Victor Millet
Victor Millet studied Anglo-Germanic philology at the University of Barcelona (1983-1988). He obtained his doctorate in medieval German literature at the University of Tübingen (Germany) in 1991, and subsequently worked as a lecturer in Spanish at the Free University of Berlin (Germany) from 1991 to 1993. Since then, he has pursued his academic career at the University of Santiago de Compostela, initially as a senior lecturer/reader and, since 2010, as a full professor.
He is a regular contributor to European programmes such as Erasmus Mundus Joint Masters (GLITEMA, EMLex), Blended Intensive Programmes, and Strategic Partnerships. He has also served as a visiting professor at several German universities, including Freiburg (2007), Göttingen (2009-2010), and Heidelberg (2023). Additionally, he is a fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (Germany) and has supervised PhD theses in Santiago, Barcelona, and Buenos Aires.
In 1995, Professor Millet received a research prize for the best scientific article in the Humanities. He has authored 18 books and more than 60 articles in his field and has been the Principal Investigator of 12 research projects. His work spans the major genres of medieval German literature, with notable contributions including his studies on Gottfried von Straßburg's Tristan, Germanic heroic poetry, and, for the past decade and a half, the philological edition of medieval texts. Since 2016, he has focused on the digital edition of medieval German texts and has authored and coordinated the digital edition of the complete works of Hartmann von Aue (12th century), which opens new ways of editing historical texts in German philology.
From 1995 to 2003, he coordinated the doctoral programme in German Philology at the University of Santiago de Compostela, where he also served as Vice-Rector for External Relations and Internationalisation 2011 to 2014.
During his stay in Strasbourg, Professor Millet will be hosted by Dr. Marie-Sophie Winter (2023 Fellow) and will give a conference “This drives me crazy! Or: how I learned to love variants” followed by a doctoral workshop “Unstable texts. Change as a principle of tradition” on 17 June 2025, and also participate in a Study day “Éditer — et ensuite ? De l’édition numérique aux études littéraires computationnelles” on 18 June 2025 (see below).
Public lecture - Variants in medieval literature
June 17, 2025 | From 17:00 until 18:30 | MISHA, Strasbourg
© UB Heidelberg/Daniela Jakob
Victor Millet is Professor of German Philology at the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain, and has been invited for a USIAS research stay. His work spans the major genres of medieval German literature, the philological edition of medieval texts and - over recent years - the digital edition of medieval German texts.
Conference - This drives me crazy! Or : how I learned to love variants
We know, and have for many years - at least since Zumthor’s Essai de poétique médiévale (Toward A Medieval Poetics) - studied the fact that medieval literature is eminently 'variant', i.e., that the different copies of the same works display a permanent instability or 'mouvance' even in cases where we consider that the texts are fairly stable. No copy is identical to its predecessor. It is easy to identify and even to interpret when a certain passage is completely different in two copies. But what is difficult for us is to understand how exactly variance works when the copies say basically the same thing. What are the phenomena, what could be the principles underlying them, how can we understand the process, can we even measure it? These and other questions will be raised in the lecture. It remains to be seen whether this will yield answers.
The conference will be in English and is organised by Thomas Mohnike (2013 USIAS Fellow, Germanic and North European Worlds (MGNE), University of Strasbourg) and Marie-Sophie Winter (2023 USIAS Fellow, University of Picardy Jules Verne, TrAme, UR 4284), with support from USIAS.
Study Day - The exploitation of digital editions for literary studies
June 18, 2025 | From 09:00 until 12:30 | Bibliothèque nationale et universitaire de Strasbourg
Image - chronique strasbourgeoise dite d'Imlin, 1501-1600, Ms.1.266, digitization available on Numistral
Publishing - and then what? From digital publishing to computational literary studies
The aim of this day is to develop, through exchanges, a reflection on the exploitation of digital editions with a perspective of their valorisation in the field of literary studies.
Among the speakers, Victor Millet (a medieval Germanist at the University of Santiago de Compostela) will present the digital editions he has been producing since 2015 in cooperation with the Heidelberg University Library as part of heiEDITIONS.
The Study Day is organised by Thomas Mohnike (2013 USIAS Fellow, Germanic and North European Worlds (MGNE), University of Strasbourg) and Marie-Sophie Winter (2023 USIAS Fellow and University of Picardy Jules Verne, TrAme, UR 4284), in collaboration with the University of Strasbourg’s Faculty of languages, the Alsace Inter-University House for the Social Sciences and Humanities (MISHA) and the National and University Library (BNU), with support from USIAS for the research stay of Professor Millet.
A travers des échanges croisant les perspectives de la recherche et de l’ingénierie, cette journée propose une réflexion sur l’exploitation des éditions numériques dans la perspective de leur valorisation dans le champ des études littéraires.
Programme
• 9h – 9h15 : mot d’accueil
• 9h15 – 9h45 : Victor Millet (Université Saint-Jacques de Compostelle) : “The Heidelberg Infrastructure for Digital Editions (heiEditions): Achievements and – more important! – Challenges”
In my presentation I would first like to briefly expose what the heiEditions infrastructure can do, or at least what we have done with it in the ‘Hartmann von Aue – digital’ projects. Secondly, I would like to argue why I think that this is a very good model. And last but not least I will ask the question, whether digital editions are worth the enormous extra effort they require. The challenge is to achieve the point in which we all could give a positive answer to this question.
9h45 – 10h : discussion
• 10h – 10h30 : Pablo Ruiz Fabo (Université de Strasbourg) [en ligne]) : « Éditer – et avant ? »
Cette conférence présentera l'expérience de développement du corpus DISCO (Diachronic Spanish Sonnet Corpus), qui contient 4 530 sonnets du XVIe au XXe siècle encodés en TEI. Il sera question de la valeur des ressources textuelles volumineuses annotées automatiquement avec des outils basés sur le TAL et des réflexions nécessaires pour leur exploitation. Nous nous demanderons concrètement comment les activités effectuées peuvent être utiles pour améliorer l’édition de ses sources.
10h30 – 10h45 : discussion
10h45 – 11h : pause-café
• 11h – 12h30 : « Après l'édition numérique : enjeux et contraintes »
La table ronde sera animée par Amélie Quilichini (UHA).
Participant.e. s : Arthur Brody (BNU), Elisa Michelet (BNU), Elsa Van Kote (Phun), Guillaume Porte (Arche), Marine Parra (BNU), Titouan Brisset-Sabouraud (Cisame)
Cette table ronde, organisée par les équipes des plateformes Estrades et du Lab, proposera une réflexion sur l'édition numérique du point de vue de l'ingénierie. Les intervenant.e.s échangeront entre autres sur les principes FAIR et leur vocation à prévoir le temps de l'« après-édition », sur les questions d’archivage, de maintenance et de coûts associés à la pérennisation des données, codes, sites et documents constitués dans le cadre d'une édition numérique. Sur le plan de l'exploitation des éditions, les échanges pourront également fournir des pistes de réflexion sur les enjeux de visualisation, d'interrogation et de médiation qui peuvent être entrepris à partir d'une édition numérique.
