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CLUL is glad to announce that researcher Rita Marquilhas was awarded an Advanced Grant by the European Research Council in the 2011 call. She submitted an application for a five-year project P.S., Post Scriptum: A Digital Archive of Ordinary Writings (Early Modern Portugal and Spain), which proposes to build up a campaign of systematic collection, edition and historical-linguistic study of personal letters written in Portugal and Spain during the Early Modern Ages, especially between the XVIIth and the early XIXth century). These documents are original epistolary writings sent by servants, children, wives, lovers, thieves, soldiers, artisans, priests, political fighters, and many other types of social agents whose paths collided with the persecuting policies of both Inquisition and secular justice, two institutions that used to seize personal correspondence as instrumental proof of indictment. Since such documents are accompanied by the ‘sociological’ interviews carried out by inquisitors and judges, they induce modern researchers to a well-contextualized study of traditional communities in their inter-personal modes of relation. Often, the sources’ texts contain an (almost) oral rhetoric, through which emotions were expressed, common-sense was stated, non-orthodox beliefs were confessed and trivial incidents were narrated. Until now, only a few scarce samples have been uncovered of this Early Modern ‘popular’ discourse, that provides unique insights useful not only for social historians, but also for language historians, for whom knowledge of real life speech is all too frequently attained only through the veil of literary and other formal texts. Post-Scriptum Project will not only assemble a large collection of letters, but it will also combine its philological treatment – an online digital edition following Textual Criticism standards – with the cultural and linguistic study of its contents.
European Research Council Press Release, list of selected researchers by country and statistics for the Advanced Grant Call 2011.

Rita Marquilhas

CARDS team, pilot project of POST SCRIPTUM