which stands for
regularized). A simple strip of encoding like
mouomovo
is telling the machine and therefore the user that in this moment of the text (Rvf5 line1) the original
text in diplomatic transcription present the verb “mouo” which has been normalized by the
Petrarchive editors in the edited (and more modern) form “movo”. The advantages of this born-
digital approach are evident in both its simplicity and depth: transparency of encoding (ways of
always tracing back the editorial decisions) and maintenance of medieval contexts, its material
structures and a more modernized/accessible text.
In the digital representation of the textual and visual components of the Fragmenta’s poetics,
the different kinds of indexes and accesses to the texts proposed by the Petrarchive represent a clear
example of how digital tools provide new ways of visualizing and investigating the dynamic
relationships between genres and poems both at a micro- and at a macro-text level. The first and
more ‘traditional’ way of accessing Petrarch’s 366 poems is the textual index. A careful encoding and
a digital platform allow the presence of hyperlinks directly connecting to the textual transcriptions of
individual chartae and individual poems inside each of those chartae:
| 1 |
1r |
Voi ch’ascoltate in rime sparse
il suono |
Sonnet |
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In the html encoding above, digitally translating the first entry of the textual index (Rvf1), the html
element signals the beginning and end of one line in which four child-elements | will be
included: poem number (1), charta number (1r), first verse (Voi
c’ascoltate…) and literary genre (Sonnet). Hyperlinks to the transcriptions of the
specific poem (in this case the first sonnet, Rvf1) are embedded both in the poem number and in the
first line (html element ), so that users can easily navigate between the index and the textual
transcriptions.
Figure 1. Portion of text index from Petrarchive: Voi ch’ascoltate in rime sparse il suono (Rfv1).
The result on the screen is a traditional index allowing different points of navigation into the
songbook. The encoding and flexibility of the digital medium also allow multiple reorientations of
the index, sorting the 366 entries according to 1) poem number (corresponding to the material
position of the poems in MS. Vat.Lat.3195), 2) first line (alphabetical order from A to Z and vice
versa), 3) genre. But the true innovation of digital approaches is the possibility of new visual access
to Petrarch’s work. The Petrarchive visual index offers indeed three ways of representation of the
macrostructures of the 366 poems: 1) the whole manuscript in one single box (Fig.2); 2) all the
chartae organized and visualized by charta, with the recto and verso side by side; 3) and organized by
fascicles. In Fig. 2 below, the visual index shows the entirety of MS. Vat.Lat.3195 with its different
layers of composition, its two hands of transcription – the copyist’s in brown and Petrarch’s in blue
– its disposition of the different genres on the manuscript charta, and its distinctive use of space as a
form of punctuation at multiple levels not only separating the potential never-completed collection
in two parts, but also signaling crucial moments in the transcription:
http://dcl.slis.indiana.edu/petrarchive/textindex.php
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Figure 2. Petrarchive’s visual index.
Through the multiple views of Petrarchive’s visual indexes, the user can experience graphic
visualizations of the different genres recognizable without the need for reading textual
transcriptions. It is easy to recognize, for example, all of the four sonnet chartae or the pairings
sonnet-sestina clearly distinguishable by their respective characteristic transcriptional principles and
the subsequent “blank” space signaling, for example, the line separating the consistent 7-line-sonnets
or empty lines in the right column of sestina. The disposition of the genres on the manuscript façade
in Petrarch’s Fragmenta is, indeed, not accidental but it represents a carefully studied textual
distribution on which the poet himself tirelessly worked for decades (Storey 1993, Brugnolo and
Storey 2004). We possess a material proof of it in manuscript Vat.Lat.3196. An experimental
workplace, Vat.Lat.3196 also contains drafts of poems with multiple authorial annotations and
marginalia, revealing a constant process of revision, erasure and editing. For example, on c.07r the
poet writes in the margin referring to sonnets Per mirar Policleto (Rvf77) and Quando giunse a Simon
(Rvf78): “transcripti isti duo in ordine […]”. The spatial references, defined by the expression in
ordine, refer to the groupings of poems that Petrarch will later transcribe “in order” in the partial
holograph 3195. In both physical places (3196 and 3195), poems included in a single charta are
virtually linked by their physical position and by thematic or stylistic recurrences and progressions.
The two sonnets dedicated to painter Martini, not only are copied “in ordine” but they also form a
close grouping both for position and content. The materiality of texts and in particular the treatment
of literary genres leads us to rethink about the graphic dynamics within documents and their intrinsic
visual-cultural contexts.
http://dcl.slis.indiana.edu/petrarchive/images/Petrarchive__Visual_Index_to_Vat__lat__3195.jpg
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The perception of literary genres changes throughout different historical times, also
modifying the perception of their visual structures. If we think about the treatment of sonnets in the
Middle Ages, including the Fragmenta’s early manuscript tradition, we can immediately perceive the
complex cultural connotations, especially if we compare them with the Renaissance treatment of the
same genre. A dramatic symbol of the cultural transformation in the perception of literary genres in
the transmission of Petrarch’s Fragmenta is ms.Riccardiano 1108. Until c.26v, the manuscript reflects
the conventional two-verses-horizontal reading for all genres, except the sestina. In the middle of c.
