New Media in the Humanities: Research and ApplicationsProceedings of the first seminar on

The process of globalisation, now under way thanks to the wider use of computer science, has increasingly influenced the field of literature, not so much in literary creation itself as in the dissemination of literature throughout the world. As Pierre Levy has recently pointed out in his writings, the Internet has altered space and time; the literary dimension has been transformed by the web, and we are building a humanity which seems closer to itself. The publication of the Proceedings of the first conference on Computers, Literature and Philologyundoubtedly constitutes a significant stage in understanding the relationship between literary disciplines and new technologies. This first international event linking Italian Studies with European trends in Humanities Computing establishes stable relationships between Italian research centres and prestigious institutions abroad. We hear more and more often of ‘Information Technologies ’ but little is known about the role humanists, philosophers and writers play in the planning of the new information designs. The essays in this volume prove how substantial the contribution of these ‘knowledge managers ’ are to the theoretical elaboration and implementation of tools and resources. This link between ‘tools ’ and forms of knowledge brings us back to another revolutionary age in the field of communication: the Renaissance. The great Humanists, by creating and disseminating a new cultural model based on new instruments ( for example libraries), rediscovered the indissoluble bond between support theories and content. Today, we find ourselves in a similar situation. Even in the daily use of the cellular telephone (consider the problems of the delivery of documents in the applications of the future, like WAP and UMTS) there is a backing operation of ‘restructuring of knowledge’. Men of letters cannot, and must not, stay marginalized. Their place is in the centre of these revolutionary restructuring processes. In conclusion to this Foreword, I would like to remind you that the fourth conference o