Frac - Fragments of Commedia

Fragments of Commedia (FraC) aims to catalogue all the manuscript fragments containing the text of Dante’s Commedia that are datable between 14th and 15th centuries, and to publish online their HD digital reproductions via IIIF. According to the most up-to-date surveys, the non-fragmentary tradition of the Poem counts about 600 manuscripts so far. Equally relevant is the fragmentary tradition: between fragments deriving from originally whole manuscripts, and excerpta, about 200 items are recorded. From such a list FraC has selected the fragments from the direct manuscript tradition (119 items), to which it will reserve for the first time a dedicated codicologic, textual and iconographic analysis. This research will contribute, on the one hand, in verifying the solidity and quality of the most important codicologic and textual groupings so far detected by Dante scholars, and, on the other hand, to suggest further possible options out of the recensio. The digital archive of FraC, along with the corresponding metadata resulting from eye-witnessed examinations by the research group (University of Naples Federico II; Scuola Superiore Meridionale; University of Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli"; University of Italian Switzerland) will be added to the Illuminated Dante Project’s digital archive (274 items) and made interoperable through the XML-TEI format and the IIIF visualisation protocol.