BITAGAP

The Bibliografia de Textos Antigos Galegos e Portugueses database offers a union catalogue for all texts originally composed in Portuguese, Galician-Portuguese, and Galician, or translated into those languages during the medieval period.

A Project Sponsored by

The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley

Centro de Linguística, Universidade de Lisboa

Centro de Estudos Históricos, Universidade Nova de Lisboa

Compilers
Scope and content
General database usage
History of the project
Acknowledgments

Compilers (1988 - ):

Arthur L-F. Askins, Universidade de California, Berkeley
Harvey L. Sharrer, Universidade de California, Santa Barbara
Aida Fernanda Dias, Universidade de Coimbra
Martha E. Schaffer, Universidade de San Francisco

In association with (2008 - ):

Cristina Sobral, Faculdade de Letras, Universidade de Lisboa
Pedro Pinto, Centro de Estudos Históricos, Universidade Nova de Lisboa
Filipe Alves Moreira, Universidade do Porto

Scope and content

For pre-1501 prose texts, BITAGAP treats all "imaginative" or "literary" works, together with historical, legal, religious, scientific, and medical texts, etc., excluding only strictly notarial documents. The contents of all presently known collections of hagiographic texts and of kingdom-wide laws are individualized. Also included are certain "classic" prose works (such as the Notícia do Torto and the complex of very late 15th- and early 16th-century Portuguese chronicles—specifically those by Rui de Pina, Duarte Galvão, Cristóvão Rodrigues Acenheiro and Gaspar Correia) which, while not conforming strictly to the definitions set for chronology or type, are of importance to studies of the period and of items more properly recorded.

For poetry, the date limitation is set at 1520, following the practice of Brian Dutton (1982) [BITAGAP bibid 1717], allowing thereby the inclusion, as primary sources, of the early 16th-century songbooks containing works composed up to 1520: e.g., Garcia de Resende's Cancioneiro Geral (1516) and its derivations, as well as the Cancioneiro Musical da Biblioteca Nacional (ca. 1520). BITAGAP therefore gathers all texts of early Galician-Portuguese poetry (12th - 14th centuries), as well as the Portuguese and "Galician School" poems, both secular and religious, of the 15th and the very early 16th century.

Note is also taken of lost, problematical, and apocryphal texts, both in prose and poetry, that have been attributed to the period. All manuscript attestations, regardless of period, are considered as primary sources. Equally so are all incunabula, accompanied by later, derivative printings (principally, but not exclusively through the 18th century). Most 18th- through 21st-century critical and commercial printings are, however, identified in the reference BIBLIOGRAPHY.

Particular attention is paid in the reference BIBLIOGRAPHY to gathering items of direct interest for descriptions, locations, and editions of the manuscripts and early printings of the texts. The bibliography recorded of critical appreciations and of thematically oriented studies for the texts involved is extensive. It is NOT, however, exhaustive. BITAGAP makes no attempt at present, for example, to incorporate systematically the expansive body of critical materials compiled by Silvio Pellegrini and Giovanna Marroni (1981) [BITAGAP bibid 1087] for the early poetry, that by Joseph Snow (1977) [BITAGAP bibid 1930] for the Marian and secular poetry of Alfonso X of Castile and Leon, those by Giuliano Macchi (1964) [BITAGAP bibid 1284] and Teresa Amado (1991) [BITAGAP bibid 2598] for Fernão Lopes or that by António J. Dias Dinis (1949) [BITAGAP bibid 1257] for Gomes Eanes de Zurara, those by Isabel Vilares Cepeda (1989 [BITAGAP bibid 2309], and 1996 [BITAGAP bibid 5108]) for the field of medieval prose in general, or from the annotated bibliography for medieval Portuguese and Galician-Portuguese literature published annually in the Boletín Bibliográfico de la Asociación Hispánica de Literatura Medieval (1987-).

General database usage

While various search options are offered, as detailed in the general discussion of procedures for using this WWW version of PhiloBiblon, principal entry is provided by title/incipit, by manuscript/printed source, by author or other associated individuals, and by bibliography.

