Aka Dot. Medievalist & wannabe booklicker. Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies. Director of VisColl. Host of Coffee With A Codex (official) and Inside My Favorite Manuscript Podcast (personal). Fascists DNI. Opinions are my own.
Episode 19: Elizabeth Fredericks on the Orkney Islands, the author’s process, and a very special bingo card
A page from the manuscript of George Mackay Brown's novel Greenvoe.
In Episode 19 of Inside My Favorite Manuscript, Dot and Lindsey chat with Elizabeth Fredericks about the manuscript for George Mackay Brown’s 1972 novel Greenvoe. The manuscript, which is now at the University of Edinburgh, was written on sometimes random bits of paper, and offers a fascinating look into the author's process for writing his first novel. Brown was born in Orkney and lived most of his life there, so we also talk about the Scottish and Orkney influences on the novel.
Listen here, or wherever you find your podcasts.
Below the cut are more images and links relevant to the conversation.
All photos taken at the University of Edinburgh Library by Elizabeth Fredericks.
Greenvoe is in print, and you can read it in paperback, hardcover, or e-book.
A typical page of notes, with multiple layers of changes - then cancelled completely!
Page showing VERA crossed out, being replaced by A (= Alice)
Notes on some of the characters.
Handwritten page of novel text showing many changes, made in blue and black ink.
Planning notes, what each character is doing, for every day of the week.
Notes about the Fishing Village.
Notes on what happens in Greenvoe on Wednesday.
Stella! Aka "The Muse of Rose Street," whom Brown met in Edinburgh, was engaged to for a short time, and stayed in touch with until her death in 1985.
Ripped calendar page from June, 1970.
Notes written on a page torn from a newspaper, including the final day of the story - RESURRECTION.
Episode 18: Olivia Baskerville on the Great Survey, the Greek New Testament, and the history of England
Pages from the Codex Sinaiticus (l) and The Domesday Book (r)
In Episode 18 of Inside My Favorite Manuscript, we have a two-fer! Dot and Lindsey chat with Olivia Baskerville about her two favorite manuscripts: The Domesday Book and the Codex Sinaiticus. The Domesday Book, completed in 1086, documents a tax survey taken of most of England and parts of Wales after the Norman Conquest, while Codex Sinaiticus is a complete copy of the New Testament, written in Greek in the 4th century and sold to England by the Soviet Union in 1933. While very different in form and content, both manuscripts have played important roles in English culture, and we'll spend most of our time talking about the politics surrounding their creation and use over the course of England's history.
Listen here, or wherever you find your podcasts.
Below the cut are more images and links relevant to the conversation.
The Domesday Book at the National Archives (includes digitized images taken from the 1986 photographic facsimile, free to download in PDF format if you sign in)
Open Domesday (includes digital images taken from the 1850s photozincographic reproduction of Domesday, made by Ordnance Survey in Southampton. As Andrew Prescott points out on Twitter, the plates used to make this facsimile have been cleaned up and some marginalia removed)
Page of the Domesday book showing Bedford in Bedfordshire (image from the National Archives)
Codex Sinaiticus (transcription and digital images)
Codex Sinaiticus fol. 217b, the opening of the Book of Mark
The same page within the context of the website, transcription and translation on the right.
Example of a Canon Table from British Library Burney 41, f. 19v. From left to right, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John showing the divisions that were used before the invention of the modern system of chapter and verses. The numbers in the columns will be written alongside the text in the main part of the Bible. (Wikipedia page on Eusebian Canons)
The canon table that Olivia mentioned, from the Codex Amiatinus (digitized online at the Library of Congress)
Codex Sinaiticus fol. 217b, zoom in on the bottom right under standard light.
Codex Sinaiticus fol. 217b, zoom in on the bottom right margin under raking light. The ruling is so clear!
Wikipedia page on the Soviet sale of paintings from the Hermitage Museum (which happened around the same time that the Codex Sinaiticus was sold)
Newsreel Footage of Codex Sinaiticus from 1933, blog post by Brent Nongbri includes the movie footage embedded.
The CULTIVATE MSS project (2019-2024), funded by the European Research Council, explores how the trade in medieval manuscripts between 1900 and 1945 affected the development of ideas about the nature and value of European culture during this period. (Project website)
The Cost of Culture, the podcast of the CULTIVATE MSS project
This week’s episode of Inside My Favorite Manuscript, a little dip into English nationalism! What do a 4th century Greek New Testament and a tax survey have to do with it? Listen to find out!
