Basler Alexander : A Digital Edition

The present study offers a new edition of the Basler Alexander (B). It adopts a document-centered approach and presents B as a work situated within a specific manuscript and historical-geographical context. The edition provides three editorial levels: diplomatic, semi-diplomatic, and “critical.” The latter does not aim to reconstruct an original text in the Lachmannian sense but includes editorial interventions to elucidate the meaning of the text, as well as critical annotations on variant readings, marginal notes, and emendations by earlier editors. The edition has been conceived as a digital, and the text can be viewed alongside the digital facsimile, which features interactive hotspots for marginal notes and palaeographic information; at the same time, it is also available as a “traditional” edition. The edition is part of the broader Digital Alexanderlied (DAL) project, which aims to produce a digital synoptic edition of all versions of the Alexanderlied, and serves as a test case for the use of the Edition Visualization Technology (EVT) software in the publication of digital editions. The first chapter introduces the Alexanderlied and its manuscript tradition, with a particular focus on B. It also outlines the current state of research regarding the relationship between the three redactions and Lambrecht’s original text. The second chapter analyzes the manuscript from codicological, palaeographical, and linguistic perspectives. The third chapter discusses the challenges and solutions involved in editing B and compares traditional and digital approaches. In this context, editorial criteria and specific encoding standards (XML-TEI), as well as the visualization (with EVT) and functionality of the digital edition, are also described. The main part of the dissertation consists of the edition of B, accompanied by a commentary. The edited text has been made available both as a printed and as a digital edition: this dual publication allows for a comparative evaluation of traditional and digital editorial methods. The study concludes with a bibliography and an appendix on the XML-TEI elements used for the encoding. The digital edition and its XML files (available online) form an integral part of this dissertation.