XML

One of the first blog posts I ever wrote for Hell’s Printing Press was titled “Laocoön and Languages.” The inspiration behind the post was that, in working on textual transcriptions, I had come across instances where Blake writes in a language other than English and I had been pointed to Laocoön as an example of a published Blake Archive work that deals with the problem of how to transcribe text in languages other than English.

It’s been a while since the last update on the “Receipts Project,” and so I thought I’d share a quick summary of what we’re up to with these strange scraps of paper, which throw up the most unexpected of challenges despite their modest size. As the receipts are scheduled for publication early next year, we’re currently at the stage of proofing and revision, and trying to deal with the following issues:

Last time I blogged about the <choice> Tag Project, I established a semi-comprehensive list of situations that required <choice> tags, and ended with a series of unsettled questions. Since then I have investigated the issue more thoroughly and now, having answered those questions, I can put together a more definitive guide. 

There is a batch of Blake’s letters that the Blake Archive is hoping to have ready for publication in the near future. Many are close to being ready and only require proofing. On the other hand, one of those which still requires some work includes sections that look like this:

The previous occasion upon which we brought to your attention the documentation of Blake’s inimitable and exciting fiscal accounts was in mid-2016, so it’s about time we revisited the manifold problems plaguing the receipts project. The project has been gathering (only a little) dust while we paid attention to more pressing questions raised by the redesign, the Four Zoas display, the marginalia schema, not to mention the terrifying experience of recording tutorial videos! But, finally, the (all new) Receipts Team – comprising the brand new BAND member Emily Tronson, the not-so-new Alex Zawacki and myself – has reconvened and we’ve been trying to compile a list of objectives to guide our attempts to prepare a single, complete BAD with all the receipts in our possession. Here are some (hopefully) interesting thoughts and considerations we’ve come up with:

One of BAND’s long term projects is what we’re calling the <choice> Tag Project. The ultimate idea behind this project is to standardize our use of <choice> tags in textual transcriptions. Since there have been several blog posts written on this topic in the past, I thought a good way to begin would be to read those three posts and then to look through recently transcribed BADs in order to get a thorough exposure to all the different ways in which people are using <choice> tags.

Bentley reads William Blake’s letter to Thomas Butts dated September, 23, 1800 as “22 September 1800” and makes a footnote explaining the same (1541). Similarly, another letter written to Butts dated January 10, 1802 is a matter of dispute and disagreement among scholars and editors. While the object (image— lt10jan1802.1.2.LT.300.jpg) itself says “January 10. 1802”, Erdman suggests it is 1803 and not 1802, and Keynes mentions both. When we were discussing this in our BAND meeting, Sarah recommended me a copy of “Blake/ An Illustrated Quarterly 51 Volume 13 Number 3 Winter 79-80”; I did find a brief note about this discrepancy in this issue (page 148). Then the concern was how and where should we address this in the XML file.

In the excitingly titled “So then what happened?” Rob outlined some of the major changes that we’ve introduced to the marginalia schema, such as using specific <layer>s to differentiate between typographic text and Blake’s writing, dispensing with line numbers for the typographic text, and dividing the annotations into discrete zones with fluid spatial coordinates. Armed with these new and fascinating solutions, we decided to transcribe the marginalia BADs independently and to hold bimonthly update sessions to discuss our progress or talk about any specific problems that came up.