Hypertext Editions of Eliot, Dante, DG Rossetti, and Dickinson.

The notion that readers find poetry too difficult has been documented at least since Ben Jonson voiced the opinion that John Donne ‘deserved hanging for not keeping of accent’. My contention is that hypertext is uniquely suited to help readers with poetic difficulty. A hypertext poetic edition can provide commentary, related texts by the poet and cultural predecessors, critical works, reviews, and links to other resources on the subject, all available in one location. Through an exploration of The Prufrock Papers, The Princeton Dante Project, The Rossetti Archives, and The Electronic Dickinson, the manner in which hypertext editions expedite a reader's understanding of poetry will be illustrated, as well as the unique opportunity these editions present for creating a format determined by a poet's work. In addition, editorial issues characterizing the medium will be discussed: the instability of the physical forms on which the editions reside and the software used to create them, the need for guidelines and standards for digital scholarly editing, the importance of electronic markup in development of the editions and the necessity of scholars leading the process of their creation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]