Second Assignment

Choose one of the options below and write an essay in response. Your essay should be at least three and a half pages in length and should not exceed six pages. Use double-space lineation, a 12-point serif font, and one-inch margins on all sides. Your writing is expected to be error-free and up to university standards.

For the first option only, your essay is expected to have a thesis: a main point that the whole essay attempts to support or prove. The essay component for the other two options can be more of a research report. The second two options require, in addition to the paper submission of the report, digital submission of one or more files. These can be emailed to the instructor.

The assignment is due on January 25th, but may be handed in up to one week late without penalty. Consult the course outline for further information about late assignments.

Option 1

The course web site contains an XML version of Anne of Green Gables (here). Using this document, explore text analysis possibilities and results. What information about the text can you retrieve? What are the benefits and limitations to digital text analysis on this document? Can you arrive at any conclusions regarding the text using text analysis? You are free to use a variety of tools, but I recommend using one or more of: TAPoR Tools, HyperPo, and Voyeur.

Option 2

Prepare a XML edition of Matthew Arnold’s poem, “Stanzas from the Grand Chartreuse.” Use the following text for the basis of your edition:
      Arnold, Matthew. “Stanzas from the Grand Chartreuse.” Poems. London: Macmillan, 1869. 2: 215-25.
This can be found on Google Books (which erroneously identifies it as the first volume):
      books.google.com/books?id=d3EJAAAAQAAJ
Your edition can attempt to reproduce the appearance of the poem in the book as accurate as possible, though this is not necessary: you can produce a new (digital) edition of the poem. Your edition can use any set of XML tags you wish to use (including TEI). You should at the very least tag the various parts/divisions of the poem, down to and including the lines of the poem. You are welcome to add more levels of tagging (but don’t get carried away). You are welcome to add some data (such as line numbers and metrical features) as attributes to your tags. Your XML should be well-formed (and viewable in a web browser as XML); you will submit the XML document to the instructor. Your essay will be a discussion of your choices (in tagging and any other decisions) and the advantages and limitations of transforming the poem into the edition you have produced.

Option 3

Prepare three or more XSL templates to transform the XML encoding of the first three scenes of Hamlet. You must use the XML document available on the course web site for this purpose (here). Your XSL templates should accomplish different objectives, such as displaying the document in different ways, highlighting different features, and retrieving different information from the document. You will submit the XSL files along with an essay, which should explain what you have done with the XSL templates, what they accomplish, and the advantages and limitations of treating an XML text with XSL. Note: knowledge of XSL is not a requirement for this course, and consequently this option requires more technical knowledge than most students will have.