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Quire and bifolio patterns for strangely-aligned text
- Quire and bifolio patterns for strangely-aligned text
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RE: Quire and bifolio patterns for strangely-aligned text
Torsten > 14-12-2022, 09:24 AM
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RE: Quire and bifolio patterns for strangely-aligned text
MarcoP > 14-12-2022, 07:38 PM
The two bifolios in quire 8 are rather bizarre: they mix different illustrations and layouts in a peculiar way.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. I speculated that the alignment at the top left of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. leaves out a rectangle that was supposed to be filled with a coloured initial, like the "weirdos" in f1r. Emma suggested that the space could have been meant for an ornate star: this is certainly another possibility. The rest of the paragraph is also shifted to the right (though not so deeply). Maybe this space was created for a list of "index" glyphs like in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (also quire 8)? -
RE: Quire and bifolio patterns for strangely-aligned text
pfeaster > 15-12-2022, 06:20 PM
(14-12-2022, 12:31 AM)Torsten Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There are indeed some hints pointing in the direction that the bifolios were created separately. There are for instance the illustrations in the balneological section. In my eyes the illustrations for the f75/f84 as well as for the f78/f81 bifolio look similar and are probably related.
I wonder too about f76/f83. At the top right of f76v, there's an arch of spray proceeding from a figure's hands, to which a fragment of another stream (arch?) of spray seems to be joined on the right. Part of this second stream appears to be hidden behind the intervening bifolios; but unless it's very short and stubby, it presumably extends out a bit into the marginal space between You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and f83r. Meanwhile, at the top left of f83r, there's a nymph with a funnel rising up behind her spouting more spray, but the left-hand portion of that image is obscured by the bend in the page, making it hard to tell quite what's happening there. I don't suppose there's any easy way to tell whether these two figures are linked by a stream of spray drawn across the space between the two folios.
(14-12-2022, 12:31 AM)Torsten Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.On some bifolios there is not a single instance of EVA-m. See for instance the f2/f7 and the f20/f21 bifolios. But for Currier A there are bifolios like f3/f5 and f17/f24 where EVA-m is frequently used. Moreover on f3/f5 as well as on f17/f24 EVA-m is used all over the page. And there are also bifolios where EVA-m is rarely used like on the f10/f15 as well as on the f11/f14 bifolio.
There seem to be cases as well where the pages in a bifolio share unusually high amounts of overall vocabulary with each other, such as f1/f8. In that case, there isn't so much overlap between You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and f1r, but all the other page pairings in that bifolio show high correlations in vocabulary. The snippet of spreadsheet below shows this calculated in one particular way, but I think I've seen others note a strong correlation between these pages too. -
RE: Quire and bifolio patterns for strangely-aligned text
Hider > 16-12-2022, 10:08 AM
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RE: Quire and bifolio patterns for strangely-aligned text
pfeaster > 16-12-2022, 03:47 PM
(16-12-2022, 10:08 AM)Hider Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.At a resolution of 400 dpi, your version of the connection between sheet You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and sheet You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is confirmed.
Thanks for this! These scans show quite a bit more of both pages than the ones at "Voyage the Voynich," apart from the issue of resolution -- it looks like I might need to revisit the question of where to go for best available images.
Minimally, this appears to show that, at the time You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. were drawn/written, the margin between them wasn't physically concealed by any intervening bifolios. I suppose someone could still have had a whole pre-formed quire on hand while working, but only loosely assembled, so that further-in bifolios could be shifted aside for convenience while working on individual pages, regardless of sequence or relationship. But if the content meaningfully spans both pages, that would seem to imply that f76v/f83r really was conceived as a "centerfold," like f78v/f81r (with its telltale pair of left-to-right-linking streams).
From your reconstruction, it's easy to interpret the stream from the left as directed towards the nymph on the right, even though it doesn't extend all the way to the nymph as I'd suspected it might. The apparent "dribbles" falling from the nymph's hand directly underneath could perhaps further support that interpretation. But since this is what we were potentially expecting to see, confirmation bias might be rearing its ugly head -- there are other cases of streams seeming to lead nowhere in particular (e.g. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. at upper left), so maybe the top right figure on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. was intended similarly, and its placement relative to the nymph at the top left of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is just a coincidence. Thoughts?
If we were to conclude that f78v/f81r and f76v/f83r were both originally "centerfolds" in some non-trivial sense, I suppose there could be a few ways to interpret that, including:
1. The bifolios now belonging to the "oversized" Quire 13 were originally arranged into two or more separate quires, and f78/f81 and f76/f83 occupied the center positions in two of them.
2. All the bifolios in Quire 13 were prepared individually, and any arrangement of them into quires happened later, without regard for their original relationships or order or layout. -
RE: Quire and bifolio patterns for strangely-aligned text
Hider > 16-12-2022, 06:43 PM