Digital Corpora and the Practices of Classical Philology

Digital Corpora and the Practices of Classical Philology: problems and possibilities
Dániel Kozák

The subject of my project is the digital corpus as a research tool in classical philology. Classical philologists from the 1990’s onwards have been using digital corpora including the most of ancient Greek and Latin literary texts. It can be assumed that, similarly to the appearance of writing and then of printing, digital texts and corpora do not just allow us to gather more data more quickly, but may also change the questions, methods and everyday practices of philology in a more substantial way. Classics as a discipline, however, has only scarcely reflected upon these fundamental changes: publications generally tend to present and discuss individual digital projects.

The focus of my project is the effect digital corpora have on intertextual interpretation. How does the methodology and practice of finding hitherto undocumented intertextual connections change if one is engaged in this interpretative practice (very typical of classical philology) using digital tools?  It is also my aim to map the opportunities for the Department of Latin and the Center of Digital Humanities at ELTE BTK in order to start a new digital project or join existing ones.