31-12-2016, 08:53 AM
(30-12-2016, 03:36 AM)Koen Gh. wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Yes, I agree. We don't know for sure yet how related they are, but I think most evidence points towards a close relationship. For example in q13 paragraphs often start next to a new element in the drawing, giving the impression that each section of the image has its own chunk of text.
The only other way to explain this is to assume malicious intent on the part of 'the author' but I don't buy into that.
Right. To begin with, that the text and illustrations would be related is the normal thing that you would expect. It must be true for the vast majority of manuscripts. It would be interesting to know if there are counterexamples. On top of this, there are various indicators in the VMS that the text and illustrations are in fact related, though of course it is impossible to truly "prove" without being able to actually read the text.
But to clarify what I was trying to say above about how closely related the text and illustrations are, I guess a better way to phrase it would be to ask how much redundancy there is between the text and illustrations. At one extreme, we could consider the hypothetical case where the text and illustrations are completely unrelated, in which case there would be basically zero redundancy. At the other extreme, I suppose, would be the case where the text is basically just a description of what is happening in the illustration. For instance, imagine if one of the paragraphs in the bio section were to read: "A naked woman is standing in a tub of water. She's holding a tube with some fluid flowing out of it..." That would basically be complete redundancy. Of course, that is not very likely to be the case either.
What is most likely is that the text and illustrations are intended to complement each other in some way. In this case, some of the information is contained only in the text, some only in the illustrations, and then some effectively shared between the two. So the question then becomes whether or not it is possible to understand the illustrations well enough to identify the shared component and then use that to make some sense out of the text.