To browse Academia. This activity was partially inspired by the idea of Twitterature developed by Alexander Aciman and Emmett Rensin; we believe with them that our digital time should develop new and more functional ways of addressing literary texts but at the same time we are convinced that the "burdensome duty of hours spent reading" cannot be eliminated. On the contrary, the new ways of reading in the digital era as we envisage them are the result and consequence of broader and deeper reading activities.
Before writing the characters that make one tweet we also elaborated paraphrases, summaries, and keywords related to the individual poems. The second version was elaborated in the context of a seminar on the same topic during winter This paper presents the two versions of the Twitter Edition of Petrarca's Rvf now available in the OPOB and focuses on the philology connected to the latest edition that provided an English translation of the original tweets written in Italian.
The actual Italian and English tweets are published in the Appendix to the article. As part of the seminar Re-reading Petrarca in the Digital Age-taught at the University of Oregon in Winter a digital close reading of Francesco Petrarca's Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta Rvf led to a series of parallel and entwined activities and projects.
The various occurrences and data obtained from the encoding were collected into an online database that is still operating and updatable. The results of this qualitative data collection were also compared with a quantitative computer-based research of selected keywords extracted from the various themes. From the beginning of the seminar, the class was divided into groups and each of them read the Rvf focusing on one of themes chosen while at the same time paying attention to the others.
The different groups considered these themes as interrelated and interdependent. The poet is the sphere in which all the topics emerge in their specific connotations. However, his sphere is related to, dependent on and intersected by the other four spheres. The encoding allowed measuring the different manifestations, levels and meanings of the intersecting relationships. The study of the visual interpretation of the Rvf in the Inc. Queriniano G V 15 paralleled the close reading and encoding activity and helped students to develop a visual rendering of their themes and a pointed, original and creative interpretation of Petrarca's masterpiece.
