Musica Ecclesiastica – edition by David Harrap
Musica Ecclesiastica
Edition by David Harrap <david.harrap@cantab.net>
About the edition: Musica Ecclesiastica was the title of the Latin recension of the Imitatio Christi circulating in England between 1438 and the second quarter of the 16th century. The Imitatio was a devotional handbook that may be broadly classified as an example of Christian ‘consolation literature’.
Aim of the digital edition: The aim of this edition, broadly consonant with the focus of my project on devotional practice, was to highlight and compare the effects of paratextual apparatus. The project could be described as parallel apparatus. I took an extract (Book one, chapter nineteen) and marked line-breaks, punctuation and marginal annotations. Such an edition allows comparison of emphases and interpretation of the core text by the scribe, which could then be used to speculate on the different avenues of interpretation available to subsequent readers.This project was unsuccessful. My mark-up was complex and the coding very different to that of my companions within the group. As such the edition does not work as effectively as I should like.