TEI

What is it?

‘The Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) is a consortium which collectively develops and maintains a standard for the representation of texts in digital form. Its chief deliverable is a set of Guidelines which specify encoding methods for machine-readable texts, chiefly in the humanities, social sciences and linguistics.’
From the TEI-c.org website

TEI is an international organization founded in 1987, a community, and a collaborative, networked, online, open source, networked archive

TEI is an XML-based language. Currently, the latest version of the guidelines available for use is TEI P5.

TEI is a set of guidelines for creating machine-readable texts.

TEI is used to create customized ‘schemas’ and to define elements / tags to enable unique mark-ups and annotations of texts, which are then noted in the header description.

TEI is platform independent.

As an online community, there are numerous resources available to those interested in using TEI.

The Text Encoding Initiative website is here: <http://www.tei-c.org/>

TEI By Example has a series of tutorials for the beginner and a TEI validator that will check your marked text: <http://www.teibyexample.org/TBE.htm>

oXygen offers a suite of xml programs (Editor, Author and Developer) that can be downloaded for free for one month: <http://www.oxygenxml.com/>

What we did with TEI

For our TEI mark up of T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” we used the following to add our annotations to the text:

<interpGrp> “(interpretation group) collects together a set of related interpretations which share responsibility or type.” www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/en/html/ref-interpGrp.html

Usually, the interp element defines a set of @xml:id attributes. Our list of 34 mood attributes was noted in the header as follows (see Prufrock TEI Basic Verse file for full formatted list):

  <interpGrp type="moods">
    <interp xml:id="anticipation">anticipation</interp>

The specific mood attributes (terms) were associated with the textual element <lg>, marking new line groups in the text with the inclusion of the @ana attribute. Because <lg> is a structural element determining verse form, this meant students ‘deformed’ Eliot’s original structure of lines and stanzas when they published their html results to the web, leading to extensive discussion of the authority of the text and the need (or not) to maintain the integrity of the original.

The following is an example of a student mark-up of the text:

  <lg ana="inviting">
    <l>Let us go then, you and I,</l>
    <l>When the evening is spread out against the sky</l>
  </lg>
  <lg ana="unsettling">
    <l>Like a patient etherized upon a table;</l>
  </lg>
  <lg ana="sinister">
    <l>Let us go,</l>
  </lg>
  <lg ana="unsettling">
    <l> through certain half-deserted streets,</l>
    <l>The muttering retreats</l>
    <l>Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels</l>
    <l>And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:</l>
  </lg>

Our working TEI file with basic verse encoding is posted as a shareable, free to use file for others interested in TEI encoding.