At the same time, in working with the search engine for BITAGAP, users should enter only one or two key words of titles or names in the appropriate slots, with or without diacritics, and not enter articles, prepositions, nor the conjunction "e". Users should also note the following conventions in the recording of "normalized" text titles and verse incipits. For ease in searching, the various transcriptional forms of the medieval language are normalized to a single modern Portuguese or Galician equivalent, as appropriate for the given text. In the case of verse incipits, normalization is made without regard to the original metric line or rhyme: e.g., sazom / sazon > sazão; ren / rem > rem; coraçon / coraçom / coraçam > coração; perdudo/a > perdido/a; couza(s) > coisa(s); etc. "Mia" and "minha" are normalized to "minha" for Portuguese and Galician-Portuguese and to "miña" for the later Galician texts. The original form of the incipit of a particular poem, as found specifically in the early sources, is given, in any event, in the corresponding record.

History of the project

Work on the project began in the summer of 1988 at the behest of the Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (Madison, Wisconsin), to serve as a companion to the Bibliografía Española de Textos Antiguos (BETA) and the Bibliografia de Textos Catalans Antics (BITECA). As the collaborative effort of Arthur L-F. Askins (UC Berkeley), Harvey L. Sharrer (UC Santa Barbara), Aida Fernanda Dias (U. de Coimbra), and Martha E. Schaffer (U. of San Francisco), it was supported in 1992-93, in 2002, and in 2007-2008 by Research Tools Grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Individual travel grants were provided at times to the compilers, again by the NEH, by the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center (UCSB), and the research grants programs of their respective universities. Further support, for the WWW versions, was supplied by the Portuguese Studies Program (UCB), the Center for Portuguese Studies (UCSB) and the Center for Galician Studies (UCSB), and the Library (UCB). The initial project team was expanded in the summer of 2008 with the addition of two contributing Associates, Cristina Sobral of the Faculdade de Letras, Universidade de Lisboa, and Pedro Pinto of the Centro de Estudos Históricos, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, and in the spring of 2010 with another Associate, Filipe Alves Moreira of the Faculdade de Letras, Universidade do Porto.

The initial concern of the compilers focused on the establishment of a basic corpus, through an intensive review and clarification of information already available in the traditional bibliographies of the field—Barbosa Machado (1741-59) [BITAGAP bibid 1223], Inocêncio Francisco da Silva (1858-1923) [BITAGAP bibid 1034], Fidelino de Figueiredo (1934 [BITAGAP bibid 1040], 1936 [BITAGAP bibid 1561]), Serafim da Silva Neto (1956) [BITAGAP bibid 1063], and Maria Adelaide Valle Cintra (1960) [BITAGAP bibid 1045]. That basic corpus has, however, been enormously expanded over the years by on-going fieldwork in library holdings in Portugal, Galicia and beyond, particularly elsewhere in Spain, in England, Brazil, and the United States.

BITAGAP is conceived as a continuing project, with versions being made available in electronic formats, as resources have permited. An early version, using a DOS dbms, appeared in 1993 on the CD-ROM ADMYTE, Disk 0, issued by Micronet, Madrid. An updated version on CD-ROM disk was produced in 1999, again with the DOS dbms, and released by The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. In the interim, an Internet version had been opened in 1997, hosted by The Library of the University of California, Berkeley, and was maintained with frequent updates during its eleven years of service. The data base was then transported, in 2008, to the Windows operating system, and the present Internet version developed and opened in 2010, hosted again by The Library of the University of California, Berkeley, offering noticeably expanded data search and recovery possibilities.

The editors most cordially invite the contributions of colleagues, by sending corrections, new information, and suggestions to Arthur L-F. Askins or to a href="sharrer@spanport.ucsb.edu.">Harvey L. Sharrer.

Acknowledgments

Institutions which have contributed significantly to the development of BITAGAP / Bibliografia de Textos Antigos Galegos e Portugueses include:

The Portuguese Studies Program, University of California, Berkeley
The Center for Portuguese Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara
The Center for Galician Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara
The Library, University of California, Berkeley
The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley
The National Endowment for the Humanities, Washington D.C.
Seminary for Medieval Spanish Studies, University of Wisconsin
DataBase Design & Engineering, Walnut Creek, California

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