Tagging Havelok the Dane

Digital Humanities Summer Institute

The Wonders of TEI

• Because the TEI Guidelines seek to provide a framework for encoding (in theory) any genre of text from any period in any language, the full TEI tag set is extremely rich, consisting of nearly 500 elements (by comparison, DocBook has around 400, XHTML 1.0 around 90). In practice, most TEI users routinely use a much smaller subset of the full language.

• TEI Guidelines

TEAMS

• Havelok the Dane

The Problem of Person, Place and ThingHerkneth to me, gode men - Wives, maydnes, and alle men - Of a tale that ich you wile telle, Wo so it wile here and therto dwelle.The tale is of Havelok imaked:Whil he was litel, he yede ful naked.Havelok was a ful god gome - He was ful god in everi trome;He was the wicteste man at nede That thurte riden on ani stede.That ye mowen now yhere,And the tale you mowen ylere, At the biginnig of ure tale,Fil me a cuppe of ful god ale;And wile drinken, her I spelle,That Crist us shilde alle fro helle.Krist late us hevere so for to doThat we moten comen Him to;And, witthat it mote ben so,Benedicamus Domino!

Defining Person and PlacePerson• narrator• groups of people• the general ‘us’• religious figures (Christ, etc) • reflexive and possessive pronouns not

marked• all other pronouns marked with <ref> that

lead back to the person’s first mention• occupations are defined as ‘people,’ not

things• line 36: “holy kirke” marked as person

because it refers to the body of Christ• animals capable of speech are <person>;

otherwise they’re <thing>

Place•metaphysical places, i.e. Hell, heaven, etc.•there, here, are also marked as places•rooms in a house (line 157 “hall”) marked as <place> and <thing>•if we can find it on a medieval map it’s a place

That still leaves thing…

Object-Oriented Ontology

The Oxford English Dictionary’s semantic hierarchy

The Grunt Work

The first 20 lines again<div n="1"> <l n="1">Herkneth to <ref target="the narrator">me</ref>, gode <thing>men</thing> -</l> <l n="2"><thing>Wives</thing>, <thing>maydnes</thing>, and <thing>alle men</thing> -</l> <l n="3">Of a <thing>tale</thing> that <ref target="the narrator">ich</ref> <ref target="the audience">you</ref> wile telle,</l> <l n="4">Wo so it wile <place>here</place> and <place>therto</place> dwelle.</l> <l n="5">The <thing>tale</thing> is of <person>Havelok</person> imaked:</l> <l n="6">Whil <ref target="Havelok">he</ref> was litel,<ref target="Havelok"> he</ref> yede ful naked.</l> <l n="7"><person>Havelok</person> was a ful god <thing><person>gome</person></thing> - </l> <l n="8"><ref target= "Havelok">He</ref> was ful god in everi <thing>trome</thing>;</l> <l n="9"><ref target= "Havelok">He</ref> was the wicteste man at nede</l> <l n="10">That thurte riden on ani <thing>stede</thing>.</l> <l n="11">That <ref target="the audience">ye</ref> mowen now yhere,</l> <l n="12">And the <thing>tale</thing> <person>you</person> mowen ylere,</l> <l n="13">At the biginnig of ure <thing>tale</thing>,</l> <l n="14">Fil <ref target="the narrator">me</ref> a <thing>cuppe</thing> of ful god <thing>ale</thing>;</l> <l n="15">And wile drinken, her<ref target="the narrator"> I</ref> spelle,</l> <l n="16">That <person><thing>Crist</thing></person> <person>us</person> shilde alle fro <place>helle</place>.</l> <l n="17"><person><thing>Krist</thing></person> late <person>us</person> hevere so for to do</l> <l n="18">That we moten comen <ref target="Christ"><thing>Him</thing></ref> to;</l> <l n="19">And, witthat it mote ben so,</l> <l n="20">Benedicamus <person><thing>Domino</thing></person>!</l>