Help bring Middle English literature into the digital age! The Hoccleve Archive is a collection of textual analysis resources that are being digitized in order to advance the study of the fifteenth-century London poet Thomas Hoccleve. Using Hoccleve as an example, the Archive also hopes to enhance the study and teaching of late Medieval poetics, the Middle English lexicon, and manuscript publishing in the last century before the invention of the printing press. The Archive is being developed by Hoccleve scholars, with the assistance of UT Libraries, TexasScholarworks, LAITS, and numerous volunteer undergraduate research assistants. It has been supported by faculty and students of Georgia State University and has a loose affiliation with the International Hoccleve Society. The Archive is currently working on a number of projects:
- publishing a treasure trove of manuscript collation data collected during the last attempt to produce a critical edition of Hoccleve's longest poem the Regiment of Princes
- transforming lexical data files that were used in the first computer-aided analysis of Hoccleve's works into a searchable online dictionary and concordance of the poet's word choices
- designing a protocol for crowd sourcing the transcription and mark-up of a new online edition of the Regiment of Princes that can be used in college classes (using FromThePage transcription software from an Austin-based company)
- scanning microfilms of medieval manuscripts and storing them as a database of long-lasting digital images
- updating the hocclevearchive.org website regularly
- [NEW FOR 2024!!!] researching and updating the Hoccleve Bibliography maintained by the International Hoccleve Society on Zotero.
- Undergraduates with coding experience are especially needed to redevelop json and javascript files into a useable interactive interface for an existing digital edition of Hoccleve's Manuscript texts. Preferred experience with GitHub, scripting languages (e.g. Python, Perl), developing software applications for the web, working within Reclaim Hosting AWS infrastructure, and/or with developing web-usable databases and archives.
- Undergraduate researchers with any level of expertise are welcome if interested in Medieval English literature and culture, editing, the development of methods for expanding readers' access to rare material, and/or digital archive infrastructure and interfaces. Many of the projects in the works will require the researcher to learn new skills as they help the project develop. That said, experience reading Middle English and/or Latin or French will be helpful. As will experience with website development (especially with WordPress, javaScript, stylesheets, XML, etc.), paleography, microfilm scanners, image-processing software (like Photoshop), and databases/spreadsheets.
Project is ongoing.
Please set up a meeting with me to discuss how you might participate on your schedule!
