Opera del Vocabolario Italiano

Use this field to restrict your search to the works of one or more authors represented in the database. In the Author: field, type the author's last name, such as Cavalcanti or cavalcanti (note case insensitivity). Author names should be specified without accents; Folgóre da San Gimignano, for example, should be entered as folgore. Compound names are most easily represented by entering the most peculiar part of the name. Thus, Guittone d'Arezzo should be searched as guittone or arezzo. A corpus defined as the works written by three writers can be represented as:

petrarca,boccaccio,dante  [note: no space after commas]

This limits the corpus to the works in the database written by Fransceso Petrarca, Giovanni Boccaccio, Dante Alighieri and the less famous Dante da Maiano. Note that the comma between the authors' names functions as an "OR" operator.

You may also specify one or more author names, by first or last names or initials, enclosing the query in double quotes. Note, however, that your entry must match exactly the OVI bibliographic information as found in the printed or online bibliographies. For example,

"Ugolino B"
"Buzzola d"
"de Manf"

all result in works by Ugolino Buzzola de' Manfredi. However, searching for "Ugolino M" will result in zero hits (this would require using an "AND" operator, which has not yet been implemented).

Multiple quoted author names must be separated by commas, such as:

"da Bologna","da San"  [note: no space after comma]

This formula would restrict the search to documents by authors containing da Bologna, da San Gimignano, da Santa Fiora, da San Concordio, and da San Miniato.

Note that the author is given as Anonimo only in cases where the text is considered a literary work. In all other cases an unknown author is signaled by an "=" (equal sign).

^Return to Search Form^

Use this field to restrict your search to the titles of one or more works represented in the database. In the Title: field enter either a single word, or a string of words in double quotes, without accented characters. For example, entering ninfale will result in the selection of Boccaccio's Ninfale Fiesolano. Title searching on a single common word results in the selection of multiple titles containing that term. Thus, entering trattato in the title field results in a corpus of some fifteen documents containing trattato in the title, including Bono Giamboni's Trattato di Virtù e di Vizi (1292) and Jacopo Passavanti's Trattato dei sogni (1355).

Title searching also supports the "OR" operator (i.e., comma) in much the same way as author searching. For example, specifying:

testamento,cedola  [note: no space after comma]

Complete titles can also be searched by enclosing the complete title, as listed in the OVI Bibliography, with or without double quotes. Hence the queries:

"Fiore di rettorica"

Fiore di rettorica

will select all the editions of Bono Giamboni's Fiore di rettorica represented in the database. Note that such title searches are case insensitive, hence "fiore di rettorica" is equivalent to "Fiore di rettorica". Exact substrings from the OVI title will also match the document in question.

^Return to Search Form^

Use the pull-down tab to define the corpus to be searched according to a single half-century period. For example, to restrict the search to texts composed in the first half of the thirteenth century, use 1201-1250. Likewise, to restrict the search to texts composed in the second half of that century, select 1251-1300. Because the dating of some texts spans a range of years that cross half-century boundaries, such texts will be included in the corpori defined by both respective half-century periods. For example, Meo dei Tolomei's A nnulla guisa me posso soffrire/caribo/ has been assigned the date range 1291-1310 as the probable years of its composition. According, it will be included in a corpus defined by the period 1251-1300 and as well as 1301-1350.

The user should note that a century begins with the year xx01. For example, the first year of the 14th century is 1301, not 1300, which is reckoned as the last year of the 13th century. However, if the date assigned to the text is an approximate date (i.e., circa 1300), then the text will be included from the subsequent half-century as well as its proper one (i.e., 1301-1350 as well as 1251-1300).

Searching by Selected Years and Date Ranges

Use this field to specify texts to be included in the search according to the year of composition assigned to them by the OVI. For example, entering 1265-1321 selects all texts assigned composition dates between these years. In addition to year ranges, you may limit the corpus to works composed in any individual year. For example, entering 1325 will select any works that have 1325 as their assigned date.

If a text is assigned more than one year as its date of composition, assume the first value given for single year date searches. For example, Guido Cavalcanti's Rime has been assigned the date range of 1270-1300 as the years of its composition. In this case the first year (1270) should be regarded as the date of composition for search purposes. Note that the single year date search functions only if the year searched is included as the first or only number of the date range. Hence, a corpus defined by entering the year 1270 in the year/range field will not include any works which have been assigned a date range such as 1265-1300 as the approximate period of their composition.

