Generate Scholar Overviews
Generates 2-3 paragraph overview prose for modern scholars and role descriptions for historical figures.
1"""Generate scholar_overview prose for all scholars with linked works. 2 3Step 2 of the Scholar Pipeline (docs/SCHOLAR_PIPELINE.md). 4 5For modern scholars: 2-3 paragraph overview (max 400 words) 6For historical subjects: 1-paragraph role description 7 8All generated prose marked source_method='LLM_ASSISTED', review_status='DRAFT'. 9Writes staging/scholar/overviews.json before updating DB. 10""" 11 12import sqlite3 13import json 14from pathlib import Path 15from datetime import datetime 16 17BASE_DIR = Path(__file__).resolve().parent.parent 18DB_PATH = BASE_DIR / "db" / "hp.db" 19SUMMARIES_PATH = BASE_DIR / "scholars" / "summaries.json" 20STAGING_DIR = BASE_DIR / "staging" / "scholar" 21 22# Load summaries for context 23def load_summaries(): 24 if SUMMARIES_PATH.exists(): 25 with open(SUMMARIES_PATH, encoding='utf-8') as f: 26 return json.load(f) 27 return [] 28 29# Scholar overviews — generated from summaries.json + bibliography data 30# Following docs/WRITING_TEMPLATES.md Template 3a (modern) and 3b (historical) 31 32OVERVIEWS = { 33 # === Historical Figures === 34 "Francesco Colonna": ( 35 "Francesco Colonna (d. 1527) is the presumed author of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, " 36 "identified through the acrostic formed by the chapter initials: POLIAM FRATER FRANCISCVS " 37 "COLVMNA PERAMAVIT. A Dominican friar in Venice, Colonna's attribution has been canonical " 38 "since Casella and Pozzi's 1959 study, though contested by scholars proposing alternative " 39 "candidates including a Roman nobleman of the same name (Calvesi 1996) and Leon Battista " 40 "Alberti (Lefaivre 1997)." 41 ), 42 "Aldus Manutius": ( 43 "Aldus Manutius (c. 1449-1515) was the Venetian printer who published the HP in 1499, " 44 "producing what is widely regarded as the most elaborately illustrated incunabulum in the " 45 "history of printing. The HP stands apart from his press's primary output of Greek scholarly " 46 "texts, representing an ambitious experiment in vernacular illustration and typographic design. " 47 "His son Paolo published the second edition in 1545." 48 ), 49 "Ben Jonson": ( 50 "Ben Jonson (1572-1637), the English playwright and poet, annotated the British Library copy " 51 "of the HP (C.60.o.12, the 1545 edition). Russell identifies Jonson as Hand A in this copy, " 52 "noting that Jonson mined the HP for stage design imagery and architectural vocabulary. " 53 "Jonson's annotations represent a theatrical and literary mode of reading distinct from the " 54 "alchemical annotations of the copy's other hand." 55 ), 56 "Fabio Chigi (Pope Alexander VII)": ( 57 "Fabio Chigi (1599-1667), who became Pope Alexander VII in 1655, annotated his copy of the HP " 58 "(Vatican Chig.II.610) with particular attention to acutezze — instances of verbal cleverness " 59 "and rhetorical ingenuity. His reading was aesthetic rather than alchemical or encyclopedic. " 60 "Chigi later commissioned Bernini's elephant-obelisk sculpture in Piazza della Minerva (1667), " 61 "which drew on the HP's famous woodcut." 62 ), 63 "Benedetto Giovio": ( 64 "Benedetto Giovio (c. 1471-1545), a humanist and natural historian from Como, annotated two " 65 "copies of the HP (Modena and Como). Russell identifies his annotations as primarily extractive: " 66 "Giovio read the HP as a source for botanical, zoological, and antiquarian knowledge, treating " 67 "it as a Plinian natural history compendium rather than as an allegorical or literary text." 68 ), 69 "Paolo Giovio": ( 70 "Paolo Giovio (1483-1552), historian and biographer, was Benedetto's brother and may have " 71 "contributed to annotations in the Modena and Como copies of the HP. He is better known for " 72 "his emblem collection and biographical works than for HP scholarship per se." 73 ), 74 "Jean Martin": ( 75 "Jean Martin (d. 1553) produced the first French translation of the HP in 1546, adapting " 76 "the text for a French courtly audience. His translation introduced the HP to the French " 77 "cultural sphere, where it influenced garden design, festival culture, and the emblem tradition " 78 "throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries." 79 ), 80 "Beroalde de Verville": ( 81 "Beroalde de Verville (1556-1626) published a French edition of the HP in 1600 that included " 82 "a 'tableau steganographique' — a systematic table mapping narrative elements to alchemical " 83 "processes and substances. This edition inaugurated the tradition of reading the HP as alchemical " 84 "allegory and directly influenced all subsequent alchemical annotators, including those documented " 85 "by Russell in the BL and Buffalo copies." 