A Parkes-owned Cappelli
One of the most interesting (admittedly, to me) characteristics of manuscript culture, that is a literate culture distinct from print, is the handwritten transmission of texts, a phenomenon that demands a better understanding of the mechanics of copying. In short, how does the individual read while s/he is writing and/or write while s/he is reading. And how does this practice affect the way that texts shift, move and change.
At the heart of the copying process is the scribe, whose education, habits and working practices vary according to time, place and any number of considerations. Nonetheless, I think that we might be able to talk about some general principles that apply to copying as a practice. At least I would like be able to talk about generalities about reading and writing that can be applied to the specific mechanics of copying.
One attractive principle is the notion of ‘transfer units’ as described in Malcolm Parkes’s Their Hands Before Our Eyes, A Closer Look at Scribes, a significantly revised and augmented book based on the Lyell lectures at Oxford in 1999.
When a scribe copied a text he had to divide his attentions between exemplar and copy, and the degree of concentration required is reflected in the frequency of the transition from one to the other. The transitions may often be detected from minor discrepancies in the spacing or the alignment of the handwriting on the pages of the copy…(In the example under discussion, a scribe, Hrannigil) reproduced the scriptio continua of the exemplar for certain groups of words, which indicate the amount of text he retained in his memory when transferring his attention from the exemplar of a difficult text to his copy. These ‘transfer units’ can be seen in the copy…(and) are also ‘conceptual’ units. (63-64)
A wonderfully fun book! I read this last winter for a break from the medieval and was well rewarded. I admit that the title initially made me think that it might be a lament for print or an encomium for the digital. However, reading some of the reviews as well as the author’s website and blog assured me it was neither. This is a description of the continuing function and role of print in a late capitalist, consumer-driven society.
The introduction invokes familiar names for those interested in the every day and the book (Lefebvre, de Certeau, Marx); makes special mention of Febvre and Martin’s The Coming of the Book; and suggests that the idea that books are more than a commodity (they represent learning, knowledge and so self-improvement) is in itself a way of distinguishing the good in the commodity market (9).
And in the subsequent chapters amidst the discussion of cultural structures of book production, we learn about bookshelves becoming an integral part of the modern ‘home’, the development of the barcode system and the market in Harry Potter-derived media. All very clearly exposed and tantalizingly spun. read more…
n 30 June (which makes it way dated, I know!), the Palaeography Working Group at King’s College issued its final report. Michelle Brown at the School for Advanced Study in London wrote a letter clarifying some (mis)representations, but expressed support for the report’s recommendation to re-establish a chair in palaeography.
The people appointed to the group (and its recommendation) suggest that the group was not hand-picked to whitewash the matter. And given the likely support for palaeography from these individuals, the rationale behind sacking one chair in palaeography only to have to re-establish a chair in the future is perplexing. Of course, I can run through possible reasons, but these would not even be based on gossip or other sources of unreliable information. And I spend enough time talking about stuff I know nothing about when I’m teaching (so I’ll refrain here!).
Most striking to me is how serious or grave or possibly cynical and maybe even short-sighted the thing was. Let’s assume a position is re-established on more advantageous financial footing and suiting the remit envisaged by the working group’s paper. The person offered the new position will be fully aware of the fate of her/his predecessor and other prominent, productive academics who were cut as part of the restructuring at King’s.
Imagine: Hey, we just fired a guy who held this permanent position because we thought it was untenable…erm, you want the job?
Or are we as academic workers so ready to acquiesce, that it ain’t even worth a second thought?
Edward Tenner’s column at The Atlantic (Higher Education’s Tech Dilemmas) discusses research that shows that hyperlinked reading is not serving students. For a course a couple of years ago, I and the other instructors wrote the lecture notes out in full sentence and paragraph form (These 15-20 pages for each lecture served as the course reading; it was a short, not a full-term course). Rather than footnote information, I used lots of hyperlinks so that students could click through to manuscript images, library homepages and in at least one case some medieval music. For example, the following on some of the Italian humanists and their writing (just as an image, without working links):
But during the lecture and afterwards, it was made very clear to me that the students weren’t sitting at their computers and eagerly clicking through…in fact, most of the students were printing the reading out and simply following along during the lecture with their paper copies in front of them. I save myself a lot of time by not copying and pasting links into the lecture notes/readings now.