When limiting the corpus of the OVI search by date field, be aware that date ranges in the bibliography are indicated with either a hyphen (-) or a slash (/). The hyphen indicates that both the year in which the document was started and the year in which it was completed are known with certainty (or, in the case of a series of works which is considered one document in the database, the year of the first and the year of the last components). The slash indicates that one can reasonably assume that the document was composed at some time during the period thus indicated, but the exact date of its composition is unknown.

^Return to Search Form^

To define a search corpus according to one or more general or specific areas, click on the corresponding link to open a pop-up menu containing a list of all of the possible geographic areas and their corresponding abbreviations. Click on the checkbox to the left of each area you wish to Include in search corpus. When finished, click the button labeled "Include in search" to enter the abbreviations for the areas you selected into the appropriate field on the main search form. Note that this pop-up menu feature uses Javascript, which not all browsers support or which some browser support only partially. If your browser does not open the pop-up window, or if it does not automatically enter the area abbreviations into the appropriate field, you will need to enter the abbreviations manually from the following list (note that abbreviations from this list may be entered in both the general and specific area fields):

• Table of Abbreviations for General and Specific Areas

How Linguistic Areas are Defined

Both a general linguistic area (General Area), which usually corresponds to a geographic region in Italy (tosc. = toscano), and a specific linguistic area (Specific Area), which when possible coincides with the name of a city or town (fior. = fiorentino; sang. = sangimignanese) have been specified in the bibliographic data for each text in the database.

If there is insufficient data to attribute a specific linguistic type associated with a city or town, the Specific Area field simply repeats the data in the General Area field. For example, including tosc as the General Area results in a search for all Tuscan texts (909). On the other hand, including fior as the Specific Area results in a search for only Fiorentine texts (347). Yet, including tosc as the Specific Area searches for all Tuscan texts that were not able to be attributed to any specific Tuscan city or town (175).

In the bibliographic data for the Specific Area field one will occasionally find the following combined notations:

• The character ">" (i.e. A>B) means that a text pertaining to the linguistic area A was copied by a scribe who modified it according to his own linguistic type B (patina linguistica).
• The character "/" (slash) (i.e. A/B) indicates that the the document mixes in a certain sense the linguistic type A and the linguistic type B (mescidanza linguictica).
• The character "-" (hyphen) (i.e. A-B) means that the language of the document constitutes a system that contains elements of both the linguistic type A and the linguistic type B (diasistema).
• A comma (",") (i.e. A,B) indicates that the text was written partially in language A, partially in language B.
• A question mark ("?") (i.e. A? or A/B?, etc.) means that the linguistic classification is uncertain.

These combined notations cannot be searched directly (e.g., one cannot enter A>B in the Specific Area field), but searching on either part of a combined notation will return documents that include that part in a combined notation (e.g. searching for A will return all instances of A A>B A-B etc.).

^Return to Search Form^

Using the Pull-down Tabs to Select Document Form and Type

Use the pull-down tabs to define the search corpus according to specific document forms and types. For example, to restrict the corpus to include only those documents designated as having a mixed form (i.e., containing both verse and prose), select the option labeled "mixed" on the pull-down tab labeled "form". Likewise, to restrict the corpus to include only those documents which are translations, select the option labeled "translation" on the pull-down tab labeled "type".

Note that you can further restrict the search corpus by making selections from both pull-down tabs. The resulting corpus will contain only those documents that belong to both categories (i.e., the categories are joined by 'AND'). Conversely, the default selection "any" includes all of the options indicated on the pull-down tab, and hence does not restrict the search corpus in any way.

Using the Pop-up Menus to Specify Genre(s)

To define a search corpus according to a specific genre, click on the link labeled "genre" in order to open a pop-up menu containing a list of all of the possible genres and their corresponding abbreviations. Click on the checkbox to the left of each genre you wish to Include in search corpus. When finished, click the button labeled "Include in search" to enter the abbreviations for the genres you selected into the genre field on the main search form. Note that this pop-up menu feature uses Javascript, which not all browsers support or which some browser support only partially. If your browser does not open the pop-up window, or if it does not automatically enter the area abbreviations into the appropriate field, you will need to enter the abbreviations manually from the following list:

• Table of Abbreviations for Genres

^Return to Search Form^