Project synopsis:

Walt Whitman's "Calamus" Revisions: A Hypermedia Critical Edition is a work-in progress created by Tom Lukas. The purpose of this project is to satisfy the undergraduate senior thesis requirement of the Distinguished Majors and American Studies programs at the University of Virginia.

Scope of Project:

In its completion, this hypertext will compose an archive representing Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass "Calamus" cluster of poems in all of its documentary forms and textual variants, as well as providing literary, historical, biographical and cultural commentaries on Leaves of Grass and Calamus. For the purposes of satisfying the senior thesis requirement, however, my senior project will compose a model of the larger archive, and will also serve as a representitive model of large literary archives.

My senior thesis project will, then, focus on the following objectives:

familiarization with SGML Text Encoding Initiatives
creation of a digital facimile of the 1860 "Calamus" poems and the Whitman "Calamus" manuscripts
creation of 1860 "Calamus" files in TEI-2 SGML (the e-text standard) and Rosetti SGML, and for the purposes of comparison of these two DTD's as instruments of literary analysis
familiarization with principles and practices of textual editing necessary to represent the 45 "Calamus" poems of the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass in the Rosetti DTD SGML format adaptation of the Rosetti hypertext archive structure to accomodate Whitman's printed texts and manuscripts digitization of the Fredson Bowers' collation of the Barrett Collection of 1860 Leaves of Grassmanuscripts as found in both the Barrett Collection physical archive and Bowers publication Whitman's Manuscripts--Leaves of Grass: A Parallel Text
A continuation of Bowers' Descriptive Bibliography work to incorporate current bibliographical practices representation of "Calamus #1:" (In Paths Untrodden) and "Calamus #2:" (Scented Herbage of My Breast) in each of its genetic forms and textual varients design of an information structure to represent the provenance of Whitman's manuscripts :
General Components of the hypertext:
- "Header" information on the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass
- Literary History
- Printing history
- Historical commentary
- Literary commentary
- Biographical commentary on Whitman
- Contemporary reviews
- The creation of a digital facsimile of the "Calamus" poems from the 1860 Edition of Leaves of Grass. Text files of the above.
- The creation of a digital facsimile of the Barrett Collection "Calamus" Manuscripts according to Bowers' "folder" system. Descriptive bibliography of the above (according to Bowers) Transcriptions of the above in two versions (mine and Bowers') Contemporary reviews of the original "Calamus" poems.
- Specific Transcriptions searchable SGML files of all "Calamus" poems. Complete SGML, HTML, Digital Facimile and Manuscript representations of the poem "Scented Herbage of my Breast" in each of its textual forms.