Database for Ancient and Classical Poetological Devices (DACPD)

Poetology of large analyzed ancient and classical text corpora are increasingly important for the technique of translation and consequently for the understanding of semantics. Until now researchers from different fields (sumerology, assyriology, ugaritology, etc.) are engaged in analyzing corpus resources annotated with morphological, syntactic, semantic and discourse information for the variety of ancient languages and their genres. The DACPD project of the University of Tartu, Estonia, likes to bring together these activities in order to identify and suggest the best practice in utilization of poetologically analyzed and translated ancient and classical text corpora. Of special interest will be the statistical documentation of the analyzed text material.

In addition to the International database of the Melammu Project, which covers a time frame basically from 1350 BC to 900 AD, the DACPD will cover basically ancient and classical poetological devices and literal techniques tested in Aramaic, Assyrian, Babylonian, Greek, Hebrew, Latin and ugaritic language.

Until now the DACPD is proofed for Mozilla Firefox only, nevertheless other browsers should work as well: For academic quality reason the DACPD project is concidered as an Intranet database open to all researchers who are interested to cooperate. On a second stage there will be also a public version, which will give an overview and idea in the meaning and use of this database.

A. Introduction

The goal of the project is to implement the results of the interdisciplinary poetological research for the first time into a database which is lacking not only for the research of the Ancient and Classical Poetology as a whole but even for the field of Classical Poetology where poetological and rhetorical research has been most fruitful. It has to be mentioned that for some parts of Ancient literature the research has not been started until yet at all. The participants of the project want to achieve:

- database which is accessible via the internet and contains both, general and specific definitions for all kinds of poetological devices in all subdivisions of Ancient and Classical literature, statistics of the devices, summaries of the research done until yet, and possibility to get a prompt picture of the use of a specific device in one or another Ancient or Classical tradition;
- general definitions of poetological devices on the basis of the interdisciplinary research which can be used also in further studies of poetology of the Ancient and Classical literature;
- specific definitions of poetological devices on the basis of localisation and dating of the text corpora, and genre specific research, which can be used in further research as well;
- statistical data for all the text corpora, once more useful for further research;
- comparative statistics of poetological devices in different languages and traditions of the Mediterranean, which prepare the entirely new field for further research on how specific devices have been adapted and modified in the Ancient and Classical traditions.

B. Methodology

- Successive development of the poetological analysis of specific text corpora studied by the participating researchers. - Interdisciplinary seminaries to discuss the definitions and the technical issues related to the database. - Statistical data will be worked out in cooperation with specialists on the field of numeric-statistical analysis. - Comparative and genre specific analysis.

The non-profit project of the database will be free to access to all researchers and interested people. The project will be based on the international collaboration and the working language will be English.

Those scientists, who are interested in cooperation (no membership fee) or have questions or comments, please feel free to write either to:
Thomas R. Kämmerer (Ancient Near Eastern Studies),
Urmas Nômmik (Hebrew Studies),
Janika Päll (Classical Studies).

ENTER