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The VM as Outsider Art

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• The VM as Outsider Art

• RE: The VM as Outsider Art

  oshfdk > 12-11-2023, 05:53 AM

  (11-11-2023, 08:59 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I had a professor at university who insisted that we are all people of the renaissance. So much of how we see the world, art, science, ourselves... was shaped in that critical timeframe. Obviously this cannot be seen as a single moment when everything changed all of a sudden, but things were shifting quicker than before for a number of reasons.
  
  Now the whole concept of the renaissance, when it started, what it entailed and so on is being revised by historians, and a subject of debate. But nobody, not even proponents of a very long Middle Ages, would use a 16th century work like Orlando Furioso to say anything about medieval literature. It's just a product of a different age and would not have been made in the early 15th century, just like Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (1774) could not have been made in the 1600's. Works of fiction are products of their time. That fact that Orlando Furioso was written in the 16th century is extremely relevant, since it was clearly a new kind of work that had success and great influence on later authors.
  
  It has absolutely nothing to do with the context of the early 15th century.

  
  I think I understand what you are saying, but it's still puzzling why Orlando Furioso published in Italy no later than 1532 (I'm not sure if the 1516 version included the Moon trip) should be paradigmatically different from the Voynich manuscript created somewhere some 100 years earlier. I mean, there was no internet in Europe in the XV-XVI centuries, ideas took a while to spread and only some of them took off and became part of the known history, while a lot was just lost, I assume. According to Wikipedia, the ideas of Renaissance originated in Florence in the XIII-XIV centuries, spreading to the rest of Europe over the course of 200 years. 
  
  Dante Alighieri was creating his version of Inferno 100 years before the Voynich manuscript, and, as far as I understand, it was very loosely based on the Biblical traditions and mostly an original world-building creation. And quite an elaborate one.
  
  Maybe it is a stretch, I'm not a historian.

• RE: The VM as Outsider Art

  Koen G > 12-11-2023, 11:02 AM

  The idea with these pieces of literature that make the "canon" is often that they are innovative, a product of the changing times. I don't know much about Orlando Furioso (it was addressed in a literature course I had at university, but only briefly), but you can just look at the Wiki to see why it is a product of its time:
  
  "In Orlando Furioso, instead of the chivalric ideals which were no longer current in the 16th century, a humanistic conception of man and life is vividly celebrated under the appearance of a fantastical world."
  
  This is one of the main reasons why such works are celebrated. They are not only exceptional in their execution, but they also give us insights in societal changes.
  
  Anyway, my problem is with the terminology. Orlando Furioso is not an example of world building, which is again a phenomenon starting around the 19th century.
  
  Worldbuilding is, according to the Wiki, "the process of constructing a world, originally an imaginary one, sometimes associated with a fictional universe.[1] Developing an imaginary setting with coherent qualities such as a history, geography, and ecology is a key task for many science fiction or fantasy writers.[2] Worldbuilding often involves the creation of geography, a backstory, flora, fauna, inhabitants, technology and often if writing speculative fiction, different races. This may include social customs as well as invented languages for the world."
  
  Orlando Furioso takes place in Europe and Africa. The moon is mentioned as a place where things that are lost on earth, like Orlando's wits, can be found. This sounds more like a trope (your common sense is gone, it must be on the moon) than fantasy writing and worldbuilding. 
  
  
  I am arguing these points because I am convinced that anachronism won't move us forward. The VM was made in the early 15th century, and even though it may have done something new, it was still a product of its time, not of the 19th century. The genres it references are clearly medieval, with a long and established history. The handwriting in the marginalia is medieval, the dress of the figures is medieval, the vellum is medieval.
  
  If we want to ever understand the manuscript, we must look at the context of the early 15th century. I understand that we will still need to argue that something "new" or unusual happened. But this new thing came from a mind which, as I believe all evidence suggests, was still medieval. It will probably help us more to look at this medieval setting, rather than project 19th century genres onto it.