I think the issue is/was that students (at least in a lecture format) want to be told what is important and expect that if it is important the topic, issue or image will be discussed further in class. They’re reading rather pragmatically, not curiously.
Tenner’s column then notes reading speeds (possibly suggesting that the matter is related to the question of hyperlinks???), noting studies that indicate Kindle and ipad reading is somewhat slower. I suspect that this has to do with habits and comfort. The primary constraint on reading text presented in lines is the movement of the eyes which hope and skip around. Dehaene’s Reading in the Brain relates an experiment demonstrating that:
If a full sentence is presented, word by word, at the precise point where gaze is focalized, thus avoiding the need for eye movements, a good reader can read at staggering speed–a mean of eleven hundred words per minute, and up to sixteen hundred words per minute for the best readers
This is three to four times faster than normal, quick reading. Readers who read from four hundred to five hundred words per minute are, according to Dehaene, already close to optimal within the constraints of eye movement (no page numbers for references; I read it on an electronic reader!).
If we want students to read as much as possible as quickly as possible (while retaining respectable comprehension), then we need to hook them up to screens that flash words sequentially based on the individual readers gaze. Of course, this won’t teach them to read curiously, to branch out from the required reading and to consider topic more in depth. Giving students reading material in which links could suggest reliable, well presented and informative sources for more depth seemingly promised to pique their curiosity. That such a format distracts more than allures, not that it might cause you to read a fraction of a second more slowly, is the real bummer.
On Friday, the administration of King’s received a friendly write-up in the business section of The Times online. The title, “Making the cut and saving a world-class academic asset”, and the statement that “King’s looks set to keep its chair in palaeography, with a widened remit, after revising its plans” gave the impression that the position would be spared.
However, today (via the facebook group and an email circulated by David Ganz on the Apilist) we learn that Ganz and King’s College London have signed a voluntary severance agreement, the details of which are not public, but which allows either party to state:
‘On 26th January the college announced that, due to financial constraints associated with cuts in Higher Education Funding it would no longer be able to fund the current Chair in Palaeography (a position created by the university of London in 1949) The College has since this announcement re-examined the situation as part of the 90 day consultation exercise and believes that it may be able to establish a new Chair of Palaeography and Manuscript Studies at some point in the future.’
Looks like Trainor told The Times reporter something along the lines of King’s is looking to keep palaeography, which prompted the reporter to relate that it is ‘keeping
its [but, note, not the] chair’, but that Trainor also mentioned a wider remit and future plans, rhetorical moves that allow the administration to try to parry any complaints from the array of local and international protests, but make no firm commitment to the subject. In fact, from a common sense point of view the decision to terminate the position, only (allegedly) to start it up later–there is no practical difference between a chair in palaeography and a chair in palaeography and manuscript studies, other than rhetoric to circumvent labour laws–is bass-ackwards. This is coming from an administration that has, in its mind, worked tirelessly to enhance, promote and preserve the KCL ‘brand’.
Well, outside of contingencies I can’t imagine, you don’t stop producing and promoting a successful product, only to relaunch it under a different name later. At least not if you truly want to maintain the success of the product. On the other hand, if you want to kill something off, but want to keep e-mails about the discontinuation to a minimum, then you might very well discontinue the item, but attempt to palliate concerns by promising that a new, better, improved version, one that will meet all your expectations and more is just around the corner (and repeat and repeat and repeat it until people stop asking).
You’ve got to hand it to Trainor though. He wrapped The Times reporter well around his finger (although seeing as the piece was destined for the business section, it probably didn’t take too much). He managed to make cuts! and save the world-class status of the institution!
Not really, but I guess that’s a better story than ‘Making cuts and destroying world-class academic assets’. What a waste.
The Review of English Studies has introduced ‘editor’s choice’ articles, intended (according to RES) both to promote RES and provide readers without a university subscription with free access to some of the best (!) essays published in the latest issues of the journal.
My recent piece on the Taunton fragment is currently one of the freely available choice articles and will be downloadable without subscription for the next six months or so.
A Few (artistically re-created) Lines from the Taunton Fragment
The Taunton fragment was discovered in 2002 and contains a bilingual (Latin and Old English) version of biblical expositions known as the Homiliary of Angers. When the text was edited for Anglo-Saxon England in 2004/05, the editor suggested that the strange Old English of the fragment represented the language of the author/translator.
