Digital Papyrology III: The Digital Critical Edition of Greek Papyri: Issues, Projects, and Perspectives

In the ever-growing and evolving field of Digital Papyrology - intending both the set of electronic tools for papyrological research and a new way of representing our knowledge of the Greek papyri in digital environments - a focal current issue is the digital critical edition of the papyrus texts. Since new perspectives are emerging - involving co-occurring phenomena like the scribal writing act, the materiality of the writing medium, the linguistic background, which affect our global comprehension of the papyri beyond the traditional dichotomy text/context - scholars are increasingly feeling the limits of the printed editions and of their simple digital reproductions. Several projects are proposing new looks at the papyri as cultural artefacts, implementing annotation layers adding valuable information to the very texts. They mostly deal with linguistics, palaeography, documentary typology, paging layout, material features, and attempt to integrate the traditional editorial platform (Papyri.info) with new data clusters or even new editorial platforms. The volume investigates and discusses such new trends with the final goal of outlining the digital critical edition of the Greek papyri as an interconnected network of information.

Nicola Reggiani, University of Parma, Parma, Italy.