Sound and Metre in Italian Medieval and Renaissance Narrative Verse

An on-line database containing an exact, detailed and systematic representation of the sound and metre of the major narrative poems of the Italian Middle Ages and Renaissance. The database provides a firm evidence base for the analysis, comparison and interpretation of specific structures, and combinations of structures, across a substantial corpus of related poetic texts. It also aims to develop and test the capacity of computer-based processes to serve the purposes of literary scholarship.

Project

Academic field
Modern Languages
Affiliation
University of Reading
Project link
Sound and Metre in Italian Medieval and Renaissance Narrative Verse
Funders
Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)

arts-humanities.net

Principal investigator
Professor David Robey
Principal project staff
Professor David Robey
Start date
Monday, March 1, 1999
Completion date
Monday, December 1, 2008
Era
Modern
Place
Western Europe
Digital resources created
Dataset of records containing information about sound and metrical structures in the poems in question, one record for each line of each poem. The whole database contains 162,125 records. The information covers: basic text data; rhyme and rhyme words; phonemic patterns, including alliteration and assonance; accentual rhythm, metre, and word accents. The database can be searched for particular structures or combinations of structures, or by browsing the texts of the poems. The data was generated automatically, with a substantial element of manual intervention, through a suite of SPITBPL programs.
Source material
Critical editions of Dante, La Commedia secondo l'antica vulgata, ed. G. Petrocchi, 4 vols. (Milan: Mondadori, 1966-7); Francesco Petrarca, Trionfi in id., Rime, Trionfi e poesie latine, ed. F. Neri et al. (Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1951); Giovanni Boccaccio, Amorosa visione (Testo A), ed. V. Branca in Tutte le opere di Giovanni Boccaccio, III (Milan: Mondadori, 1974); L. Pulci, Morgante, ed. R. Ramat (Milan: Rizzoli, 1961); M. M. Boiardo, Orlando innamorato, ed. A. Zottoli (Milan: Mondadori, 1944); L. Ariosto, Orlando furioso, ed. C. Segre (Milan: Mondadori, 1964); T. Tasso, Gerusalemme liberata, ed. L. Caretti (Bari: Laterza, 1967), and Gerusalemme conquistata, ed. L. Bonfigli (Bari: Laterza, 1934)
Data formats
Microsoft SQL Database linked to a FrontPage interface.
Publications

Robey, David, Annalisa Cipollone, and Paola Nasti. 'Rhythm and Metre in Renaissance Narrative Poetry', The Italianist, 20 (2000), 21-43

Robey, David. Sound and Structure in the ‘Divine Comedy’ (Oxford University Press, 2000)

‘Rhythm and metre from the Liberata to the Conquistata’, The Italianist, XXVI, 2 (2006), 247-73