Episode 17: Kathryn Maude on politics, the queen as evangelist, and the 11th century Encomium Emmae reginae
British Library Add MS 33241, fol. 1v
In Episode 17 of Inside My Favorite Manuscript, Dot and Lindsey chat with Kathryn Maude about the 11th century Queen Emma, who was married to and had children with both the English king Æthelred the Unready and his successor the Danish king Cnut the Great. The resulting political situation was complicated, and the Encomium Emmae reginae can help us understand the lines that Emma was attempting to walk as her sons grew into adulthood and prepared to take the throne. The text survives in two copies, the earliest one of which is British Library Add MS 33241, believed to be the copy that was presented to Queen Emma herself. Kathryn walks us through the manuscript and we talk about both the politics and the materiality of this fascinating text.
Listen here, or wherever you find your podcasts.
Below the cut are more photos and links relevant to the conversation.
British Library Add MS 33241, aka Encomium Emmae reginae (digitized online)
Folio 1v, the presentation of the book to Queen Emma, with her sons peeking out from the margin.
A close-up of folio 1v focusing on Emma and her sons.
A close-up of folio 1v focusing on the scribe presenting the book. Note that his hands are covered with a cloth. The son's hand has been added.
A close-up of folio 1v focusing on the curtains
Boulogne-sur-Mer, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 11, miniature of Saint John, folio 107r
Close-up of folio 107r focusing on the curtains. Note Saint John holding the book with a cloth around it.
Copenhagen, Royal Danish Library, Acc. 2011/5, aka Courtenay Compendium, which contains the late 14th century copy of the Encomium Emmae reginae (apparently not digitized)
Doors of Durin, drawn by JRR Tolkien.
The Doors of Durin (Gates of Moria) from the Fellowship of the Ring film by Peter Jackson
Middle Aged Women in the Middle Ages, edited by Sue Niebrzydowski. Gender in the Middle Ages, Volume 7. D. S. Brewer, 2011.
Folio 18r, Sven and Cnut's names are capitalized Half Uncials while the rest of the text is a regular Carolingian script.
Folio 48r, another example. Here Emma's name is capitalized at the top.
A king pointing to the text on folio 46r - "a manicule with a king attached" - with a note written beneath in the later middle ages, probably at Saint Augustine's Abbey in Canterbury.
An ugly manicule (hand pointing at the text), folio 46v.
Folio 5r, a gloss in the margin.
Folio 60r, an emoji in the margin of a couple of eyes to annotate the word oculi (Latin for eyes) in the text.
Close-up of the eyes.
Folio 58v, the parchment has been mended during the parchment preparation process, before the text was written.
Folio 54r, space was left for initials that were never added (the penciled M is probably contemporary but was never decorated)
Folio 2r, the first page of text, featuring a zoomorphic initial (i.e., an initial in the shape of an animal, in this case some sort of dragon and a fish eating each other) and colorful capitals.
Folio 8r, a zoomorphic initial R made of more critters eating each other. Good for a tattoo?
Folio 19v. "Explicit Lib[er] I" means the end of book 1, and "Incipit Secundus" means the beginning of [book] two (the second book).
Folio 50v, featuring Lindsey's ugly manicule
A close-up of the manicule
The Annunciation of Mary in Boulogne-sur-Mer, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 11
We talked to Brandon Hawk about the Vercelli Manuscript in Episode 7.
A hedgehog in the Luttrell Psalter (folio 19v)! (See it online)
"The Social Centrality of Women in Beowulf: A New Context" Dot's very first published article!
Alex West on the poetry of ascetics, Sundanese, and palm leaf manuscript culture
A leaf from Bodleian Library MS Jav. b.3. (R), a manuscript from Indonesia written on palm leaves.
In Episode 16 of Inside My Favorite Manuscript, Dot sits down with Alex West to talk about Bodleian Library MS Jav. b.3. (R), the only surviving copy of the Sundanese poem Bujangga Manik (written ca. 1470-1500). We start with the story, a tale of an ascetic who travels around the island of Java searching for spiritual transcendence, and along the way we discuss the manuscript, religious, and artistic cultures that formed the poem.
Listen here, or wherever you find your podcasts.
Below the cut are more photos and links relevant to the conversation.
Bodleian Library MS Jav. b.3. (R) (digitized online)
Wikipedia page for the poem Bujangga Manik (out of date)
Where is Java?
