Module 7: Critical Editing

1. Emily Dickinson: “Faith is a Fine Invention”

The following example is a critical edition of Emily Dickinson’s poem “Faith is a Fine Invention,” encoded and made available by the University of Maryland University Libraries.

In this example, 7 different versions of a 4-line poem are encoded using the parallel segmentation method. Each apparatus entry (<app>) contains different <rdg> elements documenting the variants occurring in the different text versions. Notice how the choice for equal <rdg> elements (instead of one “preferred” reading, encoded in a <lem> element), and the use of the parallel segmentation method abolish the notion of a base text.

The different witnesses are listed in a <listWit> element inside the <front> section of the text. Each witness definition inside <witness> marks its corresponding sigil in an @xml:id attribute. In the final line, a page break is recorded with <pb>. Its @ed attribute is used to identify the specific edition where this page breaks occurs: the text witness identified as l1894. Notice, how this could have been expressed even more formally with the @edRef attribute, which takes a pointer to an edition identified elsewhere: <pb facs="#image1" edRef="#l1894"/>. For this page in that edition, a digital facsimile is provided by means of the global @facs attribute.

Reference

See Module 6: Primary Sources, section 3.2 for a discussion of the @facs attribute.
<TEI xmlns="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0">
<teiHeader>
<fileDesc>
<titleStmt>
<title>"Faith is a fine invention"</title>
<author>Emily Dickinson</author>
<respStmt>
<name>Jarom Mc​Donald</name>
<resp>Text encoding</resp>
</respStmt>
<respStmt>
<name>Lara Vetter</name>
<resp>Proofing</resp>
</respStmt>
</titleStmt>
<publicationStmt>
<publisher>The Versioning Machine project</publisher>
<availability>
<p>This poem is available only for demonstration purposes. It was created as part of a research project to experiment with ways of displaying multiple witnesses of a T​EI-encoded poem using X​ML, X​SLT and Java​Script.</p>
</availability>
</publicationStmt>
<notesStmt>
<note type="image" anchored="true">
<witDetail wit="#p1891" target="#p1891" place="apparatus">
<figure>
<graphic url="images​/p1891​.jpg"/>
</figure>
</witDetail>
<witDetail wit="#ll227" target="#ll227" place="apparatus">
<figure>
<graphic url="images​/ll227​.jpg"/>
</figure>
</witDetail>
</note>
</notesStmt>
<sourceDesc>
<p>See Witness List.</p>
</sourceDesc>
</fileDesc>
<encodingDesc>
<projectDesc>
<p>Test document for versioning machine project. Marked​-up collation of three manuscript witnesses: A 660, H 201, and H 72, and four early print witnesses: Poems (1891​)--XXX, Letters (1894​)--p. 191, Complete Poems (1924​)--LVI, and Life and Letters (1926​)--p. 227. </p>
<p>D​TD constructed from T​EI prose base with tagsets for linking, figures, analysis, transcr, textcrit.</p>
</projectDesc>
<variantEncoding location="internal" method="parallel​-segmentation"/>
</encodingDesc>
</teiHeader>
<facsimile>
<graphic xml:id="image1" url="images​/cp32​.jpg"/>
</facsimile>
<text>
<front>
<div>
<listWit>
<witness xml:id="a660">A 660, verse embedded in letter to Samuel Bowles.</witness>
<witness xml:id="h201">H 201, fascicle version of poem.</witness>
<witness xml:id="h72">H 72, fascicle version of poem.</witness>
<witness xml:id="p1891">Published as poem X​XX in the second volume of Todd and Higginson​'s
<title rend="italic">Poems of Emily Dickinson</title>
.</witness>
<witness xml:id="l1894">Letter to Samuel Bowles published in Todd​'s edition of Dickinson​'s letters.</witness>
<witness xml:id="cp32">Published as poem L​VI in Martha Dickinson Bianchi​'s
<title rend="italic">Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson</title>
.</witness>
<witness xml:id="ll227">Letter to Samuel Bowles published in Bianchi​'s
<title rend="italic">The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson</title>
.</witness>
</listWit>
</div>
</front>
<body>
<div1>
<lg>
<l n="1">
<app>
<rdg wit="#a660 #h72">"Faith"</rdg>
<rdg wit="#h201 #l1894 #ll227">Faith</rdg>
<rdg wit="#p1891 #cp32">F​AITH</rdg>
</app>
is a fine invention</l>
<l n="2">
<app>
<rdg wit="#a660 #ll227">When </rdg>
<rdg wit="#h201 #h72 #p1891 #l1894 #cp32">For </rdg>
</app>
<app>
<rdg wit="#a660 #h201 #h72">Gentlemen </rdg>
<rdg wit="#p1891 #l1894 #cp32 #ll227">gentlemen </rdg>
</app>
<app>
<rdg wit="#a660 #ll227">can </rdg>
<rdg wit="#h201 #h72 #p1891 #l1894 #cp32">who </rdg>
</app>
<app>
<rdg wit="#a660 #h201 #h72">
<hi rend="underline">see</hi>
</rdg>
<rdg wit="#p1891 #l1894 #cp32 #ll227">see</rdg>
</app>
<app>
<rdg wit="#h72 #ll227">!</rdg>
<rdg wit="#a660 #h201"> -</rdg>
<rdg wit="#p1891 #cp32">;</rdg>
<rdg wit="#l1894">,</rdg>
</app>
</l>
<l n="3"> But
<app>
<rdg wit="#h72">Microscopes</rdg>
<rdg wit="#a660 #h201">
<hi rend="underline">Microscopes</hi>
</rdg>
<rdg wit="#p1891 #l1894 #cp32 #ll227">microscopes</rdg>
</app>
are prudent</l>
<l n="4"> In an
<app>
<rdg wit="#a660 #h201 #h72">Emergency</rdg>
<rdg wit="#p1891 #l1894 #cp32 #ll227">emergency</rdg>
</app>
<app>
<rdg wit="#a660 #l1894">.
<pb facs="#image1" ed="l1894"/>
</rdg>
<rdg wit="#h201 #h72 #p1891 #ll227 #cp32">!</rdg>
</app>
</l>
</lg>
</div1>
</body>
</text>
</TEI>
Example 1. Encoding of several versions of Emily Dickinson’s poem “Faith is a Fine Invention” for the Versioning Machine (Dickinson 1891). TEI XML source available from https://v-machine.org/samples/faith.xml.

Bibliography