Abstract
The sixteenth-century Florentine philologist Vincenzo Borghini provides a model for our own examination of the influence of print as we consider the challenges, opportunities and responsibilities of producing digital editions and archives. Briefly examining several emended passages in the 1573 expurgated edition of Boccaccio’s Decameron, the essay turns to Borghini’s reliance in his 1574 Annotationi on his extensive studies of fourteenth-century Italian vernacular in manuscripts and their contrasts with the printed editions of his own day often edited — he fears — simply to sell books. Turning from Borghini’s skepticism to his own editorial work for the 2003–2004 facsimile and commentary, the author reflects upon the failures of his own edition for the print medium and how they led to the founding and development of the Petrarchive’s rich-text edition and commentary. Reflecting on two examples of the representation of the use of space in Petrarch’s medieval holograph possible only a born-digital edition, the essay concludes its brief demonstration of the deep structuring of print in philological thinking as we develop new strategies for digital philology.
Highlights
The sixteenth-century Florentine philologist Vincenzo Borghini provides a model for our own examination of the influence of print as we consider the challenges, opportunities and responsibilities of producing digital editions and archives
Borghini is remembered for his interest in manuscripts and his philological prowess, but is renowned for an editorial failure, that is for his role in the 1573 expurgated edition of Boccaccio’s Decameron, as well as for a remarkable volume of annotations and discussion of the textual condition of the work carried out by Borghini and his fellow commissioners, the “Deputati”
What is perhaps needed is a fresh discussion and transparency about and disclosure of the actual, long-term effects of the print tradition on scholarly method and the advancement of our studies of works and their texts. This kind of renewed focus on the cultural import of print sometimes forgotten by subsequent generations allows us to reevaluate the deep impact that editions of, say, Petrarch’s Rerum vulgarium fragmenta or Boccaccio’s Decameron have had on the ways we construct our thinking and subsequent representations of those works, both in our acceptance and rejection of previous editorial and interpretative formulations
Summary
The sixteenth-century Florentine philologist Vincenzo Borghini provides a model for our own examination of the influence of print as we consider the challenges, opportunities and responsibilities of producing digital editions and archives.
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