's
digitization of the text
concerned with Orlando Furioso
and its remediation into images.
Martyna?
[APPLAUSE]
I would like to contribute
to this critical forum
with some observations regarding
the application
of digital archives
in the analysis
of the visual and literary
culture of the High Renaissance.
My considerations will be based
on the experience
of the researchers of the Center
for Data Processing of Text
and Images in the Literary
Tradition at the Scuola Normale
Superiore di Pisa
acquired during the development
of the ERC advanced grant
project, "Looking at Words
Through Images.
Some Case Studies for a Visual
History of Italian Literature."
The project coordinated
by principal investigator Lina
Bolzoni investigates
the origins, evolution,
and success of Orlando Furioso's
editorial format
and the influence that it had
in both figurative and
typographic terms
on the reception process
in the age of printing.
The enormous success gained
by Ariosto's poem
since its first appearance
in 1516
and the general acclimation
of its definitive third version
published in 1532 profoundly
affected the cultural life
of the epoch.
Furioso's popularity brought
an overwhelming number
of illustrated editions
and led
to an intense theoretical debate
over the literary canon
of the modernity.
It also determined a renewed
interest in the poem's
medieval romance tradition,
gave birth to a series
of Furioso sequels and spin
offs, and influenced
in both narrative
and formal terms the vernacular
translations
of the ancient epic.
At this point,
the editorial success
of Ariosto's poem timely
intertwined
with the editorial stories
of works such as Mateo Maria
Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato,
Vincenzo Brusantino's L'Angelica
Innamorata, and Lodovico Dolce's
Transformation.
The aim of the project
is thus, on the one hand,
to better understand how
the sophisticated printing
format of Furioso's
illustrated editions
initially managed to confirm
the poem's great success
among the reading audience
actually contributed
to its acknowledgement
as a literary model.
Tracing the logic
of this typographic canonization
of Furioso as a modern classic,
as Daniel Javitch calls
this process, will allow us
on the other hand
to fully appreciate the ways
in which the poem's editorial
packaging was then
systematically used
by the printing press.
Indeed, it was frequently
adopted both to give prestige
to the contemporary epic
production
and to boost
the editorial success
of the classics
of antiquity and medieval
romance tradition.
The starting point
of this inquiry has necessarily
been the analysis of Furioso's
editorial success
and the study of six
16th century editions
of the poem endowed
with the original figurative
corpora.
Investigating the ways in which
the stories of Ariosto's
intricate plot
were read, selected, and managed
during their transcodification
in the illustrative sets
has appeared vital to outline
not only the selection criteria
and their ideological premises,
but also
the possible alterations
of the narrative substance
and the subtle meanings.
In this way,
the poems' peculiar memory
conveyed
through the illustrations can be
defined.
It helps to better understand
the variety of meanings
underlying the reuse
of Furioso's figurative sets
and the ideological purposes
implied in the adoption
of its editorial format
to other literary works.
In parallel, we have engaged
in the study of modelling
functions of Furioso's
typographic packaging
for a sample analysis
of a variety of texts.
Furioso's impact
on the editorial format of works
belonging
to the ancient, medieval and
early modern epic tradition
has been studied
through the figurative and
paratextual sets of works
by Lodovico Dolce, Luigi Pulci,
and Matteo Maria Boiardo.
The analysis of "Tredici Canti
del Floridoro" by Moderata Fonte
has allowed us to explore
some aspects of Furioso's
canonizing influence
on the 16th century's
secondary epic production,
whereas for the study of three
editions of "Gerusalemme
liberata,"
we have investigated
the editorial impact
of Ariosto's poem
on the second great epic
model
of the Italian Cinquecento,
the one offered by Torquato
Tasso.
This broad reconnaissance survey
has been necessary since, right
from the start of the project,
the research team has engaged
in designing a digital archive
that would express
the complex word image
relations
between these various sources
and support the study.
What we needed
was a hypertextual framework
that would offer us
functionalities going
beyond the markup of text
or description of images.