27r, in between the transcriptions of canzone Perché la vita è breve (Rvf71) and canzone Gentil mia donna
io veggio (Rvf72), the copyist directly intervenes to signal his decision to switch to a more modern
vertical reading transcription, as he signals in an annotation: “Non mi piace di piu seguire di scrivere
nel modo che ò tenuto da quince a dietro, cioè di passare da l’uno colonnello all’altro; anzi intendo
di seguire giu per lo cholonnello tanto che si compia la chançone o sonetto che sia.” The copyist
declares himself tired of following the Medieval traditional two-column-horizontal transcription –
which he clearly feels far from his own cultural contexts - and emphatically announces the sudden
change of direction with the shift to a vertical orientation of texts. The often-quoted episode
emphatically establishes the cultural shift in the reading and transmission of the Fragmenta: a
tendency which will be established in Renaissance copies and will prevail in the tradition of
Petrarchan studies until nowadays.
In Petrarch’s carefully and authorially planned textual and visual structures, the depth and
role of genre and spatial distribution of the façade of each page can quickly be appreciated and
further analyzed under a new digital light. The graphic “image” files are in fact XML text files in the
Scalable Vector Graphics format (SVG), which contain the information necessary for the Web
browser to reproduce the image.3 The digital SVG images created to represent the façade of the
manuscript chartae in the digital reconstruction are simple and direct representations of Petrarch’s
material structures, with arrows signaling the directionality of the text distribution. On charta 3verso,
for example, the user can easily distinguish the shift in directionality between the sonnet (horizontal)
and the sestina (vertical):
3 Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is an XML-based vector image format used to create two-
dimensional graphics with potential support for interactivity and animation. The SVG specification is
an open standard developed by the World Wide Web Consortium.
https://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/About.html
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Figure 3. SGV image of c.3v (sonnet Rvf 21 Mille fiate, o dolce mia
guerriera and sestina Rvf 22 A qualunque animale alberga in terra).
The visual index above (Fig.3) digitally reproduces fundamental features of the poetic systems of the
page: alternating red and blue initials on the right of the text indentation signaling to the medieval
reader (and now to the contemporary user) the beginning of new poems and functioning as a textual
index; blank space serves as an additional punctuation device both in separating the two poems and
in signaling the vertical reading strategy of the sestina with its partially blank right column (visible in
light blue color in the graphic SVG images); and paragraph markers in the sestina offer additional
visual indexicality indicating the vertical disposition of the text. The description of Petrarch’s visual
poetics embedded in the text encoding is therefore also represented in the Petrarchive visual indexes.
Even from a brief look at the visual index of the entire songbook (see Fig.2 above), the nine pairings
of sonnet-sestina present in the collection are immediately recognizable: once again, even before
reading the textual content of the poems, the Medieval reader – and now the digital user – can
collect a series of cultural information related to the genres and their material and visual treatments.
Petrarch’s systematic use of space to create both division and unity in his collection has
often been translated – especially in print editions, from the Renaissance on – into a new
modernized reorganization of the texts and their collocation on the page. Given their potentials in
terms of visualization and simultaneity, digital representations allow users to skip the print filter and
to create a bridge between the culture that produced the work and the digital interface. The
construction of the digital codex also forces editors to rethink and conceptualize the role of blank
space in Petrarch’s poetics. The poet’s pivotal and often overlooked use of space is not a mere
aesthetic issue, but at times it provides the very role and meaning of poems themselves. The most
obvious and evident example is the unruled charta 52v, a “stop space” signaling a break between
sonnet Arbor victoriosa triumphale (Rvf 263) and canzone I' vo pensando (Rvf264).
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Figures 4 and 5. SGV images of c.52v and 53r (canzone I'vo pensando -Rvf264).
While the ‘space’ for the initial “I” has been added outside the ‘text block’ in the left margin of the
charta, the blank space in the previous façade (c.52v) signals a stop and a new beginning in the
collection. While the previous chartae (cc. 49v-52r) are blank and ruled, therefore functioning as
potential space maybe (but we are here in pure conjectural interpretation) for future additional (but
actually never added) poems, c.52v remains unruled and therefore assumes a very different role: that
of marking a “full stop” in the collection, a pause before the beginning of a new section. A further
example of divisional stop space is represented by the eight blank transcriptional lines at the bottom
of c.22r, in which Malpaghini leaves blank space between the sonnet L'aspectata vertù (Rvf104) and
canzone Mai non vo' più cantar com'io soleva (Rvf105) to indicate a pause in the macro-text:
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Figures 6 and 7. SGV images c.22r-v: stop-space announcing the beginning of Rvf105.
The stop space at the bottom of c.22r could have easily held the first 12 or even 14 verses of Rvf105.
