Encoding of dedications and performance notes on titlePage

[juliajbeine]

Dear TEI team, I am currently encoding Neo-Latin plays for NeoLatDraCor. Some of these plays include dedications on the title page, such as Aler’s “Innocentia victrix”, Dalanthus’ “Dido”, Eucharius’ “Grisellis”, Holonius’ “Catharina”, Rosefeldus’ “Moschus”, or Salius’ “Nassovius” (see the transcriptions to be encoded). Moreover, Aler’s “Innocentia victrix” also includes a note on the performance (see my work-in-progress TEI file).
I was wondering which encoding you would advise for these elements of the title pages, especially since somewhat ‚neutral’ <p> elements seem not to be allowed in the <titlePage> element.
I also linked to the related issue in the NeoLatDraCor repository.

[lb42]

My neo-Latin is a bit rusty, but I wonder whether the phrase "à Studiosâ Juventute Gymnasii trium Coronarum theatro data, " is really a performance note. Does it not mean something more like "given to the Young Students Gym of the three crowns" -- another kind of dedication in fact? A performance note would have a date and some information about the production, methinks.
However, I would certainly use <titlePart> to tag functionally discrete parts of a titlePage, and @type to specify the function.

[sydb]

My first instinct (without looking at the sources, especially since I do not speak Latin : - ) is to use <titlePart type="dedication"> or some such. A <titlePart> is usually thought of as a child of <docTitle>, but it can also exist as a direct child of <titlePage>.

That said, the only actual dedication on a title page that I could find in the WWP collection is considered a part of a descriptive portion of the title:

<titlePart type="desc">
  <hi rend="slant(italic)">Being a Collection of</hi>
  <lb/>
  <hi rend="face(blackletter)">Romantic Narratives</hi>
  <lb/>
  <hi rend="slant(italic)">And other</hi>
  <lb/>
  <hi rend="case(allcaps)">Poems</hi>
  <lb/>
  <hi rend="slant(italic)">Humbly Dedicated by Permiſsion</hi>
  <lb/>
  <hi rend="face(blackletter)">To His Royal Highneſs</hi>
  <lb/>
  <hi rend="slant(italic)case(allcaps)">The</hi>
  <lb/>
  <persName ref="p:georgeiv.wpr" rend="face(blackletter)">Prince Regent</persName>
</titlePart>

[juliajbeine]

à Studiosâ Juventute Gymnasii trium Coronarum theatro data

@lb42, thank you for your quick reply. The note says, “Performed in the theatre by the studious youth of the Gymnasium of the Three Crowns”. Neo-Latin plays were mostly written by teachers for their students. We often only have notes about which school a play was performed at, the year, and maybe the occasion, such as Shrove Tuesday, if any.

[juliajbeine]

@sydb, thank you for sharing your ideas. In my work-in-progress TEI file, I currently use <titlePart type="dedication"> and <titlePart type="performance">, but I was wondering if there was a common approach to this. Maybe using the more general <titlePart type="desc"> could be an idea.

[sydb]

Yes, I noticed that (<titlePart type="dedication">) in your TEI file. (I can read TEI! : - ) My instinct, based on little to no information about your project — and thus to be taken only for what it is worth, which is very little — is that it is not particularly useful to separate out dedications on the title page as something important in their own right. There is not likely to be much call for sorting or filtering your dramas based on to whom they are dedicated, even less so based on how said dedication was phrased on the title page.

But it is more likely (in my uneducated humble opinion) that folks would want to sort or filter your dramas based on the performance information: which school, what time of year, etc. Might be best to store that as some sort of metadata in the <teiHeader> (probably in the <profileDesc>: maybe <setting> or <creation>? Or maybe you would have to make up your own element), but that sounds like a lot of work. So a first crack at an easy way to do this is to continue to do exactly what you are doing: separate the performance information on the title page out into <titlePart type="performance">. Once you are doing that you need to use something else to differentiate the other <titlePart>s from the "perfromance" one, so it may as well include "dedication" where appropriate, as that is probably not much harder than anything else.

I hope that makes sense … I am a bit rushed at the moment trying to get a little program ready for an upcoming meeting.

P.S. Would you (@juliajbeine) mind if we converted this issue to a discussion? Given that there is no actual bug report or feature request, it would be more comfortable there. (Or at least, there are those TEIers who would be more comfortable with it there!)

[juliajbeine]

@sydb, thank you very much for your assessment and advice!
Regarding the performance information, we currently discuss where to put this information for DraCor in general (dracor-org/dracor-schema#133).
P.S. That would be fine with me.