Erek – digital

Erek is the first Arthurian romance of German literature and possibly Hartmann's von Aue earliest work, written in or close to the 1180s. Just like Hartmann's late work, the Iwein, the Erek was soon a widely read text, mentioned several times by other authors of the time (most notably by Wolfram von Eschenbach).

On this website you will find a digital edition of Erek. It consists of a virtual manuscript library, the transcriptions of all extant testimonies, the edition of the main manuscript, and a number of attached materials. The aim is to make this widespread text of the German Middle Ages thoroughly and completely accessible for the first time in its complex and multi-layered tradition.

You will find the texts through the Virtual Manuscript Library with digital images of all manuscripts and fragments. The text corresponding to each image can be seen both as a mere transcription and in a normalized and edited form.

In the section Introduction you will find, besides an introduction to this digital edition, a presentation of the editorial principles. Under Materials we collect additional working tools, but initially only the bibliography. In the section Information you will find details about the project, the team, the functionality and the terms of use.

Technically, the transcription and editing work is done in XML format according to the guidelines of the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) Text Encoding Initiative (TEI). For the specifica aspects of the encoding, we follow the guidelines of HeiEditions HeiEditions. All image and text data are made freely accessible online under an 'open access' licence. Erek – digital also sees itself as 'open science' in the sense that the data and materials can basically be expanded.

Erek – digital is edited by Joan Dalmases Paredes (Universitat de Barcelona), in cooperation with the Heidelberg University Library.