08-08-2025, 11:14 AM
(07-08-2025, 05:02 PM)Koen G wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.That paper is rather misleading if you ask me. Not intentionally so - they are clear about their data. But from a historical perspective it makes little sense to compare modern books with a 15th century manuscript written on animal skin. [...] You cannot draw any conclusion about what a 15th century book should be by looking at what people in the 19th century were doing. It was a different time, with a different idea of what writing can and should be, a different material culture, different social structures, different social norms and so forth.
It is true that society in some places changed quite a bit between the 15th and 19th centuries. But the human mind has changed very little in the past 5000 years. The inner needs that led people to write diaries or treatises of bizarre elucubrations have existed all along that time. And the tools for expressing those needs -- pen and paper -- have been available and largely unchanged from the 15th and 19th centuries.
IIRC John Dee's diary was not meant to be read by others. IIRC, the report of his conversations with "angels" through Kelley was hidden under the false bottom of a chest, almost got destroyed, and was found by chance after his death. So "manuscripts without intended readers" have been produced at least since the 1600s.
Moreover, the changes in social context were not simultaneous everywhere. While the context of Paris of the 1800s was different from that of Paris of the 1400s, there were many places in Europe where the context in the 1800s was still like that of Paris in the 1500s.
I myself kept a manuscript diary for a year or so, some 50 years ago. I used a bunch of shorthand and symbols for common activities, so the result was effectively encrypted. I did not get this idea from the "social context"; it was just an obvious choice for saving time and paper, and for a minimum of privacy.
All the best, --jorge