January 27, 2007
Hyper-Roland
Not that Roland! The one with the sword. Vika Zafrin has linked to the latest version of RolandHT (with instructions) for use on Firefox or some other XSLT-capable browser, if there is one. (OS X Opera seems to work, too.) Her project – not fully loaded with lexias as yet – is a humanities computing project that promises to have wide appeal to the casual reader as well as disciplinary use. It allows the hypertext reader to compare different texts, by different authors, and see how literature has engaged Roland as a character. This sheds new light on how the the loveable, muslim-fighting paladin went from his starring role in The Song of Roland to become, as the font of all encyclopediac knowledge says, “a ‘pop icon’ in medieval minstrel culture.” There’s some more background about the project online, and for those who really must skip the instructions, here’s the direct link.
January 27th, 2007 at 2:15 pm
Thanks for the shout-out, Nick! The background-about-the-project page you link to brought back some memories – it’s part of the original, now much modified, RolandHT. More updated background, including the archive of short essays that formed a part of my Master’s thesis, is available here.
Which reminds me that the page I just linked to is woefully out of date, now that the new interface is finally up. Off to update it. :)
January 29th, 2007 at 7:19 am
When you said “not that Roland” and then mentioned some technological whiz-bang sort of stuff, I immediately assumed you were leading into a post about an online version of something from the other Roland. So I was quite surprised to click through and see a sword rather than knobs.