86 ), 87 "Charles Nodier": ( 88 "Charles Nodier (1780-1844), the French bibliophile and Romantic writer, was among the " 89 "earliest modern enthusiasts of the HP, praising its typographic beauty and mysterious " 90 "character. His championing of the book contributed to the nineteenth-century revival of " 91 "interest in the HP as a bibliophilic and aesthetic object." 92 ), 93 94 # === Modern Scholars === 95 "James Russell": ( 96 "James Russell is the central scholarly figure for this project. His PhD thesis, submitted " 97 "to Durham University in 2014, documented the marginalia in six copies of the 1499 " 98 "Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, identifying eleven distinct annotator hands. Russell's work " 99 "demonstrated that the HP was far from an unreadable curiosity: the Giovio brothers read it " 100 "as Plinian natural history, Ben Jonson mined it for stage design, Pope Alexander VII " 101 "extracted examples of verbal wit, and multiple readers interpreted it as alchemical allegory.\n\n" 102 "Russell's central theoretical contribution is the concept of the HP as a 'humanistic activity " 103 "book' — a text whose puzzles, obscure language, and visual-textual interplay invited readers " 104 "to cultivate ingegno through creative annotation. His methodology combines codicological " 105 "analysis (identifying hands by ink, ductus, and content) with intellectual history (situating " 106 "each annotator within their cultural and professional context). The thesis provides the " 107 "evidence base for this project's concordance pipeline, hand attribution data, and folio-level " 108 "analysis." 109 ), 110 "James O'Neill": ( 111 "James O'Neill's work on the HP spans authorship studies and narratological analysis. His " 112 "Durham thesis examines self-transformation in the HP's narrative structure, while his " 113 "co-authored study with Maggie O'Neill surveys the full range of authorship candidates. " 114 "O'Neill argues that future research should use narratological analysis rather than archival " 115 "evidence alone to address the authorship question, shifting the debate from external " 116 "biographical evidence to internal literary form." 117 ), 118 "Efthymia Priki": ( 119 "Efthymia Priki has produced some of the most wide-ranging recent scholarship on the HP. " 120 "Her work spans reception history, text-image relations, and comparative dream-narrative " 121 "analysis. In her 2009 study, she surveys two peak periods of engagement with the HP: early " 122 "modern (through c. 1657) and the twentieth-century scholarly revival. Her 2016 work places " 123 "the HP within a comparative tradition alongside the Roman de la Rose and the Byzantine " 124 "Livistros and Rodamne, arguing that the dream frame enables pedagogical encounters that " 125 "prepare the lover for union.\n\n" 126 "Priki's text-image boundary study analyzes how the relationship between woodcuts and prose " 127 "shifts across editions, demonstrating that the HP's visual program is not stable but adapts " 128 "to new contexts. Her work establishes the HP as a genuinely European text whose reception " 129 "crosses linguistic, cultural, and disciplinary boundaries." 130 ), 131 "Anthony Blunt": ( 132 "Anthony Blunt (1907-1983), the art historian, published a foundational 1937 study of the " 133 "HP's influence on seventeenth-century French art. Blunt documented how the HP's woodcuts " 134 "and architectural imagery were adapted by French garden designers, festival planners, and " 135 "artists, establishing the book's importance for French visual culture. His article remains " 136 "the standard reference for the HP's French reception." 137 ), 138 "Mario Praz": ( 139 "Mario Praz (1896-1982) published a 1947 study documenting foreign imitations of the HP, " 140 "tracing the book's influence on English, French, and German literature. Praz established " 141 "the breadth of the HP's European reception, showing that its influence extended well beyond " 142 "Italy and encompassed writers from Swinburne to Beardsley." 143 ), 144 "Liane Lefaivre": ( 145 "Liane Lefaivre's 1997 monograph proposed that Leon Battista Alberti, not Francesco Colonna, " 146 "was the true author of the HP. Her argument rests on architectural, philosophical, and " 147 "stylistic analysis rather than traditional archival evidence. Lefaivre introduced the concept " 148 "of the 'architectural body' — the idea that the HP presents architecture as an extension of " 149 "embodied cognition rather than abstract geometrical form.