Hypnerotomachia Poliphili is a fifteenth-century illustrated incunabulum first published in 1499 by Aldo Manuzio in Venice. It delivers the story of two lovers separated by death but united in a dream; in fact, the entire book is a complex, multi-layered dream narrative which gradually unfolds through the interaction between text and image, inviting readers to engage with its rich content in a playful manner. The envisioned “Digital Hypnerotomachia Project" (DHP) aspires to create a platform where the encoded transcriptions and facsimiles of the various early printed editions of this literary work can be comparatively viewed and where users can interact with the text by clicking on annotated words, phrases, or images that lead to associations within, between, and outside the texts; and, ultimately, where users can generate their own annotations and share them with the community of readers. The most important features of such an edition would be, in my opinion, the annotations and tags, that will become the stepping stones towards a better and deeper understanding of the texts, their socio-cultural and literary contexts, and their intertextual relationship, hopefully opening up new pathways for research.  My thesis aims at the creation of a prototype edition, for which I will focus on the first chapter of the book. The aim is to create a parallel edition that will include some of the paratexts and first chapters of the original Italian Aldine edition, the two sixteenth-century French translations, and the sixteenth-century English translation. The omissions, additions, and changes in the early modern translations of the Hypnerotomachia can be quite revealing about the ways in which the text (and its images) was received, interpreted and adapted by early modern learned audiences. Regarding the editorial process, I will move gradually from digitization and transcription to TEI:XML encoding and publication, that is, the development of a user interface, but this will not necessarily be a linear progress, as constant re-evaluation will probably lead to adjustments and reiterations. The most important stage in the editorial process will be the TEI:XML encoding, which I perceive to be an interpretative process. The resulting annotated parallel edition prototype will hopefully show the potential of this type of edition for the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili and its translations, and this pilot project may demonstrate its merits for critical comparative analyses of the work in research and in education.

Diese Dissertationsschrift ist angesiedelt im Bereich Digitaler Edition archivalischer Quellen, deren Erschließung und (computergestützter) Analyse. Im Zentrum stehen die sog. Kosmos-Vorträge, die Alexander von Humboldts 1827/28 in zwei Vortragszyklen in Berlin gehalten hat. Diese werden als gleichwertige, zweifache Publikationen in Humboldts Werkbiographie eingeordnet. In einem zentralen Kapitel (Kap. 7) geht es mir um eine editionstheoretische Fundierung der Edition von Vorlesungsnachschriften, zunächst allgemein und dann bezogen auf die Nachschriften der Kosmos-Vorträge. Zuvor wird das Forschungsfeld beleuchtet, da über die Rahmenbedingungen und Inhalte der beiden Vortragsreihen bislang nur wenig bekannt war. Humboldts Motivation zu diesen Vorträgen, deren Zusammenhang mit dem Kosmos (1845–62) und weiteren seiner Publikationen, sowie die jeweiligen organisatorischen Rahmenbedingungen werden untersucht. Inhaltlich sind die Kosmos-Vorträge bislang wenig erforscht worden, unter anderem weil die wichtigsten Quellen nicht rezipiert wurden. Dank der Digitalisierung des Humboldt-Nachlasses und vor allem durch die Digitale Edition der Nachschriften aus dem Hörerkreis sind die Voraussetzungen dafür mittlerweile sehr viel besser. Um die künftige Arbeit mit diesen Dokumenten zu unterstützen, dokumentiere und reflektiere ich in Kapitel 8 die praktische Umsetzung des Editionsmodells gemäß den Richtlinien der Text Encoding Initiative (TEI). Anschließend stelle ich die edierten Nachschriften aus beiden Vortragszyklen vor und zeige, wie sich mit den digitalen Volltexten arbeiten lässt. Dabei kommen quantitative Untersuchungen und Verfahren wie automatische Kollation bzw. Plagiatssuche, aber auch ‚traditionell hermeneutische‘ Methoden zum Einsatz. Schließlich geht es mir in meiner Arbeit darum, die Grundlage für die weitere Erforschung der beiden Vortragsreihen wesentlich zu verbessern und anhand einiger exemplarischer Analysen erste Schritte in diese Richtung zu unternehmen. / This dissertation is located in the field of digital editions of archival sources, their exploration and (computer-assisted) analysis. In terms of content, it deals with the so-called Kosmos-Lectures, which Alexander von Humboldt held in two distinct courses in Berlin in the winter of 1827/28. The two series are recognised as two distinct publications of equal value in Humboldt’s oeuvre. In a central chapter (chapter 7), I am concerned with an edition-theoretical foundation for the edition of attendee’s notebooks, first in general and then in relation to the transcripts of the Kosmos-Lectures. Before this, the research field of the long-neglected Kosmos-Lectures is illuminated, as little has been known about the framework conditions of the lecture series. Humboldt’s motivation for these lectures, their connection with the Kosmos (1845–62) and other of his publications, and the respective organisational framework of the courses are being examined. In terms of content, the Kosmos-Lectures have so far been little researched, partly because the most important sources have not been taken into consideration. The conditions for this are now much better thanks to the digitisation of the Humboldt legacy collection and, above all, the digital edition of the transcripts from the audience. To facilitate future work with these documents, I document and reflect the practical implementation of the edition model according to the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) in chapter 8. In the following two chapters, I present the attendee’s notebooks from both courses, and show how to work with these digital full texts. Quantitative investigations and methods such as automatic collation or text re-use detection, but also ‘traditional hermeneutic’ approaches are used. Ultimately, my work aims to significantly improve the basis for research into the two lecture series, which has so far been lacking, and to take the first steps in this direction by means of some exemplary analyses.