[Talk] Upcoming VMS lecture in NYC

[LisaFaginDavis]

Hi, all,

If you're in or near NYC, you may be interested in a lecture I'm giving on Friday, Jan. 24 at the Annual Meeting of the Bibliographical Society of America, where I'll be presenting the results of my study of VMS scribes. My session starts at 4:30 PM. More info here: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. My work will be published this spring in a journal called Manuscript Studies (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.) and in a collection of essays (Digital Palaeography, ed. by S. Brookes, M. Rehbein and P.A. Stokes (London: Routledge)) that will likely come out in 2021.

Also - if you live in Europe and get ZDF, tune into Terra X on Jan. 19 for a Voynich piece that will include an interview with me and an appearance by Ray Clemens. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

- Lisa

[-JKP-]

Hope it goes really well, Lisa.

[Aga Tentakulus]

I will definitely switch on ZDF.

Terra X is something like a compulsory program for me.

[davidjackson]

Many thanks for the heads up and all the best for the lecture. I don't suppose there's a webcast?

[ReneZ]

The ZDF programme has just started.
It begins with a description of the treasure on Réunion, by La Buse.

[bi3mw]

Lisa Fagin Davis statements:

- Four different hands are said to have been involved in the making of this manuscript.
- The VMS does not contain a secret writing, but a phonetic transcription of sounds instead of letters

[ReneZ]

It was only 10 minutes...

[Aga Tentakulus]

I saw it, and I just finished.
I am a little bit surprised that the age determination by the C14 analysis was not mentioned.
But instead Nostradamus is mentioned as a possible author, although it lies rather exactly 100 years beside it.
In these 10 minutes straight once the most necessary was addressed, which disappointed me somewhat.
Probably it is because one already too long and too often occupied oneself with the VM.

[Linda]

Lisa Fagin Davis statements:

- Four different hands are said to have been involved in the making of this manuscript.
- The VMS does not contain a secret writing, but a phonetic transcription of sounds instead of letters

Hmmm. 

First one sounds reasonable, i don't know much about it but have seen examples of several hands.

Second one, though, must mean they know what the sounds are and what they say, and therefore what language it is, otherwise it is as much a guess as anything else?

[Koen G]

I just watched it, it is indeed 10 minutes about the VM, of which five are a tangent about Nostradamus. This seems to be prompted by a small remark of Lisa's that some people like to see the VM in the tradition of Nostradamus - not even suggesting that he may be the author.

I am left with the question of what exactly the difference would be between phonemic transcription of spoken sound and medieval written text. For a large part, they wrote how they spoke. Of course there were things like abbreviations, capitals, positional variations only found in written language. But those may help to explain Voynichese oddities.