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| Viola: Transcriptions |
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Posted by: R. Sale - 24-02-2021, 08:22 PM - Forum: Imagery
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I would like to reference and collect medieval European, botanical, text passages about the plant called 'viola'. Text references, transcriptions and translations in the era 1400-1450 are the primary area of inquiry. When the visual identifications match, the relevant texts should be compared. First, there needs to be a database of transcriptions.
Similar threads for other identified plants may help in those areas.
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| The simplest plant |
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Posted by: R. Sale - 24-02-2021, 12:49 AM - Forum: Imagery
- Replies (16)
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Regarding compound plants, let's look the other way.
It was suggested " that correct plant identifications could provide a crucial clue to deciphering the text." And that surely would be something important, if we had one - but we don't. Why is that?
In order to demonstrate the concept, a single example is all that's required. The best example is the simplest. The best example of a plant that can be named and identified is the simplest plant.
There are a number of VMs representations to chose from, ones that have fairly well agreed upon identifications: violets, water lilies, poppies, etc. So there are various candidates. What is needed is a name. something that is distinctive, if that is possible, the proper name in the correct language, if it is to match the VMs (barring encryption). This would require a compilation of all relevant information about the name of the plant or plants. This could be done.
However the greater problem remains in interpreting the VMs. How to determine which vord(s) to compare with the proposed version of the name of the plant? By the number of glyphs? - By what criteria? As far as I know, there is no answer for that. How does this comparison and potential identification of text take place?
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| Compound plants in the VMS ? |
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Posted by: bi3mw - 21-02-2021, 02:03 PM - Forum: Imagery
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On the net I found the following statement about the plants in the VMS:
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In fact, many of the plants ( in the VMS ) seem to be composite: the roots of one species have been fastened to the leaves of another, with flowers from a third. Each page displays one plant (sometimes two) and a few paragraphs of text - a format typical of European herbals of the time. ...
This thesis would at least explain why none of the plants is clearly identifiable. However, I think that the assertion that this was typical for European herbals of the Middle Ages is quite daring. Does anyone know examples of plants that are clearly compound ?
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| Statistical properties of notebook jottings at the line, paragraph, and page level? |
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Posted by: RenegadeHealer - 20-02-2021, 10:25 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
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I write manuscripts. In medical school, I was known affectionately as that quirky student who attended every class, and furiously hand-wrote as much of what was said, and presented on the screen, as I could manage to write down. I challenged myself to write as grammatically correctly and completely as possible, so that I'd be able to use my notebook as a text to study later. It seemed to work; I can attest that writing something out by hand is a great way to commit it to memory. But I eventually realized that writing down every word in grammatically correct and complete sentences wasn't necessary. I just needed to get down the most important words, or even just pieces of the most important words. This was plenty enough to commit the important fact to memory, and recall it later. It was just hard to allow myself to do it.
I'm wondering if anyone has ever studied and statistically analyzed the way most people abbreviate quick notes in a notebook, for later reference. I'm not talking on the level of letters and words, so much as on the level of lines, sentences, paragraphs, and pages. I wonder how much this varies based on the language used, and the personal preferences and ease of handwriting of the writer. There are two competing demands that I see, which place some universal constraints on how notes get abbreviated. The notes need to be quick to write, such that the writer can keep up with what's happening around him. But they also have to contain enough information that the writer can retrieve it unambiguously later on. I wouldn't be surprised if some general statements can be made about what words tend to be kept, and what words tend to be omitted, when people to take notes in a notebook. In particular, I imagine function words are often omitted, unless they're absolutely necessary for interpreting the note correctly.
Notebooks intended to be read by people other than the writer, without the presence of the writer, can't be as liberal with grammar and word omission as notebooks only intended for the writer's eyes. Still, I reckon they're much less dense with function words and complete sentences than published books.
