We introduce a new site that will become a new research tool for the study of the medieval period in Italy: Rassegna storica on line. This web site is part of a larger project that the editor of Medioevo Italiano has been developing for some time now.

     Medioevo Italiano and its daughter project Rassegna storica on line are electronic 'magic boxes', where scholars may send their articles, reviews or opinions about Italian history in the Middle Ages and beyond. Accepted contributions will be published 'on line' or in electronic format as CD-ROMS.

     We believe that electronic media will be the tools of the future. Using these tools, information on research and culture will become easily available to everyone. However, our aim is to produce a scholarly electronic journal and for this reason we welcome contributions of a high standard from scholars and in particular from young scholars, who will be the medievalists of the future.

     Rassegna storica on line is a biannual journal. Articles and contributions that are submitted to the editor in the first part of the year will be published in the spring issue, while the others will appear in autumn. One of the advantages of electronic publishing is the constant updating process that can be undertaken via feed back from the reader. At present we will publish contributions individually, but at the end of the semester we will publish a revised and corrected volume.

     Submissions must be written either in Italian, English, French, German, or Spanish. You can submit your contribution here.

     The English section is meant to be the meeting point for scholars, independent scholars and students in English and beyond. (2000, summer)


Orietta Da Rold and Angelo Gambella

The WWW has become one of the most powerful tools for study and research in many areas, including the Middle Ages, and its influence continues to grow. There are numerous sites in this area, and this paper aims at presenting and comparing the quality of Internet publication in Italy, Britain and USA. It will be a survey, a prospective. It will focus on selected sites. In particular, I shall be looking at Medieval Manuscript Studies and related pages, hoping to open a discussion. During the last year the study of the Italian web has undergone a major development. Important universities' web sites have appeared, but often projects are based on self-supported and non-affiliated individuals. The Medioevo Italiano Project tried to respond to the lack of interest shown by scholars. By contrast, British and American web site have a long-established tradition of publishing images, data and secondary sources, for they consider the use of Internet publication an essential tool in teaching. The paper presents a detailed assessment of this situation, searching for answers to the question of how to improve and promote the Medieval studies on the web in Italy.

This new journal is a first step toward a link between the Middle Ages in Italy and the electronic medium. For the occasion, I present a report about an electronic Project, which was started of in England in1990 and is still working to meet its ambitious initial aims. To make available, in computer-readable form, transcripts, images, collations, and analyses of all eighty-four extant manuscripts and four pre-1500 printed editions of the Canterbury Tales. Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales towards the end of the fifteenth century. The poem is a collection of tales, which are joined by links (epilogue or prologue to the tale as known among editors) and told within the motif of a pilgrimage. The poem is uncompleted, fragmentary and survives in a large number of witnesses datable 1400-1500. The project has developed computer software in order to explore again the large textual tradition of this poem. This paper will focus on the reasons why the project was founded and on the result that it has achieved in the years. I believe that many of the research tools that are developed and used by the Project could be set as an example to explore different textual traditions, also beyond the boundaries of the Middle Ages.