LEMDO: Introduction to Critical Paratexts

Introduction to Critical Paratexts

Rationale

A critical edition for use in the classroom or rehearsal hall needs a frame to help the reader or user enter the ongoing converstion about the play. If the play has not been widely studied or performed, the editor must offer a critical perspective on the play, explain its textual history, and summarize its early performance history (if known).

Typical Paratexts

Typical critical paratexts in a LEMDO edition might include:

General Introduction

Critical Introduction/Survey (although the summary of the critical conversation may also be included in the General Introduction, particularly for plays that do not have a lengthy critical history)

Textual Introduction

Performance or Stage History

Bibliography

LEMDO editions have also included the following kinds of paratexts:

Acknowledgements

Chronology

Historical Context

Genealogy

Print Reception (in Kirk Melnikoff’s Selimus)

Encyclopedia (in David Bevington’s Hamlet)

Anthology leads set the standard for the structure and length of the critical paratexts and determine what subjects the editor needs to address (e.g., authorship, themes, early staging, historical contexts, critical history, performance history, genealogies, chronologies, and quotations from analogues and sources).¹

Critical Paratexts for LEMDO Hornbooks

Anthology leads and editors should keep in mind that the LEMDO Hornbooks series (our print editions from UVic Libraries ePublishing) will not include all the critical paratexts. The print edition will usually include only a General Introduction.

Practice

The critical paratexts for an edition are contained with the crit folder of an edition directory. Each critical paratext will have its own XML file. Editors can open an XML template for critical paratexts in Oxygen. See Use LEMDO’s Oxygen Templates.

Critical paratexts may be divided into sections using the


                                          <div>

element and a child


                                          <head>

element. Prose paragraphs are contained within the

<p>

element. Each paragraph is given an


                                       @xml:id

attribute and a unique value so that other parts of the edition (annotations, other critical paratexts) can point to the paragraph and so that users can easily link to and cite paragraphs. When critical paratexts quote from the modernized text, we use


                                          <ptr>

elements to point to anchors in the modernized text.

Critical paratexts are the easiest part of an edition for the LEMDO Team or an RA to encode on behalf of the editor. Encoding these texts does not require micro-editorial decisions in the way that encoding the modernized text does. If you are pressed for time and have funds to pay an RA, feel free to consult with the LEMDO Director about hiring UVic RAs to encode this part of your edition or getting your own RA trained up to encode the critical paratexts for you.

Sections in This Chapter

Structure of Critical Paratexts

Deprecate this File

Notes

1.Note that LEMDO discourages extensive supplementary materials, preferring to include quotations from analogues, sources, and contextual materials in the General Introduction.↑

Prosopography

Isabella Seales

Isabella Seales is a fourth year undergraduate completing her Bachelor of Arts in English at the University of Victoria. She has a special interest in Renaissance and Metaphysical Literature. She is assisting Dr. Jenstad with the MoEML Mayoral Shows anthology as part of the Undergraduate Student Research Award program.

Janelle Jenstad

Janelle Jenstad is a Professor of English at the University of Victoria, Director of The Map of Early Modern London, and Director of Linked Early Modern Drama Online. With Jennifer Roberts-Smith and Mark Kaethler, she co-edited Shakespeare’s Language in Digital Media: Old Words, New Tools (Routledge). She has edited John Stow’s A Survey of London (1598 text) for MoEML and is currently editing The Merchant of Venice (with Stephen Wittek) and Heywood’s 2 If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody for DRE. Her articles have appeared in Digital Humanities Quarterly, Elizabethan Theatre, Early Modern Literary Studies, Shakespeare Bulletin, Renaissance and Reformation, and The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. She contributed chapters to Approaches to Teaching Othello (MLA); Teaching Early Modern Literature from the Archives (MLA); Institutional Culture in Early Modern England (Brill); Shakespeare, Language, and the Stage (Arden); Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate); New Directions in the Geohumanities (Routledge); Early Modern Studies and the Digital Turn (Iter); Placing Names: Enriching and Integrating Gazetteers (Indiana); Making Things and Drawing Boundaries (Minnesota); Rethinking Shakespeare Source Study: Audiences, Authors, and Digital Technologies (Routledge); and Civic Performance: Pageantry and Entertainments in Early Modern London (Routledge). For more details, see janellejenstad.com.

Joey Takeda

Joey Takeda is LEMDO’s Consulting Programmer and Designer, a role he assumed in 2020 after three years as the Lead Developer on LEMDO.

Mahayla Galliford

Project manager, 2025-present; research assistant, 2021-present. Mahayla Galliford (she/her) graduated with a BA (Hons with distinction) from the University of Victoria in 2024. Mahayla’s undergraduate research explored early modern stage directions and civic water pageantry. Mahayla continues her studies through UVic’s English MA program and her SSHRC-funded thesis project focuses on editing and encoding girls’ manuscripts, specifically Lady Rachel Fane’s dramatic entertainments, in collaboration with LEMDO.

Martin Holmes

Martin Holmes has worked as a developer in the UVic’s Humanities Computing and Media Centre for over two decades, and has been involved with dozens of Digital Humanities projects. He has served on the TEI Technical Council and as Managing Editor of the Journal of the TEI. He took over from Joey Takeda as lead developer on LEMDO in 2020. He is a collaborator on the SSHRC Partnership Grant led by Janelle Jenstad.

Navarra Houldin

Training and Documentation Lead 2025–present. LEMDO project manager 2022–2025. Textual remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA with a major in history and minor in Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. Their primary research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America. They are continuing their education through an MA program in Gender and Social Justice Studies at the University of Alberta where they will specialize in Digital Humanities.

Rylyn Christensen

Rylyn Christensen is an English major at the University of Victoria.

Tracey El Hajj

Junior Programmer 2019–2020. Research Associate 2020–2021. Tracey received her PhD from the Department of English at the University of Victoria in the field of Science and Technology Studies. Her research focuses on the algorhythmics of networked communications. She was a 2019–2020 President’s Fellow in Research-Enriched Teaching at UVic, where she taught an advanced course on Artificial Intelligence and Everyday Life. Tracey was also a member of the Map of Early Modern London team, between 2018 and 2021. Between 2020 and 2021, she was a fellow in residence at the Praxis Studio for Comparative Media Studies, where she investigated the relationships between artificial intelligence, creativity, health, and justice. As of July 2021, Tracey has moved into the alt-ac world for a term position, while also teaching in the English Department at the University of Victoria.

Orgography

LEMDO Team (LEMD1)

The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators, encoders, and remediating editors.

Metadata

Authority title	Introduction to Critical Paratexts
Type of text	Documentation
Publisher	University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform
Series	Linked Early Modern Drama Online
Source	TEI Customization created by Martin Holmes, Joey Takeda, and Janelle Jenstad; documentation written by members of the LEMDO Team
Editorial declaration	n/a
Edition	Released with Linked Early Modern Drama Online 1.0
Encoding description	Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines
Document status	prgGenerated
Funder(s)	Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
License/availability	This file is licensed under a CC BY-NC_ND 4.0 license, which means that it is freely downloadable without permission under the following conditions: (1) credit must be given to the author and LEMDO in any subsequent use of the files and/or data; (2) the content cannot be adapted or repurposed (except in quotations for the purposes of academic review and citation); and (3) commercial uses are not permitted without the knowledge and consent of the editor and LEMDO. This license allows for pedagogical use of the documentation in the classroom.