#imfm

[leoba]

Manuscripts, Humanity, and AI

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.

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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.

The Maniculum Podcast

The Maniculum Podcast on Tumblr

Pentiment

Book Historian Plays Pentiment! (Allie Alvis Pentiment play through)

Ludohistory Pentiment Playthrough Playlist on YouTube

Perna (oyster) - Der naturen bloeme - Jacob van Maerlant - KB KA 16 - 108v (via Wikimedia Commons)

Sebhat the Ethiopian scribe relates the story of Lazarus in Pentiment (via Obsidian on Twitter)

Saint George and the Dragon, UPenn LJS 102 f. 71r, early 20th century Ethiopian manuscript

British Library Add MS 62925, The Rutland Psalter

f. 14r

Close-up of bottom of 14r

Close-up of top of 14r

f. 57r

Close-up of bottom of f. 57r

f. 88v

Close-up of bottom of 88v

Betsy Chunko-Dominguez (2016) “Playing on Timbrels”: the margins of the Rutland Psalter, Word & Image, 32:1, 131-141, DOI: 10.1080/02666286.2016.1146540 (PDF here)

f. 67r

Close-up of bottom (heh) of f. 67r

f. 66v

Close-up of bottom of f. 66v

How the opening of ff. 66v-67r would approximately appear

The Luttrell Psalter on the BL Website

The Luttrell Psalter film, mentioned at this point in the podcast, is embedded at the end of this post.

Susan Kim and Asa Mittman, Inconceivable Beasts: The ‘Wonders of the East’ in the Beowulf Manuscript. ACMRS, 2013. (Download PDF here)

British Library blog post on Cotton Tiberius B v

Maniculum D23 posts

f. 87v

Close-up of bottom (heh) of f. 87v

f. 64r

Close-up of bottom of f. 64r

Close-up of top of f. 64r

The Book of Kells

f. 88r

Close-up of bottom of f. 88r

f. 16r

Close-up of bottom (heh) of 16r

(I promise I’m not doing this on purpose)

[Images in the 170s]

f. 5v, Calendar page for October

Close up of Scorpio zodiac sign

f. 3v, Calendar page for June

Close-up of Cancer Zodiac sign

f. 78v

Close-up of f. 78v.

f. 70v

Close-up of f. 70v

Further reading on The Rutland Psalter:

Chunko-Dominguez, Betsy. “‘Playing on Timbrels’: The Margins of the Rutland Psalter.” Word & Image (London. 1985), vol. 32, no. 1, 2016, pp. 131–41 (PDF)

Morgan, Nigel. “The Artists of the Rutland Psalter.” The British Library Journal, vol. 13, no. 2, 1987, pp. 159-185 (PDF)

Luttrell Psalter Film on YouTube:

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Episode 14: Aaron Macks on medieval calendars, the beauty of simplicity, and manuscripts as data

In Episode 14 of Inside My Favorite Manuscript, Dot chats with Aaron Macks about Harvard University, Houghton MS Typ 213, a gorgeous book of hours written and illustrated in Italy towards the end of the 15th century. We talk about the scribe and artist, the illuminations, the calendar, and discuss the practicalities of working with manuscripts as data.

Listen here, or wherever you find your podcasts.

Below the cut are more photos and links to the shows and books we mention during our conversation. Unless otherwise noted, the photos were taken by Aaron.

Record for MS Typ 213 in Harvard's Hollis catalogue

MS Typ 213 in the Harvard Library Image Viewer (incomplete, only eight pages are digitized)

MS Typ 213 in hand, so you can get a sense of its size (pretty small, but check out the gilt on that binding):

Comparing the section written earlier with the section written later (f. 13r and f. 87r):

Stub of dyed parchment (note the slice in the neighboring page from when the dyed page was cut out):

Example of dyed parchment page: Folio 7v from the Rossano Gospels, the Good Samaritan.

Gothic medieval book of hours, Annunciation to the Shepherds (Philadelphia Museum of Art 1945-65-5, p. 147):

Start of Terce (f. 33r; photo from online):

Start of the Office of the Dead (f. 92r):

Start of the Office of the Holy Cross (f. 133r):

The Annunciation (f. 143r)

Prayers added at the end in a gothic script (f. 171v):

More of the prayers in the gothic script (ff. 178v-179r):

The Calendar (ff. 1v-2r):

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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!

