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+--- Thread: [Panel Session] Voynich Paleography lecture (/thread-3103.html)
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RE: Voynich Paleography lecture - LisaFaginDavis - 19-02-2020
(19-02-2020, 03:12 PM)davidjackson Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Looking to see whether distinct hands worked on the same leafs would be a good indication of whether it is a collaborative or individual effort - does one single sheet have two scribes on it?
On a different note, I remember mucking around with DigiPal ages ago with the vague intention of putting it onto the forum for exactly this sort of paleographical effort. Never did, mainly due to the lack of user permissions making unsuitable for public accesible websites IIRC. Should do it on a password protected site at some point.....
My forthcoming article will address that very question - the relationship between scribal corpora and codicological structure, and the implications of those relationships. There are a few bifolia that have different hands on different pages (57/66, for example, where Scribe 1 writes f. 57r and my Scribe 5 writes 57v, 66r, and 66v). Folio 215r has scribe 2 on lines 1-12 and then my Scribe 3 takes over. And as we all know, Scribe 1 bifolia are mixed in with Scribe 2 bifolia in several quires of the botanical section, but I am fairly certain that that's the result of an early misbinding.
The new version of DigiPal ("Archetype") is much more do-it-yourself than was the original DigiPal. It's fairly simple to set up and customize an offline instance on your own computer, but if you want something publicly served it's more complicated. My "VoynichPal" instance lives on my laptop. For more, see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(19-02-2020, 01:38 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Apart from the fact that there are five hands, I also find it interesting that one is in Currier A and the others in Currier B. That is, to the extent that Currier A and B are clearly separated entities. Is it possible that some of the "B" hands also correspond to their own sub-dialect?
Definitely! Rene observed that there's a group of leaves that rarely use the "40" combination - that group corresponds to the work of my Scribe 4. So it may be that those of you working on linguistic matters will be able to find other such patterns by analyzing my scribal corpora.
RE: Voynich Paleography lecture - RenegadeHealer - 20-02-2020
@LisaFaginDavis, I've been looking forward to hearing this talk since you announced it. I had a pipe dream of making it up to NYC to hear it in person, but having young triplets and a small business ensured that this remained a pipe dream.
I am aware that your findings in no way prove that the VMS was made by more than one person. I'll leave that argument to those here who have expertise in paleography and codicology, and are much more comfortable playing the role of the skeptic than I am.
Nevertheless, I've been thinking a bit about the ramifications of the VMS being determined to be the work of more than one scribe. If more than one writer was involved, this makes it more likely that the VMS's creation was discussed and documented, and could have left some trace in the historical record. Benjamin Franklin's famous aphorism, "Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead" comes to mind.
I contrast this with the literary works of modern-day outsider artists like Francis Darger or James Hampton. These works tend to be the product of one (unique!) mind. The process of their creation involved no social discourse or feedback, and went entirely undocumented by anyone but the author. Thus, discovered after the author's death, works of Outsider Literature are to some degree impenetrable. The intentions and mental machinations that went into creating them die with their solitary authors. This, if most of the evidence supported the VMS being the creation of a single person, this makes it much harder to speculate on the circumstances and intention behind its creation.
Also, the more people who were involved in the VMS's creation, the more likely it is that Voynichese functioned as an actual system of symbolic communication between people, even if only briefly and in the most rudimentary way. And even if Voynichese truly is meaningless, the involvement of more than one scribe makes it less likely the intention in composing it was deceptive. After all, if I had the skills and the motivation to create a fake but believable mysterious book as part of a con job, then keeping in mind Franklin's quote above, I'd want as few people involved as possible. Ideally no one besides me would even know about me writing it.
RE: Voynich Paleography lecture - LisaFaginDavis - 20-02-2020
Thanks! I'm not a linguist and I am not a cryptologist, so I am completely unqualified to comment on Voynichese as a linguistic or even symbolic system. But if there were five different people who wrote the manuscript (and my results may very well be refined as time goes on) then there were indeed at least five people for whom the glyphset had some kind of significance.
A very large percentage of medieval documents did not survive the Middle Ages, so even if there was secondary documentation having something to do with the creation of the VMS, it would not necessarily have survived.
RE: Voynich Paleography lecture - bi3mw - 20-02-2020
If five different scribes have worked on the manuscript, that naturally opens a path for various speculations.
- It must have been a systematic writing. The rules for the writing process had to be passed from one scribe to another. A random generation of text seems very unlikely on this background.
- It can be assumed that the work was created in a writing workshop.
- The time required for the production was less than previously assumed, since it was possible to work continuously (also in parallel).
RE: Voynich Paleography lecture - -JKP- - 20-02-2020
(20-02-2020, 09:48 AM)bi3mw Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....
- It can be assumed that the work was created in a writing workshop.
...
I don't think we can assume that. This is not the only possibility. It may have been created by a family. It was not uncommon for fathers to create books of knowledge to pass onto their sons. In the nobility, daughters were sometimes included, as well.
RE: Voynich Paleography lecture - nablator - 20-02-2020
(20-02-2020, 09:48 AM)bi3mw Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If five different scribes have worked on the manuscript, that naturally opens a path for various speculations.
- The glyphs, drawn with a short selection of basic shapes borrowed from 15th century Gothic cursive, were designed with ease of teaching and standardization in mind.
RE: Voynich Paleography lecture - Koen G - 20-02-2020
(20-02-2020, 11:59 AM)nablator Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.- The glyphs, drawn with a short selection of basic shapes borrowed from 15th century Gothic cursive, were designed with ease of teaching and standardization in mind.
This is something I believe as well. An experienced scribe wouldn't have to learn many new shapes. And an inexperienced one wouldn't have to learn much that's totally useless for his further carreer.
RE: Voynich Paleography lecture - Aga Tentakulus - 20-02-2020
It's not exactly my area of expertise.
But how does writing behave on the different surfaces of the skin inside, outside of the parchment. Structure, absorbency.
Could that have an effect on the writing ?
RE: Voynich Paleography lecture - LisaFaginDavis - 20-02-2020
(20-02-2020, 12:12 PM)Aga Tentakulus Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It's not exactly my area of expertise.
But how does writing behave on the different surfaces of the skin inside, outside of the parchment. Structure, absorbency.
Could that have an effect on the writing ?
Not in the case of the Voynich...the hair and flesh sides are almost indistinguishable, and the parchment is quite worn, almost felt-like (I was just at the Beinecke today working with the manuscript, in fact!).
RE: Voynich Paleography lecture - Aga Tentakulus - 21-02-2020
Thanks Lisa
In this case I would say it is a good quality and not cheap either.