Abstract
This article describes computer-assisted methods for the analysis of textual variation within large textual traditions. It focuses on the conversion of the XML apparatus into NEXUS, a file type commonly used in bioinformatics. Phylogenetics methods are described with particular emphasis on maximum parsimony, the preferred approach for our research. The article provides details on the reasons for favouring maximum parsimony, as well as explaining our choice of settings for PAUP. It gives examples of how to use VBase, our variant database, to query the data and gain a better understanding of the phylogenetic trees. The relationship between the apparatus and the stemma explained. After demonstrating the vast number of decisions taken during the analysis, the article concludes that as much as computers facilitate our work and help us expand our understanding, the role of the editor continues to be fundamental in the making of editions.
Highlights
I conclude the article with examples of the apparatus and how they link to the stemmata, demonstrating that this research implies thousands of minute decisions, each of which carries its own weight on the final product
The preparation and process of semi-automatic computer-assisted collation are so time-consuming, when working with more than fifty witnesses of significant length, that by the time a researcher emerges on the other side, she discovers herself surrounded by a sea of variants
Some instructions on how to do this can be found as part of the Textual Communities wiki, where there are a few examples of the naming structure for the Universal Resource Identifiers (URIs) (Robinson 2020)
Summary
This article describes computer-assisted methods for the analysis of textual variation within large textual traditions. It focuses on the conversion of the XML apparatus into NEXUS, a file type commonly used in bioinformatics. Phylogenetics methods are described with particular emphasis on maximum parsimony, the preferred approach for our research. After demonstrating the vast number of decisions taken during the analysis, the article concludes that as much as computers facilitate our work and help us expand our understanding, the role of the editor continues to be fundamental in the making of editions. The editor of a traditional critical text is, in the very layout of the edition, enshrining a hierarchy of variants: those which make it onto the textual page are somehow in a different class from those which are printed in apparatus and collation.
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