Based on a comparison with other Latin manuscripts of the Homiliary of Angers, I argue that the Old English translation had access to a more complete version of the Latin than can be found in the Taunton fragment. In other words, there are mistakes in the Latin that are not repeated in the English translation. Consequently, the Taunton fragment is likely a copy, and the Old English in the text represents a mix of the original translator’s language, the copyist’s language and copying errors that occur during the course of textual transmission (that is the repeated process of copying/re-inscription in an entirely handwritten documentary culture).
In the next year or so, some other work by other people will be coming out related to the homiliary, new manuscript discoveries and vernacular analogues, so in so far as these types of arcane and obscure things go…it promises to be exciting. =)
rom the always stunning I Love Typography, a short overview on early printing, but more importantly a plan to chart the development of typography from the incunable on with images from special collections from the University of Amsterdam.
Not to knock any of the nice manuscript sites too much, but Amsterdam’s special collections deserve thanks and praise for allowing so many images to be put up on flickr. While some images are marked clearly with all rights reserved, many can be shared and remixed under a creative commons license. Not only does this feel more open than collections that limit viewing to their own web pages (and in some cases viewers) it allows teachers, researchers and artists to explore type in different ways, not to mention comments and queries from the public.
It would be nice to see a similar approach become feasible for large manuscript repositories. Accessibility allowed the Staffordshire hoard to become a public marvel. Part of that comes from treasure being more visual than text, but I don’t know of too many recent manuscript finds that have made their way on to flickr. The more likely scenario to be played out is: fragment discovered, academic who finds it claims it as his/her territory, years later an edition with one or two black and white images is published in an expensive and relatively inaccessible journal, the world continues to turn in indifference.
The only comparable manuscript collection (with a flickr stream allowing you to have its images on your iphone, for example, allowing you to discuss them with colleagues at conferences immediately and easily) that I know of is the Walters Art Museum which is gradually mounting its Islamic collection (with some pictures of the Archimedes palimpsest). More please!
Any day there should be something to report from King’s, but every day nothing surfaces. Earlier this week a letter from David Ganz was posted on the facebook page (which can be viewed without a facebook account, I think).
Like others, I am disappointed, but I suppose not surprised, that the adminstration has suggested that Ganz has orchestrated a campaign against. First, why would orchestrating a campaign to save your job and the subject to which you’ve devoted your life be a condemnable act? Clearly, it’s rational enough. The real charge, I reckon, is ‘rather than work with us, you are now working against us’, intimating that the decision to close the position can be even further justified because of the now-strained relationship.
Oh yeah, then there’s the fact that David Ganz hasn’t orchestrated any campaign. Heinrich C. Kuhn comments on the suggestion.
Meanwhile, Iain Pears keeps the heat turned up particularly in this recent post and with generally blistering commentary on his blog.
An inferior version of the most talked about unpublished homiliary to be found in a recently discovered Old English-Latin manuscript fragment is now available! Retired and renowned scholars (well at least one retired and renowned, maybe two, and others more renowned than retired) have a copy, do you?
n intelligent engagement with the past is a critical component for a working public sphere. The totalitarian state is free to use its vision of history to impose its ideological orthodoxy, or alternatively, lacking any voice to the contrary, to erase the past as it sees fit. Last fall, I picked up Jasper Becker’s City of Heavenly Tranquility: Beijing in the History of China. While not an overt, direct, confrontational assault on communist China, it offers a clear picture of history subverted to and wiped out by the state.
The back-cover blurb (“In the summer of 1997, without discussion or announcement, a decision was made to eradicate old Beijing…”) piqued my interest; its sentiment was further echoed in the introduction which describes the eviction of the old city’s populace. As the city was rebuilt, physical memories of earlier protests, such as Democracy Wall, were bulldozed: “the state only protected sites that served to bolster its own self-justifying version of history…[and] as they were destroying Beijing’s past, the authorities boasted of how they were spending US$ 800 million on preserving its traditional culture” (11-12). This was done by the creation of about 150 new museums that allowed the regime to present history when and how it wished.
Of course everything from the past cannot stand indefinitely. Societies need to make room for new realities. To put it another way, when I asked an English host once as to why British train stations are outside towns whereas French stations are often in the town center, he responded that the French were never hesitant about razing their past. Of course, some people would argue that twentieth-century Britain was a living museum with all its protected properties and spaces. read more…