\n\n" 150 "Whether or not her Alberti attribution is accepted, Lefaivre's work shifted HP scholarship " 151 "toward architectural and phenomenological analysis, demonstrating that the HP's descriptions " 152 "of buildings and gardens are intellectually serious rather than merely decorative." 153 ), 154 "Rosemary Trippe": ( 155 "Rosemary Trippe's 2002 study in Renaissance Quarterly argues that the HP has been " 156 "understudied as literature. Through close analysis of woodcuts and their accompanying text, " 157 "she demonstrates how the author adapted Petrarchan conventions — the beloved's beauty, the " 158 "lover's suffering — into an interplay of word and image. Trippe's work recovers the HP's " 159 "literary dimension from art-historical and architectural approaches that had dominated " 160 "previous scholarship." 161 ), 162 "L. E. Semler": ( 163 "L. E. Semler's 2006 study reframes Robert Dallington's 1592 English adaptation of the HP " 164 "as deliberate cultural appropriation rather than failed translation. Semler shows that " 165 "Dallington's Hypnerotomachia was designed to serve Protestant antiquarian interests in " 166 "Elizabethan England, adapting the HP's Catholic and Italian content for a specifically " 167 "English political and religious context." 168 ), 169 "John Dixon Hunt": ( 170 "John Dixon Hunt's 1998 study is a landmark in HP garden scholarship. Hunt argues that the " 171 "HP foregrounds the process of experiencing gardens over the description of finished " 172 "architectural objects, anticipating phenomenological approaches to landscape. His reading " 173 "positions the HP at the origin of a tradition of garden writing that emphasizes bodily " 174 "movement through designed space." 175 ), 176 "Roswitha Stewering": ( 177 "Roswitha Stewering's 2000 study in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians " 178 "analyzes the HP's architectural representations as sophisticated engagements with classical " 179 "building practice. She demonstrates that the HP's descriptions of columns, arches, and " 180 "thermae reflect genuine knowledge of the Vitruvian tradition and contemporary architectural " 181 "theory, not merely literary fantasy." 182 ), 183 "Tamara Griggs": ( 184 "Tamara Griggs's 1998 study argues that the HP should be understood as the culmination of " 185 "fifteenth-century Italian antiquarianism rather than as Romantic escapism. She traces the " 186 "HP's verbal and visual strategies to Cyriacus of Ancona's commentaria and mid-century " 187 "antiquarian manuscript collections, positioning the book within the material and intellectual " 188 "culture of Renaissance archaeology." 189 ), 190 "Brian A. Curran": ( 191 "Brian Curran's 1998 study situates the HP's pseudo-hieroglyphic inscriptions within " 192 "fifteenth-century humanist Egyptology. He shows that the HP's hieroglyphs are not authentic " 193 "Egyptian writing but Renaissance inventions inspired by the rediscovery of Horapollo's " 194 "Hieroglyphica, and he traces their influence on the later emblem tradition." 195 ), 196 "Mark Jarzombek": ( 197 "Mark Jarzombek's 1990 study in Renaissance Studies addresses the 'structural problematics' " 198 "of the HP's architectural descriptions. He argues that the architectural passages are not " 199 "merely decorative but structurally constitutive of the narrative's meaning, functioning as " 200 "a kind of architectural argumentation that unfolds through description." 201 ), 202 "Raffaella Fabiani Giannetto": ( 203 "Raffaella Fabiani Giannetto's 2015 study connects the HP's cultivation of meraviglia " 204 "(wonder) to the Sacro Bosco at Bomarzo. She argues that both deploy architectural surprise " 205 "as a mode of philosophical instruction, creating environments where wonder precedes and " 206 "enables understanding." 207 ), 208 "Georg Leidinger": ( 209 "Georg Leidinger's study examines Albrecht Durer's relationship to the HP, exploring " 210 "connections between the German artist's visual imagination and the HP's woodcuts and " 211 "architectural imagery." 212 ), 213 "James Gollnick": ( 214 "James Gollnick provides a theoretical framework for dream-narrative hermeneutics through " 215 "his study of Apuleius's Metamorphoses. His work on the religious and initiatory dimensions " 216 "of dream narratives offers an interpretive lens applicable to the HP's own dream structure." 217 ), 218 "Peter Ure": ( 219 "Peter Ure's 1952 notes in Notes and Queries provide early philological observations on the " 220 "HP's unusual vocabulary. His brief but precise annotations remain useful for readers " 221 "navigating the HP's macaronic language." 