Prolegomena to a New Lyric Petrarch in the Digital Future

This article presents some features of the new the edition of the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta recently published by the author. This edition is very different from all previous editions and arguably the most innovative in its editorial decisions. Preparation of the edition involved approaching the Canzoniere with a view to establishing concordances/correlations among all aspects of its “lexicon” (literally lexical, graphemic, and visual). The use of computer technology, both on the lexical level and in the treatment of images, made the difference with respect to the traditional philological approach, both in analysis and in the properly editorial phase. Proceeding by concordance/correlation implies that before making any editorial decision one must compare all analogous elements of the work. Today only computer science can provide a scientific basis for our textual analyses. Digital treatment of a text allows us to move from the syntagm to the paradigm, that is, puts us in contact with the system specific to the text that we wish to understand and also publish.