Early modern intertextuality in the digital space. Notes on the design of the SFInC archive

Against the background of the ongoing scholarly debate on digital data collection, visualization, and fruition, this paper explores the methodological implications of Digital Humanities approaches to early modern intertextuality by discussing the design of SFInC, an experimental resource centred on the sixteenth-century French and English afterlives of Ludovico Ariosto's Suppositi. Focusing on the Anglo-Italian branch of the prototype, the paper comments on the difficulties encompassed in its modelling and in the transcription of the early modern texts it hosts, from the long-standing dilemma between old and modern spelling to the representation of the scripts' bibliographical ontology. Further reflection is given on the impact of a hypertextual structure on digital editorial practices, laying emphasis on viable visualization and representation modalities for genetically related texts. The resulting analyses highlight the project's strengths and weaknesses while also identifying foreseeable technological improvements and ways forward for alike resources, promoting a more comprehensive and digitally aided study of early modern intertextuality.