Introduction

This volume contains a number of contributions resulting from the scientific discussions held during the Euroconference "Philological Disciplines and Digital Technology" (Il Ciocco, Castelvecchio Pascoli, Italy, 7-11 September, 2003), sponsored by the European Science Foundation (ESF), the Conseil National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and the Regione Toscana (Tuscan Region). Therefore, the articles published here are not the Proceedings of that Conference but, more interestingly, they reflect the themes that were dealt with on that occasion. Owing to the different scientific experiences, the papers cover a wide range of issues but their authors share the same scope, which is to provide an accurate and precise state-of-the-art description of Digital Philology. In the light of the digital revolution, what is the position of philological disciplines? How are critical editors reacting to this? How do they perceive the functions of this technology? Is it seen only as a tool for teaching and for research, or does it assume a more innovative role from a methodological point-of-view? It is said, at least in Italy, that the critical-editor's profession is at a crisis: the publication or re-publication of texts, especially ancient ones, is carried out by an increasingly smaller number of specialists as well as students. The term 'philology', in reality, is more and more often used to define 'stylistics', 'literary critics', 'anthropology of literature', etc. If these considerations are true, how then can technological development and the creation of digital libraries have a positive influence on the editorial profession in order to help reverse the negative trend of a diminished interest by young researchers in the production of critical editions? At the end of the 1960's similar reflections were made already when the development of information technology (IT) for the literary and philological disciplines was still at its pioneering stage: for example on the occasion of the important seminar "La pratique des ordinateurs dans la critique des textes", organised by CNRS in Paris in 1968.