Leipzig Open Fragmentary Texts Series (LOFTS)

Leipzig Open Fragmentary Texts Series (LOFTS)

Editor: Monica Berti

Description

LOFTS establishes open editions of ancient works that survive only through quotations and text re-uses in later texts (i.e., those pieces of information that humanists call “fragments”). In the field of textual evidence, fragments are not portions of an original larger whole, but the result of a work of interpretation conducted by scholars who extract and collect information pertaining to lost works embedded in other surviving texts. These fragments include a great variety of formats that range from verbatim quotations to vague allusions and translations, which are only a more or less shadowy image of the original according to their closer or further distance from a literal citation.

LOFTS has two goals: 1) digitize paper editions of fragmentary works and link them to source texts; 2) produce born-digital editions of fragmentary works. In order to produce such results, LOFTS is working on two different subprojects:

• Digital Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum (DFHG) Project, which consists of a digitization of the five volumes of the Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum edited by Karl Müller in the 19th century.
• Perseids Fragmentary Texts Editor, that allows both scholars and students to annotate quotations and text reuses of fragmentary authors.