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Module 7: Critical Editing

Below is a brief critical edition of “Nocturne,” a short poem by Thomas McGreevy. In a parallel-segmented apparatus, the edition encodes the variants of 4 versions:

a1
Nocturne, Saint Eloi, 1918 (TCD 7878/1/2)
a2
Nocturne of St. Eloi, 1918 (TCD MS 7989/1/3)
a3
Nocturne, Saint Eloi (TCD MS 79891/1)
pub
This poem was published in Poems as “Nocturn”

Let’s assume this has been encoded as follows:

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<body xmlns="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0">
<div>
<head>
<title>
<app>
<rdg wit="#a1">Nocturne, St. Eloi, 1918.</rdg>
<rdg wit="#a2">N​OCTURNE OF ST. E​LOI, 1918
<del>Weeds of virtue</del>
<del>The</del>
Widowed Virtue</rdg>
<rdg wit="#a3">N​OCTURNE, S​AINT E​LOI</rdg>
<rdg wit="#pub">N​OCTURNE</rdg>
</app>
</title>
</head>
<app>
<rdg wit="#a3">
<div type="dedication">
<p>
<hi rend="underline">To the memory of
<del>[?]</del>
Geoffrey
<lb/>
England Taylor, 2nd Lieutenant, R​.F.A.,
<lb/>
died of wounds received in action, in
<lb/>
France, September, 26, 1918.</hi>
</p>
</div>
</rdg>
<rdg wit="#pub">
<div type="dedication">
<p>
<hi rend="italic">To Geoffrey England Taylor, 2nd Lieutenant, R​.F.A.,
<lb/>
"Died of wounds"</hi>
. </p>
</div>
</rdg>
</app>
<div>
<lg>
<l n="1">
<app>
<rdg wit="#a1 a2 a3 pub">I labour in a barren place,</rdg>
</app>
</l>
<l n="2">
<app>
<rdg wit="#a1">Afraid, aware,
<del>little</del>
<add>blundering</add>
, lonely thing:</rdg>
<rdg wit="#a2 a3 pub">Alone, self​-conscious, frightened, blundering;</rdg>
</app>
</l>
<l n="3">
<app>
<rdg wit="#a1">Far away, stars wheeling on through space.</rdg>
<rdg wit="#a2">
<del>Above me</del>
,
<add>Far away</add>
stars wheeling in space,</rdg>
<rdg wit="#a3">Far above, stars wheeling in space,</rdg>
<rdg wit="#pub">Far away, stars wheeling in space,</rdg>
</app>
</l>
<l n="4">
<app>
<rdg wit="#a1 pub">About my feet, earth voices whispering.</rdg>
<rdg wit="#a2 a3">About my feet, earth voices whispering. . . .</rdg>
</app>
</l>
</lg>
</div>
</div>
</body>
Example 1. This encoded fragment was based on a TEI P4 XML encoded critical edition of “Nocturne” (McGreevy), made available for the Versioning Machine. Please note, that for the purpose of this example, the encoding has been simplified and some errors have been deliberately inserted.
  1. Spot the obvious mistake, and correct it.
  2. Although this encoding is perfectly valid, it takes the entire verse line as the unit of variation. In terms of variant representation, this could be made more informative, by encoding the variants under the line level. Try this.
  3. This variant encoding at word level allows you to group readings and qualify them (punctuation, spelling, substantial variation, ...). Enrich your variant encoding with such categories.
  4. Complete this critical edition by documenting the list of witnesses the @wit attributes then can properly refer to.

Bibliography