Aga Tentakulus > 08-07-2021, 09:00 AM
R. Sale > 08-07-2021, 06:52 PM
Pythagoras > 11-07-2021, 01:40 PM
(08-07-2021, 06:52 PM)R. Sale Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Hang on just a moment. To say it is not a hoax, and therefore it is genuine, just doesn't work. Genuine what?
What is the 'apparent' and 'presumed' cultural source of the information in the VMs? For the VMs to be the strange sort of "alchemical herbal" etc. that it appears to be, with the impenetrable linguistics, and then be genuine, there needs to be a whole culture behind it, from which it derives its 'facts' and information and its reality. But there doesn't seem to be any such cultural source that is otherwise known in the historical record. If there is one, what is it?
Obviously this premise is much more plausible now, and would have been impossible to support in the 1400s.
The VMs is pseudo-genuine. It appears as though it might be genuine, from an otherwise unknown cultural source. But that ingenuous cultural source was created by the author(s), producer(s) of the VMs. That is why the VMs is a hoax - because it presents itself as being something it is not. It is not genuine. It is more sophisticated than that.
The VMs is not a total work of fiction. There is a reality behind the strange appearance. Yet even that reality has been found to be unfamiliar in many specifics, as historical details have gotten lost over the centuries. Plus the artist took care to be tricky, to disguise things that would have been clear to her/his contemporaries, through ambiguity, optical illusion, mnemonics, heraldic canting and so on.
In recent years, the accumulated wisdom of various investigations has revealed somewhat more of several specific VMs illustrations and one such example is the VMs cosmos. Few would now accept Newbold's interpretation as a Roger Bacon drawing of the Andromeda Galaxy. I believe the VMs cosmos was best identified with the image in BNF Fr. 565 (E. Velinska, 2014) - the interior part. While the exterior part, corresponding to the diagrams of Shirakatsi was spotted by D. Scheers (c. 2014). The combination of such diverse sources in the VMs is part of the intentional obfuscation. The strange combination cannot be explained without naming both parts. Furthermore, the use of combined images helps to explain other VMs illustrations such as Melusine, the 'mermaid'.
Within a manuscript that has no cultural foundation, the artist (at least) is using known medieval, (mostly) European, cultural, historical, traditional, and scientific information and data details (in a subtle way) for an unknown purpose. That's why the VMs is a hoax.
Pythagoras > 13-07-2021, 10:37 AM