MINUTES Meeting of the Literature Texts Work Group held in Winnipeg 2-3 Feb., 1991. Call to Order 9h.30 A.M. 2 Feb. 1991; adjournment 18h.00; reconvened, 9h.30 3 Feb. 1991, adjournment 15h30. Present: C. Delcourt, P. Fortier (chair), I. Lancashire, R. Potter. Regrets: D. Robey. 1. Revision, Adoption of the Agenda. After some discussion is was agreed to treat item 3 (TEI Critique) before item 2 (Taxonomy of types and methodologies). 2. The committee discussed the current version of the Guidelines in detail, the Chair's draft critique and Michael's reactions to it were also discussed in detail. It was decided to adopt the draft after extensive revisions, incorporating Michael's reactions and the results of the survey more explicitly; it was also considered appropriate to add to the document a preamble sketching the committee members' qualifications and the survey which had been carried out. A number of items were added to reflect additional concerns expressed by members of the committee and adopted for inclusion by consensus. The chair was instructed to prepare a final version of the Critique of the TEI Guidelines for transmission to the Steering Committee and release to the general public, through TEI-L and HUMANIST among other media. The committee also instructed the chair to transmit to the Steering Committee only its grave concern about the following matters which arise from the deeply held and unanimously expressed conviction of the members: A. The absolute need to use original printed texts for extended examples, and to feature photocopies of these texts (not mock- ups) as the first item in these examples. B. The need for a working group on Literary Theory to provide a bridge between current literary critical methodology and the TEI Guidelines. C. The need for a truly minimal code (both as to number of tags and their length), to be required for TEI conformity, over and against a large number of optional codes, and the necessity to indicate clearly in the Guidelines to which category each code is associated. D. The necessity for the TEI Project to undertake and express the committment to produce parsers or checkers for its tagging system; which parsers or checkers must be designed for use with current widely used software. UNIX was specifically indicated as not fitting into the category of current and widely used software, Microsoft Word and Wordperfect were given as examples of such software. E. The committee was gratified to find texts from the LOB Corpus and the Old English Database in the Guidelines, but disappointed that the full set of codes and tags used by these two corpora were not shown in the document. F. The Committee strongly recommends that the coding systems used by existing corpora and archives be documented in the Guidelines. A list of these corpora and archives (which is not intended to be exclusive) includes the following: Tresor de la Langue Francaise (Nancy and Chicago branches), Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, CETEDOC (Louvain-la-Neuve), the Bonn corpus, the Mannheim corpus, the Tubingen corpus, the Gottingen corpus, CNUCE, the Perseus Project, the Brown Women's Literature Corpus, the Dante database. 3. Types of texts and of Analysis to be recommended for inclusion in the Guidelines. Text types are to be handled under the four following categories: Performance texts (Theatre, Film script, opera, etc), Poetry/Verse, Prose (Novel, Essay, Philosophical texts), Critical Editions. A separate work group will treat literary theory as it impinges on the coding of the above types of texts. The literary Texts work group applauds and adopts the principled stand taken by the linguistic texts group: All theoretical positions are to be provided for in the Guidelines; none is to be priviliged or excluded. 4. The Objectives of the Working Groups to be set up A. The Literary Theory Work Group 1. Evaluate the Current Version of the TEI Guidelines as to the facilities they provide for handling texts in conformity with accepted literary critical practice. 2. Propose definitions of text, tag, hierarchies, and other terms used in the TEI Guidelines which are relevant to the study of literature, from the perspective of providing for a wide range of methodologies, without privileging or excluding any. 3. Submit a preliminary report no later than June 1, 1991. 4. Submit a final report no later than August 1, 1991. 5. Hold one meeting in order to compose its final report. B. Genre and Method Oriented Work Groups 1. Evaluate the Current Version of the TEI Guidelines as to the facilities they provide for handling texts in conformity with accepted literary critical practice. 2. Recommend Document Type Definitions and tags appropriate to the work being carried out in their area. The Literarure Texts Work Group has devised a survey instrument to elicit the needs of scholars in the various areas; it is approaching the Modern Language Association with a view of distributing it to the membership of that Association (no equivalent entity could be identified for Europe). The Literature Texts Working Group will transmit responses to the appropriate genre Working Groups so that they can use this information in carrying out their task. 3. Submit a preliminary report no later than June 1, 1991. 4. Submit a final report no later than August 1, 1991. 5. Hold one meeting in order to compose its final report. 5. Types and Structure of Working Groups to be recommended. We recommend that the Working Groups to be set up be sub- committees to the Literature Texts Working Group. A member of the latter Group will chair each of the sub-Groups to insure orderly lines of reporting. The Literature Texts Working Group should remain constituted to integrate the reports of the sub- Groups into a final report to the Steering Committee. 6. Specialisation and Composition of sub-Working Groups: A. Critical Editions I. Lancashire (Chair) D. Chesnutt C. Faulhaber. B. Performance Texts R. Potter (Chair) E. Irizarry M. Neumann C. Poetry/Verse Texts D. Robey (Chair) T. Corns W. Ott D. Prose Texts P. Fortier (Chair) J. Burrows (consulting role only) J. Goldfield D. Owen J. Rudman E. Literary Theory C. Delcourt (Chair) E. Nardoccio T. van Dijk W. Winder 7. Other Business A. The Literature Texts Working Group recommends to the Steering Committee that the Working Group remain constituted until the submission of its final report by November 1, 1991. We also request that funds be allocated for one meeting of the Group to be held in September or October 1991 in order to compose its final report. B. The Literature Working Group is concerned about the rather archaic nature of the terms suggested for Morphological Features. It is willing to accept this terminology and recommend its use, although it had expected something more in keeping with current usage, for example the category of determiners in the place of articles, demonstrative adjectives, and possessive adjectives, or provision for transposition of function (e.g. an adjective used as a noun). It notes with dismay that the proposed handling of contractions in French (du, des) does not conform Muller's advice on the matter nor to common practice among linguists. respectfully submitted, Paul A. Fortier