Join our mailing list to receive weekly updates about the IMFM pod!

Below the cut are photos of some of the specific things we discuss in this episode.

Beinecke MS 481.51: Gottschalk Antiphonary:

Beinecke MS 283: Epistolary, Cistercian Use:

Beinecke MS 408: Cypher Manuscript aka The Voynich Manuscript

Page from the herbal section:

Page opening from the astrological / zodiacal section:

Page from the bathing section:

Large fold-out:

Voynich Conference. Virtual conference! November 30-December 1, register now!

The Medievalist: A Novel, by Phil Adamo.

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Introducing Inside My Favorite Manuscript

Inside My Favorite Manuscript is a new podcast. Join Dot and Lindsey as they talk to people who work with medieval manuscripts (and other types, too) about their favorite manuscript and why they love it. The first full episode will arrive on November 15. Be sure to subscribe wherever you find your podcasts! Blog posts for each episode will be posted to our website.

Our first episode, featuring Allie Alvis aka @book-historia introducing us to two of their favorite manuscripts from the Huntington Collection at the University of Glasgow, will drop on Tuesday, November 15. Until then, here is me talking a tiny bit about the show and how I hope it will go.

We’re serving from PodBean but eventually you should be able to find us wherever fine podcasts can be found!

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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.

Join our mailing list to receive weekly updates about the IMFM pod!

Below the cut are photos of some of the specific things we discuss in this episode.

Folio 5r, the opening page:

Zoomed in to show the location of the erased signature:

Folio 352r, pilgrim portrait of the Monk:

Zoomed in view of the Monk:

Monk from the Ellesmere Manuscript (for contrast):

Folio 433r, Lechery and Chastity from the Parson’s Tale:

Zoomed in view of Lechery and Chastity:

Opening of the Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale with excised initial, recto:

Opening of the Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale with excised initial, verso (the back of the same leaf):

Parchment stub (protected on either side by thin paper) of the leaf that contained the opening to Troilus and (likely) a full-page miniature:

Holland’s added glossary:

Holland’s portrait of Geoffrey Chaucer:

Cook, Megan L. (2017) "Joseph Holland and the Idea of the Chaucerian Book," Manuscript Studies: Vol. 1: Iss. 2, Article 2. Available at: https://repository.upenn.edu/mss_sims/vol1/iss2/2

The Poet and the Antiquaries: Chaucerian Scholarship and the Rise of Literary History, 1532-1635 (Penn, 2019)

Finally, as promised in the outro, a link to Megan’s essay “Dirtbag Medievalism,” LA Review of Books, July 14 2021.

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Episode 1: Allie Alvis on Bindings, Tattoos, and Cute Little Guys | Inside My Favorite Manuscript

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!

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Episode 20: Paul Dilley on Papyrus, Manichaeism, and Multispectral Imaging

A photo of a page from one of the Medinet Madi Coptic Manichaean Codices taken under ultraviolet light.

In Episode 20 of Inside My Favorite Manuscript, Dot talks with Paul Dilley about one of the Medinet Madi Coptic Manichaean Codices. These seven papyrus manuscripts dating to the 4th and 5th centuries were discovered in Egypt in 1929, and they tell the story of a religion that was intended to draw from Christianity, Buddhism, Gnosticism, and other religions to create something new, but it was later crushed by Christian Roman emperors who considered it heresy. Our conversation ranges from the conservation of papyrus and the details of the beliefs of Manichaeism, to papyrus conservation and multispectral imaging.

Listen here, or wherever you find your podcasts

Below the cut are more images and links relevant to the conversation. Please note that there is an animated gif that switches between light and dark at one second intervals. Please be careful if you are sensitive to flashing lights.

These manuscripts have been minimally digitized, so we don't have many images to show.

The papyrus is quite damaged, and the text is so faded it can be difficult to read.

Multispectral imaging can help clarify the ink.

And here is a little animated gif that illustrates the difference between the two photos.

And finally, the photo of Paul ready to put the manuscript through the machine!

Dr Brent Seales, "Reading the Invisible Library: Virtual Unwrapping and the Scroll from En-Gedi" (Video on YouTube, February 2023)