The Perseus Digital Library is pleased to announce funding from the NEH to create a new digital edition of Aristotle’s Poetics in Greek, Arabic and Latin. The complicated manuscript history, textual transmission and broad reception of this work across disciplines calls for a digital edition that can fully reflect its complexities. In order to address gaps in scholarship on the Poetics, work will focus on the 10th-century Arabic translation by Abu-Bishr Matta, the 13th-century Latin edition by William of Moerbeke, and the Translation Movements of Baghdad (9th-10th CE) and Toledo (12th-13th CE).

Blending the methods of classical philology and the digital humanities, this project seeks to create a digital edition that will include annotated translations aligned with original texts and related commentaries. By providing richly annotated translations aligned with texts in the original languages as well as supplementary reference materials to help researchers without expertise in these languages, the project hopes to greatly expand intellectual access to the earliest work of Greek dramatic theory.

Co Project PIs Professor Gregory Crane and Professor Ricardo Strobino will lead this project with the resulting digital edition hosted on the Perseus Digital Library.