Indeed, it would
be necessary to map
and link the illustrations
to each other
to connect selected portions
of images
to the textual and paratextual
fragments,
inspiring and commenting
on them.
And finally, to semantically
describe the mutual influences
between such resources.
The large number
of heterogeneous works
and consequently
the great complexity
of the relations
that the digital tool was
expected to reveal
were making this project
extremely challenging,
moving us to make the most
of our past digital research
experiences
and to go far beyond them.
Indeed, the development
of this digital archive
mirrored the CTL's long term
interests.
Since its foundation in 2001
as a spin off of CRIBECU,
the first Italian center
for digital research
and cultural heritage,
established in 1970s by Paola
Barrochi, the CTL's director,
Lina Bolzoni,
has oriented the activities
of the research group
towards the analysis of the word
image relationships
in various historical and
literary contexts.
An exhibition dedicated
to the 16th century emblems
and devices
and a digital collection
of the art of memory treatises
were
among the first scientific
acquisitions of the center.
Moreover, right
from the beginning
its trans-disciplinary approach
intertwining the analysis
of literary texts
with historical inquiries,
research, and book illustration,
and visual studies was
associated with the development
of open access digital archives.
They were intended
as
complex hypertexual
architectures in which not only
to collect
figurative and literary sources
and store the data and metadata
derived from the study,
but also to make such resources
available for full text
and cross searches.
Intended as digital repositories
of rare documents
and critical commentaries,
these research tools were
supposed to both present
the center's
scientific acquisitions
and to enhance users
with their inquiries.
The technology chosen to support
the digital architectures
was initially the XML markup
language used according
to the text encoding initiative
guidelines.
Since it's allowed text--
semantic markup and was
flexible enough to describe
the peculiar structure
and logical relationships we
were interested in tracing,
which were words and images,
this markup language was chosen
also when, in 2006, the center
engaged in the building
of the first digital archive
dedicated
to the figurative fortune
of Orlando Furioso.
The project, funded
by the Ministry of Education,
Universities and Research,
was intended to untwine
the poem's reception dynamics
through the analysis
of iconographic and paratextual
sets of the three 16th century
editions endowed
with the original figurative
corpora, Zoppino, Giolito,
and Valvassori.
The digital archive designed
on that occasion was supposed
to represent
a hypertextual context
to systematically study the way
in which
the illustrations of annotation
and its allegories--
that is,
short allegorical comments
to each canto--
mirrored Ariosto's poetry.
For the digital collection,
we also wanted to investigate
the possible internal relations
between the images
and the allegorical readings
of the same edition
and the potential interactions
in figurative and interpretive
terms between the three
editions.
The research focus was not
on the poem itself,
but on its illustrations
and comments.
This shift was expressed
in the peculiar structure
of the collection.
The documents
available for browsing
were images and allegories,
and not the epic poem that had
inspired them.
As Serena Pezzini remarks,
within that hypertextual frame,
Ariosto's poetry became
a hypertext,
whereas
the iconographic and allegorical
documents, although originally
designed as paratext,
turn into text.
Thanks to this double change
of status, the narrative
material could be primarily
perceived
through
its visual interpretations
and allegorical readings.
The meanings conveyed
by such documents were analyzed
in metadata resources.
These, just as the allegories
of Ariosto's texts, were encoded
with XML.
For each single woodcut,
a number of descriptive data
and research interpretations
were offered.
We indicated its provenance,
publisher date, and technique
of execution, dimensions,
frames, and described
its iconographic elements using
the international alphanumeric
classification system designed
to describe and retrieve
the subject represented
in images, Iconclass.
The illustration's narrative
content was defined
through a series of scenes often
split into actions.
For each action, we specified
a textual fragment that had
originally inspired it
and provided its transcription
together with indication
of the main characters, places,
and objects.
As far as allegories were
concerned, we specified episodes
and narrative elements, which
they referred to
and indicated their meaning.
