Compilation guidelines

The major guideline for the selection of texts is to reflect their textual history in the discourse world. Texts with a wider circulation and a greater reception are chosen over such with a lesser importance in the discourse world. For example, rules ceased to be of importance during the Early Modern English period due to the dissolution of the monasteries and are consequently represented to a lesser extent in the corpus.

Generally, text reception and circulation are evaluated on the basis of contemporary, i.e. historical sources, and modern scholarly studies. For example, the number of editions of a text is helpful in estimating its relevance in the discourse world.

However, individual genres have different requirements. Catechisms, for instance, are well documented in modern research and their circulation can be reconstructed closely. Up to 20 editions are frequent for one single work and most catechisms have at least reached three to six editions. Subsequently, samples were drawn from texts with at least five editions and care was taken to include "best-selling" works which have reached up to 58 editions (John Ball's Short Catechism, for example) and those works which were officially prescribed (the Prayer Book Catechism or the Westminster Shorter Catechism).

For other genres, the reconstruction of the circulation of a single text, let alone of a whole genre, is less ideal. Here, texts are chosen which are discussed as "typical" of or "important" for the genre by modern sociohistorical and literary research; George Paule’s Life of John Whitgift has, for instance, been identified as a pioneer work regarding ecclesiastical biographies of the seventeenth century.

Generally, full texts are rejected in favour of samples (except in the case of shorter texts, e.g. prayers, sermons or pamphlets). The major objective in sampling is that samples should reflect the range of text sections/functions of the complete text as closely as possible.

Treatises are notoriously difficult here. They are often very long and may have one predominant function with only small sections covering different functions. Care has to be taken not to lose such sections in the sampling procedure. Additionally, treatises are often composed in a compilatory way. The Treatise of Love, for example, is a doctrinal, monologic compendium which consists of ten individual treatises. The first of them is the longest, comprising roughly two thirds of the complete text. In sampling of such complex works, we draw several samples from several texts in order to match textual functions of the samples as closely as possible to the complete work and to indicate the variety of individual texts contained in the compendium. Similarly, if one single text has few, but markedly different functional sections, we decided to draw several samples from this one text to reflect these sections.

As concerns the number of samples and sample length, a rather flexible approach is chosen and individual genres follow quite different guidelines. Doctrinal treatises as one of the core (sub-) genres, for example, will be represented by a number of 8 samples of ca. 5,000-8,000 words each per 50-year period throughout the corpus. Ideally, these samples will be distributed evenly across the century. This basic data set will be expanded when necessary to reflect further emerging subgenres or to emphasize a greater impact of the core genre in a particular period. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, for instance, contemplative treatises will be represented in addition to doctrinal treatises, to reflect the mystic tradition as a subgenre of treatises. In a similar way, temporary prevalence of one subgenre may be seen in the latter half of the fourteenth and the first half of the fifteenth century in controversial (Lollard) treatises, a subgenre which does not reemerge until the beginning of the sixteenth century in connection with the Tyndale/More controversy over vernacular Bible translations and with the upcoming Reformation.

Keying in is performed primarily by research assistants followed by a double proofreading process by research assistants and postgraduate researchers. Sources are scholarly editions and facsimile copies of originals. Catalogue information for each text will be made available with the manual.