• RE: The VM as Outsider Art

  nablator > 12-11-2023, 11:55 AM

  (12-11-2023, 11:02 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Worldbuilding is, according to the Wiki, "the process of constructing a world, originally an imaginary one, sometimes associated with a fictional universe.[1] Developing an imaginary setting with coherent qualities such as a history, geography, and ecology is a key task for many science fiction or fantasy writers.[2] Worldbuilding often involves the creation of geography, a backstory, flora, fauna, inhabitants, technology and often if writing speculative fiction, different races. This may include social customs as well as invented languages for the world."

  
  The closest in medieval literature would be Marco Polo's and John Mandeville's travels: they had a lot of fantastical elements but they were partly factual, and considered as factual.
  
  You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

• RE: The VM as Outsider Art

  zosima > 14-11-2023, 06:23 AM

  (12-11-2023, 11:02 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I am arguing these points because I am convinced that anachronism won't move us forward. 

  
  
  Yes, but these distinctions of terminology don't negate the possibility of the VM author being mentally ill or neurodivergent in some sense. 
  
  I also find everyone's favorite You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. suggestive in this context. Here at last is something written in the Latin alphabet, and seemingly in a known language. Let's have a look. O dear, it appears to be a bunch of garbled nonsense, just like pretty much every other aspect of the VM. I'm sure we can all appreciate the pleaseure of settling down before the fire with a glass of warm goat's milk and spitballing theories as to what "palden bpren so nim gas mich" means, but I'll take this as a bit more evidence that whoever wrote this may have been a bit mad.

• RE: The VM as Outsider Art

  ReneZ > 14-11-2023, 09:45 AM

  I also tend to agree that these concepts are primarily anachronistic if we interpret them in a modern way.
  
  I would find it hard to believe that unusual minds or mildly to moderatel disturned minds did not exist before the Renaissance. This is probable also not what Koen intended.
  
  There is of course an extreme shortage of documented examples, though two famous cases have been mentioned in the context of the Voynich MS:
  - Hildegard of Bingen
  - Opicinus de Canistris
  
  Their work does not look at all like the Voynich MS but I think that the whole point is that each of these types of works would be a unique and new creation.
  
  When I was interested in finding a connection between George of Trebizond and the Voynich MS, I learned that he was also considered to have some kind of a mental disorder, though modern scholars in this area of medical research would hesitate to put a name on it without having a chance to 'talk to the patient".
  
  This is just meant to underline the possibility (in my opinion) of some kind of 'visiionary' or 'outsider'  mindset in the creation of the MS.

• RE: The VM as Outsider Art

  Koen G > 14-11-2023, 10:32 AM

  Yeah, I'm certain a similar array of mental issues existed in the past. We could say the VM was probably made by a "neurodivergent" person, but that might become a slippery slope that ends up in abandoning the study altogether. 
  
  I think a word like "visionary" as Rene uses it might be more suitable, as it encompasses a certain divergence from the norm / new creation, as well as invoking the right context.
  
  The problem I see is this: how do we discuss absurd behavior in the context of religious extremism? Hildegard grew up in a theocracy, where it was normal to send daughters off to religious communities where they could become brides of Jesus. The society was also repressive of women in general, and those that were able to obtain some authority could not always do so by regular means. Hildegard's insistence that her writings came from visions rather than biblical exegesis allowed her to do something only men were allowed to do.
  
  Again, context is everything.

• RE: The VM as Outsider Art

  Aga Tentakulus > 14-11-2023, 11:40 AM

  You might agree, if it weren't for the possibility of multiple writers in the VM.
  (A joint effort of an insane asylum?)
  
  So interpretation is also a problem if you don't understand something. Just looking at the word "bpren", where it doesn't say that. You should write "pbren". But it actually says "vbren". If I were to simply add the apostrophe as it should be, it would be "v'bren", which means nothing other than "burn". Since very few people have used an apostrophe at all, it is actually spelt correctly.
  
  From this point of view, the VM author is right.
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