Thanks to this shared XML
markup, the poem,
the allegories, and the research
metadata
describing both illustrations
and allegorical comments,
could be linked together in ways
that would reveal
their multiple interactions.
Still, some important problems
remained.
The XML markup was not
applicable to images,
and we were not using
other applications that would
allow to circumvent the issue.
Thus, although digitalized,
the figurative resources could
not be tapped.
It was impossible to digitally
map an image fragment
and to make it semantically
meaningful through a link
to a formally defined action
or a scene.
Even worse, it was
impossible to link together
portions of the images.
This represented
a critical markup deficiency
and put the coherence
of the entire structure at risk.
To overcome the first
of the severe limitations,
we adopted a sort
of handcraft solution.
We divided illustrations
into meaningful portions
with Photoshop and then linked
them to the metadata resources.
To overcome
the second difficulty
and make it possible to connect
various image fragments,
we used Ariosto's text.
The poem was marked up
with special text indicating
verses to which
the illustrations were related.
Yet, this solution
had some heavy drawbacks.
To mark up within the same file
verses referring
to various editions overcharged
the text with tags.
Moreover, the opening
and closing tags were often
overlapped, making
the precise markup difficult.
As a result, the poem
became hardly legible.
Tagging required great ability,
and it was very easy to make
markup errors.
In addition, the numerous
attributes that we were forced
to add to the standard XML
tags reduced
the interoperability
of our data.
Clearly, all of that
was in sharp contrast
to the very mission of the World
Wide Web Consortium,
which emphasized the simplicity,
flexibility, and generality
of this markup.
An important step in overcoming
the first of these problems
was made four years later
during the building
on an archive dedicated
to the literary works of Anton
Francesco Doni.
Within that project-- also
funded by the European Research
Council--
the IT researchers developed
the image mapping tool,
a digital instrument offering
the possibility to directly map
within the figurative resources,
the areas most closely linking
them to the text.
An upgraded version of this tool
named Flexip, based
on the open source technology,
was released a few months later
during the further development
of the first collection
dedicated to Orlando Furioso.
Thanks to the actions
of the extremely complex
Valgrisi edition were all mapped
and linked directly
to the verses that had inspired
them.
In this way,
the logical relations
between the iconic
and the verbal code were finally
expressed in the back end
solutions and not merely
represented
through the interface
adjustments as they were before.
On the same occasion,
also the problem of linking
images to each other
was solved thanks
to the adoption of WikiNotes,
an open source application
for semantic annotation.
Still, these solutions needed
to be improved in 2012 when
the center engaged
in the current project,
Looking at Words Through Images.
Here, the study of Furioso's
figurative tradition
and its strong impact
on the typographic culture
of the epoch has been supported
by a new backend technology.
The backend structure has been
built on Sympfony, and open PHP
web application framework
released under the MIT license.
It has allowed us to abandon
the complex and time consuming
XML markup
and to input the data,
the metadata, and all
the related entities referring
to the images
directly
into the backend architecture.
Within this extremely flexible
and digital grid, we had thus
established a series
of categories
to describe the six Furiosos'
original illustrative sets.
These were, of course, quite
similar to those supplied
in the first project dedicated
to the poem.
Yet, along with these forms,
we have introduced
new information
suitable to define
various specific word image
relations
between the editorial tradition
of Ariosto's poem
and the typographic packaging
of other authors' works.
Together with a series
of standard illustration
descriptive data,
such as provenance published
our data and technique
of execution, dimensions,
position, inscriptions,
and frames, we have indicated
some new information,
such as the presence
of the image
in other editions
of the same work
and in other works' editions.
In reference to the narrative
content of an illustration,
we have chosen to indicate
scenes, actions, characters,
places, objects,
iconographic themes,
and related entities,
such as the texture or fragments
that inspired it.
Moreover, in relation
to the reused illustrations,
we decided to specify
the entities regarding
the original provenance,
their initial meaning,
and the textual source
of inspiration
together
with the paratextual comments
and the other possible narrative
influences referring
to the image.