Has anyone found any verbatim transcriptions of a lengthy notebook, in any language and from any point in history? I'm currently looking for some. If I find any that are usable, I'd be very interested to let Marco, Nablator, and other computational linguistics / statistics gurus here run their tests on them, and see how they match up to transcriptions of both the VMs and to published works in known languages. I wouldn't be surprised to find most notebooks sporting:
- A high type to token ratio
- Line as a functional unit effects
- Page and paragraph clustering of similar words
- Weak word order
- Ambiguous spacing and spelling
- Loose grammar and punctuation
- A slow but steady drift in the rules of abbreviation and overall style of notetaking, from the first page to the last
I fail to see how fast and "just meaningful enough" notetaking would naturally lead to high rates of exact reduplication, though.
If the VMs was someone's notebook, which I think is a reasonable idea given the crudeness of its images and layout (Fisk, 2017), then a transcription of a long, old notebook in a known readable language, might be a good apples-to-apples comparison.
The bad news is, if the VMs really is a notebook, abbreviated in typical ways but written in a novel script and/or language, that does not give me confidence in our ability to decode it. To anyone who has ever borrowed someone else's class notebook, and had to call the owner to make sense of a lot of the notes, I don't think this needs much explanation. This is especially true if the ways that notetakers condense language tends to vary a lot based on the writer, language, and subject matter, and few generalizations about this condensation process can be made.
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| [split] St John's College MS. 18 |
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Posted by: DONJCH - 19-02-2021, 08:13 AM - Forum: Imagery
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There is a really interesting one on P50 of this collection by Don Hoffman
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Roland of Lisbon St Johns College Oxford MS18 Reductiorum Physiognomie
I was surprised not to see this one on a search of Voynich Ninja, it MUST have been discussed before!
Seems to be naked male "nymphs" representing 12 constellations and 7 planets.
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| [split] Nude figures wearing crowns |
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Posted by: CaryR - 18-02-2021, 02:41 AM - Forum: Imagery
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It's more specific than the broad topic of this thread, but I was wondering about the prevalence of nude figures wearing crowns. Is this something that shows up in particular types of manuscripts? And in what contexts?
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| Counting on stars |
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Posted by: R. Sale - 17-02-2021, 09:45 PM - Forum: Imagery
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If it is accepted that VMs Virgo is a combination of Christian and classical influences, then it would fit in with the trends toward the form of ideological syncretism that occurred in the 15th C.
The star in Virgo is Spica, and there's a story behind that too.
In the VMs, Virgo has a star inside its medallion. Which other VMs medallions have a star inside?
Unless I missed something, only two other VMs zodiac medallions have stars inside: Pisces has two stars and Scorpio has one. What is the reason for that?
The primary star in Scorpio is Aldebaran. But what are the two stars in Pisces - from a medieval perspective?
Based on pairing, first Pisces is a pair together. Then the others are a pair apart. Aldebaran is red and Spica is blue.
Many stars around the VMs medallions have been painted. Some are solid gold; others are fainter. All the way to where it's unclear if they have been painted or not. There are groups of stars with yellow centers and a few painted blue. And just one (?) with a couple touches of red.
Do these stars already have a thread?
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| Ave maris stella |
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Posted by: R. Sale - 16-02-2021, 08:01 PM - Forum: Imagery
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Tradition wins out again in the investigation of VMs Virgo. Starting with the suggestion that the VMs image contains certain diverse elements, in particular the crescent moon, that was more commonly associated with representations of the Virgin Mary, rather than the other Virgo representations of classical astrology, it implies that the VMs illustration is something of a combination or fusion of classical and more subtle Christian elements.
But what about the "star on a string" that is found in the VMs Virgo medallion? The moon connection with Mary can be verified in numerous illustrations, but what about the star? Is there one good example of Virgo with a star?
Perhaps, then, the source of the star is not in an illustration. Perhaps the star has a different source - and that source was a song: 'Ave maris stella'
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An oldie, but a goodie, on the C-14 chronology jukebox. Clearly a part of relevant tradition, though not well-represented visually. It greatly strengthens the influence of Christian elements, but only *if* the investigator knows the tune! Not that I can sing, mind you, but there it is. And more importantly, *there it was*. And let's say that in some circles, at least, the connection was obvious - part of the rise of Mariology. How can the combined image be used in VMs Virgo and still be disguised? Would the VMs artist have tied stars to every nymph in the whole VMs Zodiac sequence just to disguise this connection? How's that song go again?
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