Various versions of the Seven Sages of Rome, a collection of medieval stories, were produced throughout Europe and the Near East during the Middle Ages and early modern period. The main objective of this project is to incite reflection about the connectedness of the medieval literary world, by visualizing the diffusion of texts across time and space.
The first aim of this project was to collect information regarding the extant copies of the Seven Sages of Rome by completing the information about manuscripts and prints available on the online Arlima literary Archive with further research into other sources. The collected information was digitally organised, before being used to produce visualizations (graphs displaying in which languages the prints and manuscripts were produced, as well as static and timelapse maps) which reflect how texts of the Seven Sages of Rome were transmitted. Finally, the visual information was made accessible through a website, which any interested user can use as a tool to download the collected information, bring modifications to it, and produce new updated visualizations.
From the collected information about manuscript and prints, 2 different types of visualizations were produced: bar chart graphs and geographical scatter plots on maps. The bar charts were made using Plotly Express. They display the repartition of languages amongst manuscripts according to the century in which they are estimated to have been produced. The Dash framework was used to build the maps. They display the number of manuscripts or prints that were produced during a given period of time. The option to download and upload the data to produce new visualizations was also made possible thru the use of Dash core components.
The web app is available online at https://sevensages.up.railway.app/. From the web app, the user can see and interact with the map and graph visualizations of manuscripts and prints. Using a button, the user can download the csv file containing the collected information and upload it using another button. It is then possible to download the new images in PNG format.
The information presented on the Seven Sages web app was gathered from :
- Campbell, Killis and University of California Libraries. The Seven Sages of Rome. Boston, Ginn and company, 1907.
- Runte, Hans Rainer, et al. The Seven Sages of Rome and the Book of Sindbad : an Analytical Bibliography. Garland, 1984. (Prints reference)
- Runte, Hans Rainer. Li Ystoire de la male marastre : version M of the Roman des sept sages de Rome : a critical edition with an introd., notes, a glossary, five appendices, and a bibliography. M. Niemeyer, 1974.
- Runte, Hans R., and Laurent Brun. “Les Sept Sages de Rome.” Arlima - Archives de Littérature Du Moyen Âge, 12 Nov. 2021.