There are other instances in MS. Vat. lat. 3195, in fact, of a canzone’s transcription beginning at the
end of a charta, just as c. 24v's final lines which carry the first 12 verses of canzone Una donna più
bella assai che 'l sole (Rvf 119), following three sonnets: Pien di quella ineffabil dolcezza (Rvf116), Se ‘l sasso
(Rvf117) and Rimasi a dietro il sestodecimo anno (Rvf118). The choice of leaving eight transcriptional lines
blank, though, clearly signals a pause in the narrative and in the layout of the charta, a “full stop”
transforming the following canzone into a poetic manifesto: the incipit and the content of Mai non
vo’ più cantar com’io soleva (Never again do I want to sing [poetry] as I used to) can only confirm that
this is a crucial editorial shift in the poetics of the Fragmenta.
Blank space can also function as placeholder for postponed decisions. Charta 37r, for
example, in which Malpaghini leaves a blank space and later Petrarch transcribes sonnet Geri, quando
talor meco s’adira (Rvf179). It is not, therefore, space created by an erasure but a placeholder, which
leaves the macrotext open for potential future additions while at the same time establishing material
spatial limitations on the poem to be potentially added (a limitation determined by the number of
transcriptional lines available). The very nature of the visual index provides a new digital “space” in
which to investigate even further the spatial dynamics established by Petrarch in decades of
interrupted work in composing, transcribing, editing erasing and calculating “ideal” forms and
spaces of his songbook.
Visual indexes and digital representations also provide a new insight into the three temporal
and spatial phases of preparation of Petrarch’s unfinished partial holograph. The first project is
revealed by the rubricated chartae transcribed by the copyist, set aside in 1367 when he abruptly left
his service (see the visual index of Fig. 2 in brown: five quaternions [cc.1r-40v] in Part I and two
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fascicles, one quaternion and one binion, in Part II [cc.53r-60v, cc.61r-62v and 71r-72v]). Next, we
see Petrarch’s continuation of the compilation process in an attempt of maintaining a fair copy
(visual index in blue with colored initials: another quaternion [cc.41r-48v] in Part I and four more
chartae [cc.59r-62v]) in Part II. Finally, the latest additions reveal what is by then a service and work
copy (visual index in blue without colored initials: four chartae at the end of Part I [cc.49r-52v] and
the last binion added [cc.69r-70v] with the transcription of canzone Quel’ antiquo mio dolce empio signore
[Rvf356{revised360}]). The user can now clearly visualize these phases of Petrarch’s assembling of
the “book” and therefore further investigate an area of Petrarchan studies still very problematic: that
of the genesis of the work. The late insertion of two binions within the last fascicle (cc.63r-66v and
cc.67r-70v), for example, offers an occasion to rethink also the genesis of the text in terms of space
and not only in terms of time. These insertions in the middle of the final quaternion entail the
incorporation of additional poems before the concluding canzone Vergine bella (Rvf366), in a place
where Petrarch was potentially still working around the time of his death, given the small numbers in
the margin reordering the last 31 poems.
At the core of new digital methods is therefore a new orientation into Petrarch’s material
and visual poetics that he personally and consistently used to construct the layout of the entire work.
Ironically, the digital code, through its interactive and simultaneous visualizations, seems to be the
most suitable to display the essential dynamics of the charta and the material codex. The virtual
representation on the web page of the different aspects of the Fragmenta - its textual and graphic,
temporal and spatial components - allows scholars to rebuild the structural and visual principles
implemented by Petrarch himself at the level of single charta, fascicles and macro-structures and
therefore to repropose the poet’s editorial choices, skipping the filter of print editions whose cultural
mediations and interpretative variations have modified the way the text is visualized and therefore
received and interpreted.
Works cited:
Storey, H. Wayne, John A.Walsh and Isabella Magni. Petrarchive: An edition of Petrarch’s songbook, Rerum
vulgarium fragmenta. 2013-current. http://dcl.slis.indiana.edu/petrarchive/
Barolini, Teodolinda, “Introduction.” Petrarch and the Textual Origins of Interpretation. Brill, 2007.
Berté, Monica. “Malpaghini copista di Petrarca?” CN lxxv, 2015, pp.205-16.
Brugnolo, Furio. “Libro d’autore e forma-canzoniere: Implicazioni grafico-visive nell’originale dei
Rerum vulgarium fragmenta.” Commentario all’edizione in fac-simile. Edited by Belloni, Brugnolo,
Storey e Zamponi, 2004, pp.105–29.
Magni, Isabella. “I codici paralleli dei Fragmenta.” Medioevo letterario d’Italia 12, 2015.
Storey, H. Wayne Transcription and Visual Poetics in the Early Italian Lyric. Garland, 1993.
———. “All’interno della poetica grafico-visiva del Petrarca.” Commentario all’edizione in fac-simile.
Edited by Belloni, Brugnolo, Storey, and Zamponi 2004, pp.131–171.
http://www.petrarchive.org/
http://dcl.slis.indiana.edu/petrarchive/
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———. “Petrarch’s ‘Original’ of the Fragmenta 1362-1558: From Boccaccio to Rovillo’s Third
Printing.” Humanist Studies & the Digital Age 1.1, 2011, pp.28-49.
Werner, Marta L. “Signals from a distance: editing, telepathy, elegy”. Textual Cultures 3.1, 2008, pp.3–
11.
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