05-08-2019, 03:13 PM
(This post was last modified: 05-08-2019, 03:20 PM by -JKP-.
Edit Reason: fixed typos
)
In my mind, I've always thought of the VMS plants as roughly divided into three groups... naturalistic, stylized, and fanciful (the word fanciful came to my mind before I started seeing it in Voynich literature).
Examples of the kind of drawing that I believe are naturalistic in the large plants section include Menyanthes/Villarsia, Cannabis, Ricinus, and Tragopogon (there are others, but these are less controversial than most).
The stylized ones look mostly like real plants but often have an element that is exaggerated (probably for mnemonic reasons) and are somewhat similar to plants in English early medieval herbals, which are somewhat stylized but still somewhat recognizable. For example, sorrel (Acetosella) in real life has leaves that look like fish. If you exaggerate this particular feature a little, you end up with something like a VMS drawing.
The fanciful ones have always puzzled me. I think of these as drawings that go beyond stylization, as though the drawing is telling a story beyond a simple mnemonic. I probably originally thought of them this way because I was having trouble identifying them (as a real plant) and because of the way they inhabit the page—they sometimes look more dynamic than the more naturalistic ones, but the more I got to know the VMS (if, in fact, I know anything about it at all), the more it seemed possible that maybe there is a story in some of them. I think the first one that really made me feel this way was the one with archway roots that reminded me of reliquary containers.
These classifications are completely theoretical, of course and I don't want to get too tied to them because some of the drawings might be hybrids, or might be simply extra-stylized rather than fanciful, but I do suspect they are not all the same kind of drawing.
Examples of the kind of drawing that I believe are naturalistic in the large plants section include Menyanthes/Villarsia, Cannabis, Ricinus, and Tragopogon (there are others, but these are less controversial than most).
The stylized ones look mostly like real plants but often have an element that is exaggerated (probably for mnemonic reasons) and are somewhat similar to plants in English early medieval herbals, which are somewhat stylized but still somewhat recognizable. For example, sorrel (Acetosella) in real life has leaves that look like fish. If you exaggerate this particular feature a little, you end up with something like a VMS drawing.
The fanciful ones have always puzzled me. I think of these as drawings that go beyond stylization, as though the drawing is telling a story beyond a simple mnemonic. I probably originally thought of them this way because I was having trouble identifying them (as a real plant) and because of the way they inhabit the page—they sometimes look more dynamic than the more naturalistic ones, but the more I got to know the VMS (if, in fact, I know anything about it at all), the more it seemed possible that maybe there is a story in some of them. I think the first one that really made me feel this way was the one with archway roots that reminded me of reliquary containers.
These classifications are completely theoretical, of course and I don't want to get too tied to them because some of the drawings might be hybrids, or might be simply extra-stylized rather than fanciful, but I do suspect they are not all the same kind of drawing.