The selection of texts for our work follows three ideas. First, we want to annotate different genres and modes of text. The first text we chose to annotate is a prose text: Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper – a short novel, published in 1881. Then came a group concerned with what might be considered a broad definition of Metaphysical Poetry: poems from authors as diverse as John Donne, Emily Dickinson and T.S. Eliot. And soon (summer 2013), another group will start annotating different models of word play ranging from literary examples to contemporary advertisements in an interdisciplinary approach between Romance and English Studies. Additionally, we try to find a drama to further enlarge this scope in a future group.
This multitude of different texts is necessary, and put to good use, for our second aim: we want to try the possibilities of the practice of annotation. What are the guide lines to effectively use annotation as a means of enhancing the reader’s understanding of the text? How can annotation be used for studying texts at the university or in the classroom in general? We develop different sets of rules according to best practice experience in the first hand work with the texts as well as reflecting the practice of annotation on a meta-level. Further information on our model of annotation and its underlying guide lines can be found be here.
The third goal results from the other two: a valuable gain in the research of literary texts that, up to now, haven’t had scholarly editions. We can provide a critical online edition of the texts that is a reliable academic source. And as part of our Open Access policy these electronic texts will be freely accessible.