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Systems of Transmitting Early Modern Manuscript Verse, 1475–1700

Project description

Mapping the circulation of early modern English verse

Research into the circulation of early modern English poetry manuscripts tends to treat individual manuscripts as case studies, tracing their movements among discrete and often elite groups of agents. By contrast, the ERC-funded STEMMA project aims to computationally map and model a more extensive network of pathways through which poetry manuscripts circulated in social networks between 1475 and 1700. The project will draw upon and augment six existing data sets about early manuscripts before using social network analysis and graph theory to model their wider transcontinental circulation. STEMMA will create the most comprehensive bibliographical data set yet and facilitate future research as well as bring to light previously obscured agents of early modern English literary culture.

Objective

STEMMA offers the first large-scale quantitative analysis of the circulation of early modern English poetry in manuscript between 1475 and 1700. It addresses a significant gap by developing innovative computational methods for studying the social and material forces that informed literary culture. Scholars have tended to address individual manuscripts as case studies. In contrast, STEMMA revolutionizes the study of manuscript poetry by taking a data-driven approach to identify patterns and trends at scale. At its centre is the poet John Donne, whose reluctance to circulate his verse makes the survival of at least 4,249 manuscripts of his work all the more puzzling; the poems of his next most-circulated contemporary survive in fewer than 1,000 witnesses. To understand how Donne’s poems, and early modern poetry more generally, circulated throughout the English-speaking world, the project synthesizes six of the most comprehensive datasets about early modern manuscripts and applies insights from social network analysis and graph theory to model the larger transcontinental communications system. The project’s objectives are to provide the first comprehensive study of early modern English manuscript verse circulation; to combine, augment, and enrich the most important bibliographical datasets and return them as Linked Open Data; to develop transferable and extensible methods for analysing the circulation of manuscript poetry; to offer a thoroughly revised account of the production and circulation of literary manuscripts after the introduction of print; to provoke a reassessment of historical metanarratives that privilege print and obscure the diverse agents who participated in early modern literary culture; and to facilitate new modes of research and discovery. The project offers benefits for scholars of early modern Europe as well as those working on computational and digital projects addressing a range of time periods, national traditions, and disciplinary orientations.

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HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) ERC-2022-COG

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Host institution

UNIVERSITY OF GALWAY
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 1 864 593,00
Address
UNIVERSITY ROAD
H91 Galway
Ireland

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Region
Ireland Northern and Western West
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 1 864 593,00

Beneficiaries (1)

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