We have also provided
the possibility of adding
specific critical notes
relevant
to
both descriptive and narrative
aspects of scenes, actions,
and the general composition
of the image.
Finally, thanks
to the flexibility
of this backend architecture,
it has been possible to insert
various content association
links with the metadata
resources.
To do all of this, the Symfony
backend supports a number
of satellite applications.
This allows us to separately
encode
our heterogeneous resources
and subsequently put them
into explicit relations,
revealing
their implicit dialogue.
The textual sources
that Ariosto's poem
and other authors' writings are
encoded with XML.
However, such markup is now used
to express only basic structure
and not semantic information.
Thus it does not lead
to the overcharge of the XML
files anymore.
The images are mapped
with Flexip, which allows us
to distinguish various scenes
and actions
within their narrative content.
The connections
between these two entities
are mediated
by the critical descriptions
provided in the Symfony backend
and are expressed according
to the W3C resource description
framework specifications.
The data semantic annotation
is done with Pundit,
an open source semantic web
annotation tool.
Pundit allows us to annotate
the digital items
of our collection using triples.
In this way,
we create semantic relations
between the single image
portions
and the textual fragments that
had inspired them
or paratextual comments relating
to them.
We say, for instance,
that a textual fragment
represents an action of an image
or the paratext of an action,
and this is how it occurs.
The actions annotated in Pundit
are furthermore enriched
with data from vocabularies.
The vocabularies currently set
up in our backend
define the concepts of person,
character, object, place,
and iconographic theme,
which, as I mentioned,
we make reference
to in our illustration analyses.
Such vocabularies are supported
by Korbo semantic basket
manager.
This satellite application
allows us to build
our distinctive taxonomies based
on those available
from different providers
of vocabularies used to describe
web resources.
It's Dublin Core in our case.
Furthermore, it also enables us
to make these descriptions more
exact to introduce
logical connections
among related concepts
and to specify inference rules.
Finally, it exposes
the vocabulary items
and the semantic connections
between the entities
as it links the data to be
accessed by third party
applications.
As a result, an important part
of the digital data stored
in the archive is semantically
described and can be shared.
This guarantees the data's
semantic interoperability
and makes an important part
of our archive data
strongly compliant
with these semantic web
standards.
The application
of these new technologies
has profoundly changed our work.
It made date insertion much
easier and sped up the job,
strongly reducing
at the same time
the margin of error, but it also
allowed us to precisely trace
and define
the multiple and complex
dynamics which govern the word
image relationships
within the illustrated book.
The complexity of the research
issues
and our scientific acquisitions
could be thus faithfully
rendered in a digital archive,
which does not simply offer
a frontend rendering
of the relationships
between the different resources,
but gives
a structural and semantic
representation
of such relations.
This growing complexity
of our digital archive
is not to the detriment
to its usability and user
friendliness.
Usability is one
of the challenges we are facing
in designing the front end
of the archive,
and our objective is to provide
a simple experience
capable of targeting
different groups of users.
We are approaching the front end
design relying on methodologies
like previous projects'
retrospectives,
similar archives' benchmarking,
user testing, prototyping,
and iterative design.
On the other hand,
the visual solutions
available with Flexip
allow us to map even the most
complex illustrations
and to clearly show the meanings
in reference to the text.
At the same time,
the backend structure
and the methodology
is based on vocabularies,
guarantee the major accuracy
of data,
and facilitate information
retrieval and cross search.
And finally, the data openness
and interoperability renders
our archive ready to be accessed
and reused within semantic web.
In the near future,
all of the archive's
backend information
will be expressed
in triple stores,
making all of our data machine
understandable and available
to others as linked and open
data.
This will make possible
a precise semantic retrieval
of our data
and its easy integration
to other digital archives
and web applications.
For instance, a future research
team or research institution
investigating
the figurative tradition
of the mental disorder
would be able to retrieve
together with a number
of representations dating
from various centuries, also
a number of images and research
data from our digital archive,
and to integrate them
into its own digital collection.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
