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+--- Thread: [split] On the study of the imagery vs. study of the text (/thread-2275.html)
[split] On the study of the imagery vs. study of the text - Diane - 04-02-2018
I want to return for a moment to a comment made by Marco earlier in the thread, where he says
Quote:VMS hobbyists tend to almost exclusively focus on manuscript images. This forum is no exception: in the last month there were 13 active threads in "Imagery" and only 2 in "Analysis of the text". As you know, I discovered the ms through the work of Prof.You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., so I have always been interested in the language as well as the illustrations. I am positive about all contributions that seriously examine the Voynichese language.
Just as a matter of the history of this study: Apart from some vague observations which were acute enough but undeveloped (such as a couple of John Tiltman's), there was no informed comment on this imagery between 1912 and 1931, when Anne Nill made a note of some offered by Panofsky. Once again there was no explanation in detail for those observations, though that doesn't lessen their importance as the first unforced, informed commentary we have.
Thereafter there appears to have been nothing recorded of any informed observation or comment on the imagery before 2008.
There had developed a reverse-engineered sort of 'identification': a person with a theory would then point to one detail or another and assert it supported their theory, but again it was not well-grounded and not informed by any effort at analytical discussion of the image-as-image, and no historical perspective or explanation for the *whole* picture on any folio was attempted. In this way we had Pelling's effort to argue that the botanical folios were Averlino's, and then to interpret them as obscured imagery of machinery. Rene occasionally pointed to some detail or other which he thought supported his 'central European' idea - and this led to more errors, such as the assertion that the cloudband was Germanic in some way.
I began publishing analytical treatments of one folio and another - complete with brief historical and contextual notes designed to assist those seeking the Voynich language - from 2009.
In about 2012 (?) you and Darren Worley began trying to re-visit some of my conclusions, including the map which had, in the meantime, attracted a number of efforts to imitate the method while reaching some Euro-centric conclusion.
You and Darren, especially, offered in a very public arena a positive image of the way we must contextualise images from the manuscript, and it was in some ways a relief no longer to be alone.
Thereafter we saw Koen, and then JKP and various others determined to move beyond the style in which the imagery had been treated from 1912 to 2010, and I admit that not everyone now involved produced work that deserves to be described as other than a 'hobby'.
However, I've made no mystery of the fact that I'm not an amateur in the field of comparative iconography - which is rather different from specialising in one tradition or period.
Since you have had so important a role in raising the profile of study for the pictorial text - where for years the attitude was that there was no point to it before the written text was deciphered - I think you should congratulate yourself on having made a real difference to the study in this as in other things.
RE: Decoding Anagrammed Texts Written in an Unknown Language and Script - -JKP- - 04-02-2018
Quote:Diane:
Thereafter we saw Koen, and then JKP and various others determined to move beyond the style in which the imagery had been treated from 1912 to 2010...
I don't think I can be described as being "determined to move beyond the style in which the imagery had been treated from 1912 to 2010..."
I write what interests me, in whatever way seems appropriate... I had no knowledge of how the imagery had been treated, other than Edith Sherwood's plant IDs and her assertion that one of the month labels was da Vinci's name written backwards.
I only started looking at historical opinions (such as the idea that the page that looks like a map might be a map) when issues came up on the forum that had me scratching my head. Even now I only look at historical opinions in a very cursory way.
Studying medieval manuscripts (including the VMS) is more interesting to me than looking at other people's interpretations of the VMS. It's only very recently that I've made any effort to visit other researcher's blogs and even now, I do so in a haphazard way and I still haven't read most of the early ones.
.
The imagery is interesting, quirky, fun. I do enjoy it... and I think most people hope that the imagery will illuminate some of the text but, in the end, it may not. If someone took an illustrated but unfinished manuscript and added text that is unrelated to the drawings, and if the text is eventually unraveled, then the imagery will recede into history as a fun diversion rather than a key to the mystery of the text.
RE: Decoding Anagrammed Texts Written in an Unknown Language and Script - Koen G - 04-02-2018
I agree that the text may be impossible to decipher, either because it has lost too much of its meaning or because it is meaningless to begin with. In that case, our study of the imagery is all we've got.
The VM remains a real historical document. It appears to fill a gap in the historical record, since we know nothing like it. In that case, studying the imagery is just as important as studying any piece of history which is not yet understood.
Of course cracking the text is the ultimate objective. But as Kondrack's research shows, a big problem is that too many options remain open. If languages like Hebrew and Malay both turn up as likely candidates, a deep understanding of the imagery should be able to tip the scales in favor of one or the other. As we stand now, this understanding is lacking.
RE: [split] On the study of the imagery vs. study of the text - -JKP- - 04-02-2018
I think the VMS is potentially a very important historical artifact beyond being simply old and interesting.
If the text is meaningful, it has been expressed in an unusual and creative way.
If there is underlying language of a lost or undocumented nature, it's a rare treasure.
If the text someday verifies some of the plant information, there may be a number of botanical firsts.
While considering all these possibilities, I also try to keep a level head... If the text turns out to be meaningless, there may never be a way to substantiate the various interpretations of the drawings other than by self-reference (patterns within the illustrations that are self-confirmatory) and some parts of the manuscript may resist this kind of analysis.
Even so, it's a fascinating journey... so much to learn along the way regardless of the outcome.