Towards a Database of Poetic Form

This paper will discuss the motivations and challenges of creating a database of poetic form based on EEBO-TCP texts. We are current completing a pilot version of a database that will eventually contain information on the genres, metrical structure and rhyme schemes of all poetry in early modern printed texts. In this resource, users may search a variety of criteria, searching specific poetic forms by name ("ode", "ballad"), or metre ("iambic tetrameter"), or rhyme scheme ("abcb") and then refine search results within a time period, or according to author, or place of publication, or language. They may also enter information about a poem, such as its rhyme scheme, and be able to view similar or identical forms in the database.Our strategy is to create an interface which will interrogate marked-up EEBO-TCP texts, as users present queries. We employ a Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) P5-compliant scheme to enrich the relevant encoded texts, using a base tag set for the encoding of rhyme scheme and metrical information, along with a rhyme element to support simple analysis of rhyming words. The primary function of these tags is to encode the conventional metrical or rhyming structure within which a poet is working. By making this information available to users, the database will enable users to ask the kinds of questions about poetic form that we currently ask about words and phrases in EEBO-TCP texts, such as what the origins of a given form are, how does its structure and use change over time, whether a form relates to others and how this relationship develops over time.A database of poetic form offers an exciting new direction for research and teaching using EEBO-TCP. Online resources using EEBO-TCP texts have enabled students and scholars to conduct literary historical research in novel and exciting ways, allowing users to discover obscure publications and pursue new lines of enquiry through keyword-searchable full texts. The TCP has helped to revolutionize the way we study words and phrases, but our current online resources based on EEBO-TCP are not designed to support sophisticated analysis of the formal properties of early modern texts. As scholars begin to reassess the relationship between formal and historical study, we need electronic resources that will enable us to study form in a historically-rooted way, stimulating new questions about parallels and differences across literary periods.This paper will outline the kinds of data this resource could provide, and the kinds of questions we would want to ask of it. In addition, the paper will address some of the theoretical and practical challenges involved in encoding formal features in EEBO-TCP texts, and will suggest ways in which this process might be conducted on a larger scale in the future. Finally, the paper will include screenshots, and perhaps a brief demonstration of the pilot database, in order to explore how such a resource might be used in future teaching and research.