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RE: The bottom margin
Anton > 23-04-2017, 10:15 PM
Quote:While the first conclusion is safe (surely it's an observation?),
Of course, it's not an observation. An observation would have been "no Voynichese paragraph is interrupted by a page break" - which, of course, might have been a purely accidental thing or a case of following some general manuscripting practice of the time (which I asked of, above). What I mean is some sort of text-associated rule which prohibits breaking a paragraph between two pages.
Quote:1) Several pages of Quire 20 have the same number of stars/recipes on both recto and verso. This suggests that the writer could have been aiming for a specific number, regardless of whether another recipe would fit. Both 105r and 105v have ten recipes, 104r and 104v have thirteen, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and 106v have fifteen (though the stars don't match), and 107r and 107v also have fifteen.
That's an option indeed.
Quote:2) There's no guarantee that the order we see pages in today is the original writing order. Pelling has put forward a good argument that Quire 20 may have originally been two, and that You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. was the original first page.
That's a good point (I completely forgot about that). But the same behaviour holds true for some r -> v (instead of v -> r) pairs. Like e.g. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. -> f104v. It's obvious that only You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. can follow f104r, and not any other folio. -
RE: The bottom margin
Emma May Smith > 23-04-2017, 10:48 PM
(23-04-2017, 10:15 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Quote:1) Several pages of Quire 20 have the same number of stars/recipes on both recto and verso. This suggests that the writer could have been aiming for a specific number, regardless of whether another recipe would fit. Both 105r and 105v have ten recipes, 104r and 104v have thirteen, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and 106v have fifteen (though the stars don't match), and 107r and 107v also have fifteen.
That's an option indeed.
Quote:2) There's no guarantee that the order we see pages in today is the original writing order. Pelling has put forward a good argument that Quire 20 may have originally been two, and that You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. was the original first page.
That's a good point (I completely forgot about that). But the same behaviour holds true for some r -> v (instead of v -> r) pairs. Like e.g. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. -> f104v. It's obvious that only You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. can follow f104r, and not any other folio.
Put the two points together and the balance is toward the paragraph distribution being caused by forward planning. The writer knew he wanted X number of paragraphs on a page and wasn't interested in whether he could fit more in the gap left at the bottom. -
RE: The bottom margin
Anton > 23-04-2017, 11:04 PM
Quote:Put the two points together and the balance is toward the paragraph distribution being caused by forward planning. The writer knew he wanted X number of paragraphs on a page and wasn't interested in whether he could fit more in the gap left at the bottom.
Of course it's caused by forward planning. I won't believe that the matter is accidental. The question is in the nature of this planning. In the balneo, and especially in the botanical section, the nature of this planning is on the surface - the text present on the page should relate to the images therein depicted. But in the recipe section there are no images, so nothing to relate to.
Why would he want X paragraphs on a particular page, and not Y paragraphs? Especially given that this "X" is not constant, neither it exhibits any recognized numerological series (does it?)
And again: the text density does not diminish towards the end of the page, that's what puzzles me. Note how tightly close are the leading gallows of last paragraphs to the previous line (the last line of next-to-last paragraphs). Would a scribe who knows that it is the last paragraph on the page that he is going to put down, and who knows that he still has plenty of page space - would he still conserve the linebreak space? -
RE: The bottom margin
-JKP- > 24-04-2017, 05:15 AM
(23-04-2017, 12:14 AM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....
One extravagant possibility, of course, is that all folios of the VMS had their upper margin cropped at some time after they were put down. Does that sound plausible? I doubt so.
It's completely plausible. As I mentioned above, I noticed this on quite a few manuscripts that I was browsing in the Vatican library (also some in the British Library).
It's not uncommon for a side, a top, or a bottom to be trimmed to fit the binding, sometimes for the whole manuscript. -
RE: The bottom margin
davidjackson > 24-04-2017, 03:05 PM
The obvious solution is that the scribe was observing some sort of typographical canon, as was often common.
It's a question of trying to work out whether there is some sort of proportion going on in the text - who's got a ruler? -
RE: The bottom margin
Koen G > 24-04-2017, 03:46 PM
What kind of proportion would you expect? The size of a text block on a page us often influenced by drawings so I'm not sure if it's easy to determine. -
RE: The bottom margin
Anton > 24-04-2017, 04:12 PM
Quote:The obvious solution is that the scribe was observing some sort of typographical canon, as was often common.
typographical?
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RE: The bottom margin
Emma May Smith > 24-04-2017, 05:54 PM
(23-04-2017, 11:04 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Quote:Put the two points together and the balance is toward the paragraph distribution being caused by forward planning. The writer knew he wanted X number of paragraphs on a page and wasn't interested in whether he could fit more in the gap left at the bottom.
Of course it's caused by forward planning. I won't believe that the matter is accidental. The question is in the nature of this planning. In the balneo, and especially in the botanical section, the nature of this planning is on the surface - the text present on the page should relate to the images therein depicted. But in the recipe section there are no images, so nothing to relate to.
Why would he want X paragraphs on a particular page, and not Y paragraphs? Especially given that this "X" is not constant, neither it exhibits any recognized numerological series (does it?)
And again: the text density does not diminish towards the end of the page, that's what puzzles me. Note how tightly close are the leading gallows of last paragraphs to the previous line (the last line of next-to-last paragraphs). Would a scribe who knows that it is the last paragraph on the page that he is going to put down, and who knows that he still has plenty of page space - would he still conserve the linebreak space?
I don't know why the scribe would want a particular number of paragraphs on a page. As you say, it's puzzling because the number changes between folios. But we can still say that, in a number of cases, recto and verso do match. I don't think that's chance.
As for the text density, has anybody measured line height and spacing? Does it alter greatly throughout the text, and would the scribe even have the choice to space out the lines a bit more? -
RE: The bottom margin
davidjackson > 24-04-2017, 07:02 PM
@Anton - typographical because it relates to the layout of the text.
The canon is the construction of the page layout.
Raúl Rosavario created the field when he noticed the proportions inherent in early printed books. You get a lot of guff about the golden ration, 2:3 ratio and whatnot, but at its simplest, it's just planning the proportions of any page layout to make it easy on the eye. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.has some information on it, not very detailed.
Early manuscripts also had them. You'll find similar sized margins across the pages of illustrated manuscripts - there was a specific layout plan which was adhered to across pages.
Given the rather slapdash nature of the VM construction and failure to adhere to scribal training (ie, no ruling) I would not expect to find such consistency, but it does fit with what you are describing.
My question is - and I have done zero research on the VM here, this is simply off the top of my head - are the blocks of text in the "text-only" parts under discussion similar in layout proportion? If so, it is possible that the scribe was intentionally using a proportion of the page for whatever mystical or graphical reason of his own.
If a trend can be found across pages, this would be very interesting.... -
RE: The bottom margin
Davidsch > 25-04-2017, 12:49 PM
Quote:My question is - and I have done zero research on the VM here, this is simply off the top of my head - are the blocks of text in the "text-only" parts under discussion similar in layout proportion? If so, it is possible that the scribe was intentionally using a proportion of the page for whatever mystical or graphical reason of his own.
If you measure against word repeat mechanism, or word distance, word length, or letter usage per word or letter distance per word in word distances...
Well you get the point, it does not matter in general in which page you are in from that perspective in my measurements.
Of course the language itself varies so if the text you compare is smaller you already get slight differences.
Do you have other suggestions how to measure let me know.