New Essays on Stemmatics in DSH

The latest issue of Digital Scholarship in the Humanities (31.3) has a special section of stemmatics. I would particularly recommend the essays by Barbara Bordalejo and Peter Robinson which were mentioned on the blog here. All of these appear to be freely available for the time being. But I don’t think that will last. Here’s the list of essays:

Thematic Section on Studia Stemmatologica

• Thematic Section on Studia Stemmatologica
  Tuomas Heikkilä, Teemu Roos
• Analysis of variation significance in artificial traditions using Stemmaweb
  Tara L. Andrews
• Lines of succession in an English ballad tradition: The publishing history and textual descent of The Wandering Jew’s Chronicle
  Giles Bergel, Christopher J. Howe, Heather F. Windram
• The genealogy of texts: Manuscript traditions and textual traditions
  Barbara Bordalejo
• Computer-assisted stemmatology in studying Paulus Juusten’s 16th-century chronicle Catalogus et ordinaria successio Episcoporum Finlandensium
  Marko Halonen
• The silva portentosa of stemmatology: Bifurcation in the recension of Old Norse manuscripts
  Odd Einar Haugen
• Oral fairy tale or literary fake? Investigating the origins of Little Red Riding Hood using phylogenetic network analysis
  Jamshid Tehrani, Quan Nguyen, Teemu Roos
• Four rules for the application of phylogenetics in the analysis of textual traditions
  Peter Robinson
• Open versus closed recensions (Pasquali): Pros and cons of some methods for computer-assisted stemmatology
  Marina Buzzoni, Eugenio Burgio, Martina Modena, Samuela Simion

How (Not) to Use a Computer-Generated Stemma

Barbara Bordalejo has been heavily involved in the use of computer-aided stemmatics since at least the time of her NYU doctoral thesis (2003; found here).

In the newest issue of Digital Scholarship in the Humanities she has an important essay on how to understand the differences (and similarities) between the genealogy of texts and the genealogy of manuscripts—a distinction central to the CBGM. 

Put another way, this is an article on how to avoid misusing computer-generated genealogies. Since this is a concern that comes up again and again when I talk to people about the CBGM, I thought it would be worth quoting Bordalejo’s conclusion in full:

Phylogenetic analysis and other computer-assisted stemmatological approaches can be used productively when studying large textual traditions, despite the difficulties presented by contamination, changes in order, major alterations, and significant losses. The stemmata produced using computer-assisted methods are working hypotheses which serve as a starting point of investigation. These stemmata, whether they correspond to a textual tradition or a manuscript tradition, are one of the tools that we can use to further our understanding of how texts are transmitted and how variants are inherited. What they do not do is to present us with a one size-fits-all solution that could answer all of our queries. In the end, we are still subject to the remarks of A. E. Housman who said that knowledge and method were important, but that besides those a scholar was required to make use of her brain (Housman, 1921).

The interpretation of the stemmata generated by the use of phylogenetic software is fundamentally changed when we understand the difference between textual and manuscript traditions. Although the search for meaning in each of these follows a similar pattern, the recognition of the differences between the data sets will have an impact on our expectations.

A stemma, computer-generated or made by hand, is only a graphic representation of a hypothesis (machine or human or a combination of both) created following a specific model and has to be treated as such. The historical reality that underlies our hypotheses cannot be recovered in its totality, whether this reality corresponds with the textual tradition or with the manuscript tradition. However, combining computer-assisted stemmatic analysis, database searches and historical knowledge of the production history of a particular text can help us build increasingly convincing hypotheses about it. Once we recognize this, we will be better equipped to use the tools at our disposal more efficiently and interpret the results of our research more accurately.*

Notice that Bordalejo is saying that regardless of whether we are after manuscript relations or textual relations, our stemmata are only partial representations of the historical reality. This is important because some of the literature on classical manuscript stemmatics can leave one with the impression that what they provide is a complete history. But this is not the case (cf. M. West, Textual Criticism, p. 35 and P. Trovato, Lachmann’s Method, p. 144 [quoted here]).

It’s also worth noting that Bordalejo does not set textual relations against manuscript relations but considers them to be mutually informing. The bulk of her essay helps us think through how they can be used in this way. But for that, you’ll have to read the full article (it’s it was free).

*Barbara Bordalejo, “The Genealogy of Texts: Manuscript Traditions and Textual Traditions” Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 30.4 (2015): 1–15 (12–13); italics mine.

Update

I see that Peter Robinson also has an essay out in DSH which comes to many of the same conclusions. For example: “In our reconstructions, we are making a wager about history, not a statement of fact.... These strictures still leave substantial space where quantitative methods can, in combination with traditional scholarly methods and knowledge, achieve valuable results.” He goes on to cite the example of Prue Shaw’s work on Dante. His article is “Four Rules for the Application of Phylogenetics in the Analysis of Textual Traditions“ (not free).

Destroying a Manuscript to Test Multispectral Imaging

Image setup for the experiment.

There is a fascinating new article out today in the journal Digital Scholarship in the Humanities (more on which later) on multispectral imaging (MSI). What makes this article so interesting is that the authors destroyed a manuscript in order to systematically put MSI through its paces.

Here is how the authors sum up their aim (my emphasis):

Previous multispectral imaging capture projects, applied to specific examples of texts of historical importance, have concentrated on recording documents in their current state (generally once important features are illegible). Here, we investigate best practice in the multispectral imaging of heritage material by imaging a parchment document before and after a series of degradation processes, allowing us to assess the effectiveness of image processing algorithms to recover information from degraded documents. This gives us a unique platform for evaluating the quality of recovered images, and allows us to assess the performance of image processing algorithms for analysis of these images.

In other words, the authors applied MSI to a manuscript with no damage, then systematically destroyed the manuscript in various ways only to re-apply MSI so that they would have a more objective measure of best practices. The unlucky specimen is described thus:

The document was an assignment of property which had been deemed to hold no historical or scholarly value, and had been de-accessioned from their collection prior to our request for parchment material in accordance with The National Archives guidance on deaccessioning and disposal.

The unlucky specimen here showing the samples.

From this manuscript the authors cut 23 specimens, all with text and generally avoiding folds and blemishes. Various “degradations” were then applied to 20 of these, ranging from problems in the manufacture, use, and storage of the parchment. This included anything from scraping the ink off to oil stains, chemical reagents, fire, water, smoke, and, yes, human blood (full list here). The specimens were then photographed under the same conditions both before and after the damage was done. In total, they took 2,800 images!

The blood sample before damage (left), after (center), and the best result from MSI (right).

Naturally, they found that MSI had different levels of success with generally more success.

In some samples in which the writing has been rendered unreadable by the treatment, the writing can be recovered, including aniline dye, oil, and blood. In some samples the writing is completely obscured or the parchment has been severely affected and recovery is all but impossible, including iron gall ink, India ink, and mould. In most cases, however, the image processing algorithms can extract more information from the multispectral images of treated samples corresponding to the writing than the human eye can see.

The real value of the study, of course, lies in the ability to measure the relative success and to isolate the specific circumstances in each case. They don’t give all the results in the paper (they do elsewhere) and they are clear that this is not a systematic study of any one type of damage (although they hope to in later studies).

This method raises questions about when to destroy the past in order to better understand it, but I’ll leave those issues for you all to discuss. For my part, I would have liked to know a little bit more about how this document was “deemed to hold no historical or scholarly value.” Apparently there exist guidelines for just such a decision.

I’ve never been involved in the direct process of applying MSI, but I imagine this study would be very useful to those weighing the cost benefit of using MSI.

You can read the whole article online (free).