222 ), 223 "D. R. Edward Wright": ( 224 "D. R. Edward Wright's study in the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes examines " 225 "connections between Alberti and the HP, contributing to the debate over Albertian influence " 226 "on the book's architectural and philosophical content." 227 ), 228 "A. Segre": ( 229 "A. Segre's 1998 study provides the first critical analysis of the garden designs on the " 230 "island of Cythera in the HP. Segre traces the mythological associations of Cythera's " 231 "concentric garden layout and argues it anticipates sixteenth-century botanical garden design." 232 ), 233 "Lynne Farrington": ( 234 "Lynne Farrington's 2015 study contextualizes the HP within Aldus Manutius's career, " 235 "examining the book's production within the broader output of the Aldine press and its " 236 "partnership with Andrea Torresani." 237 ), 238 "Christophe Poncet": ( 239 "Christophe Poncet's research addresses aspects of the HP's production history and its " 240 "relationship to fifteenth-century Venetian printing culture." 241 ), 242 "William B. Keller": ( 243 "William B. Keller's work contributes to the bibliographic and material study of the HP, " 244 "examining the book's physical form and production context." 245 ), 246 "Michael Leslie": ( 247 "Michael Leslie's research addresses the HP's garden descriptions within the broader context " 248 "of Renaissance garden literature and the relationship between literary gardens and actual " 249 "garden design." 250 ), 251 "N. Temple": ( 252 "N. Temple's study addresses architectural and political dimensions of the HP's dream " 253 "narrative, reading the book's built spaces as encoding political and social meanings." 254 ), 255 "Marcel Francon": ( 256 "Marcel Francon's research examines the HP's French reception and translation history, " 257 "contributing to understanding of how the book crossed linguistic and cultural boundaries." 258 ), 259 "Eric L. Pumroy": ( 260 "Eric L. Pumroy's bibliographic work contributes to the census and cataloging of HP copies " 261 "and related materials in institutional collections." 262 ), 263 "Christopher J. Nygren": ( 264 "Christopher J. Nygren's research addresses the HP within the context of Renaissance visual " 265 "culture and the relationship between text and image in early modern printed books." 266 ), 267 "John Bury": ( 268 "John Bury's scholarship contributes to the architectural analysis of the HP, examining " 269 "the book's representations of built form within the context of Renaissance architectural " 270 "theory and practice." 271 ), 272} 273 274 275def main(): 276 conn = sqlite3.connect(DB_PATH) 277 cur = conn.cursor() 278 279 print("=== Generating Scholar Overviews ===\n") 280 281 # Get all scholars 282 cur.execute("SELECT id, name, is_historical_subject, review_status FROM scholars") 283 scholars = cur.fetchall() 284 285 staging_data = [] 286 updated = 0 287 skipped = 0 288 289 for sid, name, is_hist, status in scholars: 290 if status == 'VERIFIED': 291 print(f" SKIP (VERIFIED): {name}") 292 skipped += 1 293 continue 294 295 overview = OVERVIEWS.get(name) 296 if not overview: 297 # Try partial match 298 for oname, otext in OVERVIEWS.items(): 299 if oname.lower() in name.lower() or name.lower() in oname.lower(): 300 overview = otext 301 break 302 303 if not overview: 304 print(f" SKIP (no overview): {name}") 305 continue 306 307 # Check word count 308 word_count = len(overview.split()) 309 if word_count > 400: 310 print(f" WARNING: {name} overview is {word_count} words (max 400)") 311 312 staging_data.append({ 313 'name': name, 314 'is_historical_subject': bool(is_hist), 315 'overview': overview, 316 'word_count': word_count, 317 'source_method': 'LLM_ASSISTED', 318 'review_status': 'DRAFT', 319 }) 320 321 cur.execute(""" 322 UPDATE scholars SET 323 scholar_overview = ?, 324 source_method = 'LLM_ASSISTED', 325 review_status = 'DRAFT' 326 WHERE id = ? 327 """, (overview, sid)) 328 329 if cur.rowcount > 0: 330 updated += 1 331 print(f" UPDATED: {name} ({word_count} words)") 332 333 conn.commit() 334 conn.close() 335 336 # Write staging artifact 337 STAGING_DIR.mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True) 338 staging_path = STAGING_DIR / "overviews.json" 339 with open(staging_path, 'w', encoding='utf-8') as f: 340 json.dump(staging_data, f, indent=2, ensure_ascii=False) 341 342 print(f"\nUpdated {updated} scholars, skipped {skipped}.") 343 print(f"Staging artifact: {staging_path}") 344 345 346if __name__ == "__main__": 347 main()