The aim of the project “Medieval Texts in a Transmedial Context” is to discuss questions of the edition and medial processing of medieval handwritten texts in the age of digitization. Today, medieval texts are primarily studied in academic and museum contexts. A wide range of efforts are currently being made to bring the medieval manuscript culture out of the ‘corner’ of the traditional book market. Digitization initiatives enable the provision of e-books, digitized manuscripts, digital editions, audio files, multimedia text and image presentations or virtual exhibitions. Some of these formats are already standardized.

The possibilities of computer technology offer both opportunities and risks. The opportunity of digitization undoubtedly lies in the fact that it offers a wealth of additional possibilities for text representation and documentation. It becomes a risk, however, if the objects of research are subordinated to these possibilities. This is because the selection of a particular form of representation from the many that are available today remains a mere gimmick as long as it is not justified in terms of the history of the text and its transmission.

In view of these changed media conditions, the question of how to prepare and publish medieval texts is currently being raised with a new urgency. The present project is dedicated to this question. As a basis for the meta-reflection of editorial activity, two ongoing research projects on the transmission of Middle High German poetry are introduced. These lend themselves to this inasmuch as they have innovative aspirations and are each testing new forms of conceptual and medial processing of medieval texts and associated knowledge in different ways.

The project is aimed at interdisciplinary researchers who are involved in the edition and medial processing of medieval handwritten texts, as well as colleagues from the digital humanities and computational linguistics who carry out the computer-technical implementation of such projects.