The wooden box MS Jav. b.3. (R) is stored in:
Folio 7r, a representative view of the appearance of the palm leaf pages. Note the large hole in the center of the page and two smaller ones on the edges - string originally would have been thread through the holes, to hold the leaves together and to enable them to fan out. The text is inscribed, with no ink.
A close-up of the center of 7r, so you can better see the inscribed writing.
Folio 7v, the other side of 7r.
Dot misspoke during the podcast - the University of Pennsylvania palm leaf manuscripts are from India, not Thailand (the Thai manuscripts are written on paper). Here is one of them, Ms. Coll. 390 Item 82, Āhnikaprayoga, a digest of Hindu rituals from various sources written in 1822. In Sanskrit. Records here and here.
Front cover:
Folios 1v (top) and 2r (bottom)
An example of an inscription: The stone inscription of Kalasan, 778/779 ce, Central Java. National Museum of Indonesia, Jakarta, inv. no. D.147. Photo OD 7466, Kern Institute Collection, courtesy of Leiden University Library:
A. J. West, Bujangga Manik: or, Java in the fifteenth century: an edition and study of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Jav. b. 3 (R). PhD Dissertation
Image of a manuscript, generated in MidJourney by Suzette van Haaren
(a few words originally posted on Twitter on March 27, 2023 and then on my blog. It’s resonating there so I thought I would post it here too.)
I’ve been trying all morning to figure out what bothers me about these Mid journey-generated manuscripts without simply sounding like a Luddite, and I think I finally have it.
It’s because my interest in manuscripts is almost entirely about the humanity behind them. Who made them? Who used them and why? What happened to them after they were made? Where are they now? What did they mean in the past and what do they mean now?
A computer generated book doesn’t have any of that context. I’ve talked about the uncanny valley with regard to digitized manuscripts, and this is that, one step further. It’s one thing to digitize a manuscript in a way that elides its materiality, and a whole other thing to create manuscripts that don’t exist materially at all.
I think there are potentially interesting ways to use AI in my work. I’m interested in structure, and have been part of a project, VisColl, to develop models and software to build models of manuscripts. Could AI be used to combine structural models and digital images to create photorealistic imagery of existing manuscripts? Imagine an AI reconstruction of manuscripts cut apart and distributed by Otto Ege. Could it even generate pages that are lost as semi-realistic placeholders?
Just a few thoughts. I’m less interested in generating realistic looking manuscripts than in the potential to leverage the technology to help us understand the use and history of manuscripts that exist in the real world.
Added: If you’d like to hear me talk more about manuscripts and humanity, check out Coffee With A Codex, a weekly 30-minute program both live and posted to YouTube where I present a show-and-tell with books from the University of Pennsylvania’s premodern manuscript collections, and Inside My Favorite Manuscript, a weekly podcast I do in my own time where I talk to people who love manuscripts about manuscripts they love the most.
Episode 9: Zoe and Mac from The Maniculum Podcast!
In Episode 9 of Inside My Favorite Manuscript, Lindsey and Dot chat with Zoe and Mac from the Maniculum podcast, where they suggest ways to adapt medieval texts for TTRPG’s (tabletop roleplaying games). We talk about marginalia, games, and Mac takes us for a dive into the Rutland Psalter. We also talk to Zoe about her storytelling for Pentiment, a medieval adventure video game by Obsidian Entertainment.
Listen here, or wherever you find your podcasts.
If you enjoyed this episode, you can listen to Dot and Lindsey over on The Maniculum Podcast! We talked about digital humanities, book history, and the secrets of women. Find links to listen here: https://www.themaniculumpodcast.com/episodes
Below the cut are page images and further reading from our conversation.
Episode 5: Sonja Drimmer on Hieroglyphs, the wonder of creativity, and the Abduction of Ganymede
In Episode 5 of Inside My Favorite Manuscript, Dot and Lindsey chat with art historian Sonja Drimmer about British Library Royal MS 12 C iii, an early 16th century manuscript that purports to be a guide for translating Egyptian hieroglyphs but in reality is so much more than that.
Listen here, or wherever you find your podcasts.
Below the cut are photos of some of the specific things we discuss in this episode.
bear in mind that i'm mostly interested in medieval english history, but... do you really think that all women suffered miserable, joyless lives? that no man ever loved his wife? that no gay person ever lived in peace? that no child ever grew up to live a life they loved? that no parent ever saw their disabled child and cared for them anyway? that nobody ever had sex, and enjoyed it? that no priest was ever truly virtous, that nunneries were always places where women were sent away to be locked up? do you really think that it was just suffering day in, day out, unless you were the richest of the rich? do you really think that simply living in a different time made people stupid, senseless, violent? do you really think that people living in the past were so different from us, that they never had thoughts and feelings and dreams to rival our own?
do you really think that people in the past were not people?
