Computational Approaches to Textual Multiplicity in Curricular Manuscripts

CDH/MARBAS Postdoctoral Research Associate Christine Roughan will speak at the Austrian Academy of Sciences Institute for Medieval Research. For more information, visit their website. Times are in Central European Summer Time.

In late antiquity there circulated a collection of Greek texts arranged to serve the study of astronomy; in the ninth century, these texts were translated into Arabic and soon arranged into a corresponding curriculum called the Middle Books. The centuries-long usage of these texts in didactic contexts meant that they were not static: contemporary teachers and scholars would intervene in the collection and in the texts themselves. This lecture will explore how computational methods such as database approaches, handwritten text recognition, and automated text alignments can facilitate research into the multiple recensions, translations, and editions of these curricular texts.