TEI by Example Module 3: Prose Ron Van den Branden Edward Vanhoutte Melissa Terras Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing (ALLC) Centre for Data, Culture and Society, University of Edinburgh, UK Centre for Digital Humanities (CDH), University College London, UK Centre for Computing in the Humanities (CCH), King’s College London, UK Centre for Scholarly Editing and Document Studies (CTB) , Royal Academy of Dutch Language and Literature, Belgium
Centre for Scholarly Editing and Document Studies (CTB) Royal Academy of Dutch Language and Literature Koningstraat 18 9000 Gent Belgium
ctb@kantl.be Edward Vanhoutte Melissa Terras Centre for Scholarly Editing and Document Studies (CTB) , Royal Academy of Dutch Language and Literature, Belgium Centre for Scholarly Editing and Document Studies (CTB) , Royal Academy of Dutch Language and Literature, Belgium Gent
Centre for Scholarly Editing and Document Studies (CTB) Royal Academy of Dutch Language and Literature Koningstraat 18 9000 Gent Belgium

Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License

9 July 2010 TEI by Example. Edward Vanhoutte editor Ron Van den Branden editor Melissa Terras editor

Digitally born

TEI by Example offers a series of freely available online tutorials walking individuals through the different stages in marking up a document in TEI (Text Encoding Initiative). Besides a general introduction to text encoding, step-by-step tutorial modules provide example-based introductions to eight different aspects of electronic text markup for the humanities. Each tutorial module is accompanied with a dedicated examples section, illustrating actual TEI encoding practise with real-life examples. The theory of the tutorial modules can be tested in interactive tests and exercises.

 en-GB integrated examples in a single file
British Printed Images

The next example contains Dr Malcolm Jones’ (University of Sheffield) description of printed images from early modern England, in the context of the project British Printed Images to 1700 by the Centre for Computing in the Humanities of King’s College, London.

This prose description of an image is wrapped in a div element, consisting of a head and multiple paragraphs. The first paragraph contains the image, with a pointer to its digital representation in the graphic element’s url attribute. Notice how the rend attribute is used to encode specific information for rendition of the image as a thumbnail. Although the caption of the image is encoded as bold text inside a p, it could as well have been encoded as head. The text contains a quote, marked as q and containing a poem, organised in line groups and lines. Inside the paragraphs, highlighted text is marked with hi, titles with title, and notes with note. For a discussion of these elements, see .

No. 2, September 2006

‘A New yeares guift for shrews’

A New yeares guift for shrews is a diminutive sheet engraved c.1630 and signed by the relatively unknown Thomas Cecill, who seems to have been active between 1625 and 1640. It bears the imprint of the even less known Edward Lee, whose only other issue is a large equestrian portrait of Charles I.

In a series of unified scenes, it depicts the traditional nagging wife eventually beaten by her husband, and ultimately chased off by the devil. It is accompanied by the following rhyme of a traditional type, reminiscent of the ditty about Solomon Grundy, who was Born on Monday, and then on successive days christened, married, taken fatally ill and Buried on Sunday:

Who marieth a wife uppon a Moneday, If she will not be good uppon a Tewesday, Lett him go to the wood uppon a Wensday, And cutt him a cudgell uppon the Thursday, And pay her soundly uppon a Fryday; And And: if she mend not, the Divil take her a Saterday Then may he eate his meate in peace on the Sonday.

In the final scene the husband is shown happily enjoying a jug of ale at an ale-bench outside ‘The Swan’ - to judge from the inn-sign. Another interesting detail of the contemporary street-scene is the latticed box attached to the tavern wall: at lattice, the Oxford English Dictionary explains: A window of lattice-work (usually painted red), or a pattern on the shutter or wall imitating this, formerly a common mark of an alehouse or inn. The Dictionary illustrates this usage with a quotation from Richard Harvey's Plaine Percevall (1590), and one not inappropriate to our print: As they which determine upon an Ale bench whether the passenger that passeth by the lettise be a Saint or a Divell.

It was clearly popular, for it appears in Peter Stent’s advertisements of 1654 and 1662, and is still listed in his successor John Overton’s catalogue of 1673,Alexander Globe, Peter Stent, London Printseller, c. 1642-65 (Vancouver, 1985), p. 123 (no.*448). yet only the unique impression in the British Museum's Department of Prints & Drawings survives - testimony to the great rarity of such popular material.

David Kunzle was the first to point out the likely dependence of A New yeares guift on a contemporary German sheet, Ein köstlich gutes bewertes Recept vor die Männer so böse Weiber haben [A precious and valuable prescription for men who have such evil wives], though in the German sheet the process of correction takes nine days; he drives into the wood on Monday, cuts sticks on Tuesday, beats her on Wednesday, and so on.D. Kunzle, The Early Comic Strip, c. 1450-1825 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1973), pp. 230-1 (fig. 8-9). The English shrew is shown fleeing before a sturdy devil, his pitchfork raised, as he pursues her – into hell, presumably.

British Museum 1850,1109.10. Dimensions of original: 189 mm x 206 mm.

Adapted from the TEI P4 XML source encoding of Malcolm Jones’ article Print of the month, September 2006 (Jones 2006). TEI XML source is no longer available online.
Bronte, Emily. 1847. Wuthering Heights. London: Thomas Cautley Newby, publisher. Encoded and made available by the University of Virginia Library, Text Collection at . Cather, Willa. 1919. Roll Call on the Prairies. The Red Cross Magazine, 14 (July 1919). 27–31. Edited by Andrew Jewell. Lincoln: Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Available online at . Jones, Malcolm. 2006. Print of the month, September 2006. British Printed Images to 1700. London: Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King’s College. Available online at . Morgan, Eric Lease. 1997). Clarence meets Alcuin; or, expert systems are still an option in reference work. In: The Cybrarian’s manual. Edited by P. Ensor. Chicago: American Library Association. 127–134. Available online at . Muller, Charles. s.d. XML Technical Notes on the Yogācāra Bibliography. Accompanying documentation for the Yogācāra Buddhism Research Association. Available online at .