Ms. Codex 1101 is a collection of historical works about war and prophecy, focusing on the Holy Roman Empire. It was written in Austria, ca. 1529. The cover is a parchment fragment from breviary over cardboard, heavily worn and darkened.
We are declaring 2023 the Year Of Hours! Every week we'll share two books of hours from institutions in and around Philadelphia and digitized through the BiblioPhilly project. There is such a variety in the collection and two a week should get them all. We hope you'll join us on this bookish adventure!
Links to the manuscripts above (clockwise from upper left):
Book of Hours, Use of Rome (Italy, ca. 1450)
Susanna Hours (France, early 16th century)
The Hawley Hours (Zwolle, Netherlands, between 1470 and 1480)
Book of Hours, Use of Rome (Flanders, early 16th century)
I am really excited about the Year of Hours. I have not always been a fan of books of hours, I thought they were fancy books only good for art historians, but I am pleased to admit that I was wrong. There’s a really great range in books of hours, both artistically and textually, and they can show incredible signs of use. I’m always interested in things that show how people interacted with books, so learning more about that has been a revelation for me.
Our first post will be on January 1. They won’t be long - just a video with photos, a bit of information, and a link to the record on BiblioPhilly. But getting to show off all the books of hours in Philadelphia is going to be great! Follow @upennmanuscripts if you want to follow Year of Hours (I’ll also be tagging all the posts).
Episode 4: Michelle Margolis on Studious Women, Colorful Margins, and a Curious Bath
Folio 37v (not 40r!), men and women studying together.
In Episode 4 of Inside My Favorite Manuscript, Lindsey and Dot talk to Michelle Margolis about a 15th century Haggadah manuscript from Germany. We spend some time talking about how many women are present in the illustrations, and why that might be. We look at some of the other illustrations, which include a hunt, and a very interesting bathing scene. Finally we discuss the signs of use in the manuscript, including ones that you’ll only see in a book used at the dinner table.
Listen here, or wherever you find your podcasts.
Below the cut are photos of some of the specific things we discuss in this episode.
Episode 3: Megan Cook on Chaucer, Weird Spelling, and the Long History of GG
Pilgrim portrait of the Monk from CUL MS Gg.4.27.1
In Episode 3 of Inside My Favorite Manuscript, Dot sits down with Megan Cook, professor of English and book historian, to talk about Cambridge, University Library MS Gg.4.27.1. GG (as Megan affectionately calls it) is an early effort to bring together Chaucer’s major works outside of London, the writing might indicate something interesting about the person who wrote it, and it had a long and interesting history after it was written around 1425.
Listen here, or wherever you find your podcasts.
Below the cut are photos of some of the specific things we discuss in this episode.
We are frequently asked why we don’t wear gloves in our manuscript videos. In today's #ManuscriptBasics, curator Dot Porter @leoba will do her best to explain. If you have a question, ask, and maybe we'll make a video to answer!
Episode 2: Lisa Fagin Davis on a Fragment, a Forgery, and a Fiend
Women bathing in the Voynich manuscript
In Episode 2 of Inside My Favorite Manuscript, Dot and Lindsey talk to manuscript scholar Lisa Fagin Davis about three of her favorite manuscripts, all of which happen to be in the collections of the Beinecke Library at Yale University:
The Gottschalk Antiphonary, now a collection of fragments
Epistolary, Cistercian Use, a 15th century manuscript with substantial forged illustrations added in the 19th century
Cypher Manuscript aka The Voynich Manuscript, a fiend of a manuscript that has proven itself impossible to decipher
Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts!
Below the cut are photos of some of the specific things we discuss in this episode.
In today's episode we talk to Allie Alvis, cataloger and bookseller, as she shares with us two manuscripts she loves from the Hunterian Collection at the University of Glasgow: The Hunterian Psalter (MS Hunter 229), a gorgeous and exquisitely illustrated 12th century psalter, and John Lydgate's Life of Our Lady (MS Hunter 232), a 15th century collection of religious poetry, notable primarily because it's been drawn upon by children.
Complete show notes are on our blog.
Thrilled to share Episode 1! Listen to it on PodBean, it should soon be available wherever you get your podcasts. Visit our About page to see where the IMFM pod is available now. If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating or a review!
