Cervantes Project: The Digital Quixote Iconography Collection Eduardo Urbina Eduardo Urbina Texas A&M University e-urbina@tamu.edu

Dr. Eduardo Urbina (University of California at Berkeley, 1979) is currently Professor of Hispanic Studies at Texas A&M University and Director of the Cátedra Cervantes at the University of Castilla-La Mancha. He is the author of Principios y fines del Quijote (1990), El sin par Sancho Panza: Parodia y creación (1991), Don Quixote Illustrated, ed. (2005), Electronic Variorum Edition of Don Quixote (2005-2009), Textual Iconography of the Quixote Archive (2003-2009), and La ficción que no cesa: Paul Auster and Cervantes (2007). He has published over 100 articles and book chapters in Anales Cervantinos (Spain), Bulletin Hispanique (France), Bulletin of Spanish Studies (UK), Espéculo (Spain), Iberoamericana (Germany), Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica (México), Romanistisches Jarhbuch (Germany), Cervantes, Hispania, Romance Quarterly, and many others. He is the Director of the Cervantes Project (http://cervantes.tamu.edu), editor of the Anuario Bibliográfico Cervantino and the Anuario de Estudios Cervantinos, Director and co-editor of the Biblioteca Cervantes series, founding member of the Cervantes Society of America, and a member of the Academia Norteamericana de la Lengua Española.

 Richard Furuta Richard Furuta Texas A&M University furuta@csdl.tamu.edu

Richard Furuta is a faculty member at Texas A&M University where he is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science, Director of the Center for the Study of Digital Libraries. and Director of the Hypermedia Research Laboratory.

Steven E. Smith Steven E. Smith Texas A&M University stevensmith@tamu.edu

Steven Escar Smith is Associate Dean for Collections and Services for the Texas A&M University Libraries. He holds the C. Clifford Wendler Professorship and adjunct appointments on the graduate faculty of English at A&M and in the School of Library and Information Science at the University of North Texas. He is founder of the annual Book History at A&M Workshop, which provides students with hands-on experience in printing and its allied technologies prior to 1800 (http://cushing.library.tamu.edu/events/book-history-workshop). He has published two books and numerous articles in a wide range of journals.

000061 003 3 article 29 September 2009

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 DHQ classification scheme; full list available in the DHQ keyword taxonomy Keywords supplied by author; no controlled vocabulary Initial encoding

Words and images together again, or the recovery of the illustrated history of the Quixote
Poster Abstract

It is often stated by critics that the Quixote is a theatrical, graphic, and visual book. Thus, visual representations, like theatrical performances, popular iconography, and book illustrations, have been recognized as significant contributions to the understanding of Cervantes’ masterpiece. Nevertheless, the thousands of woodcuts, engravings, etchings, drawings, and lithographs that have accompanied the text are, for the most part, a little known interpretative tradition, and a much neglected critical and artistic treasure.

Obstacles, such as the difficulty to get access to rare books, have prevented the illustrative tradition from being well appreciated by scholars, students, and users in general. In 2001 the Cervantes Project (CP) started the creation of a hypertextual archive to include digital images of the illustrations taken from over 500 of the most significant editions to form the textual iconography of the Quixote (as permitted by copyright limitations). Our main objectives are to make the illustrations more accessible and to establish their contribution to the reception and interpretation of the text. At the present time, the archive has acquired, digitized, and made available online more than 25,000 images, supported by a fully searchable database and complemented by rich metadata and innovative visualization tools.

The availability of the archive will contribute to the understanding and appreciation of Cervantes’ novel by initiating new explorations from many perspectives: textual, artistic, critical, bibliographical, and historical. In particular, we provide resources and assistance to examine the reception and evolution of the Quixote’s readings across time, culture, audience, and milieu. Furthermore, the images can be grouped according to several layers of content to cater for the users’ need for information selection of a specific critical focus. This is achieved by cataloging each image using a comprehensive taxonomy of the episodes, adventures, themes, and characters. We are also in the process of inserting cataloged anchors in the textual narrative to establish thematic interlinking between the locality in the narrative and the subject of the illustrations.

At the same time, this novel iconographic approach in our project will enable scholars to go beyond the literary aspect of Cervantes’ works. As an invaluable pictorial depository, we also emphasize supplying information regarding the historic value and artistic significance of the images. The hermeneutic and aesthetic values of each individual image can be carefully examined by art historians and the results incorporated in the archive as scholarly commentary. Additionally, we are also developing biographical commentary about artists and engravers. These rich scholarly commentaries will help to boost the study of book illustration art, which has been to date secondary in Art History, in aspects such as the evolution of techniques, from the first woodcuts (early 17th century) to modern mechanical offset (20th century), and the influence or achievement of an engraver, illustrator, or lithographer.

For additional information about the project, and to view the Digital Quixote Iconography collection, see http://cervantes.tamu.edu/.

Poster

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