From Parchment to Cyberspace: Medieval Literature in the Digital Age (Medieval Interventions) 9781433129636, 9781453915981, 1433129639

Citation preview

2 From Parchment to Cyberspace argues the case for studying high-resolution digital images of original manuscripts to analyze medieval literature. By presenting a rigorous philosophical argument for the authenticity of such images (a point disputed by digital skeptics) the book illustrates how digitization offers scholars innovative methods for comparing manuscripts of vernacular literature—such as The Romance of the Rose or texts by Christine de Pizan—that reveal aspects of medieval culture crucial to understanding the period.

Stephen G. Nichols, a medievalist, is James M. Beall Professor Emeritus of French and Humanities, and Research Professor at Johns Hopkins University. He has written or edited some 26 books on the Middle Ages, including Romanesque Signs: Early Medieval Narrative and Iconography, for which he received the MLA’s James Russell Lowell Prize. He holds an honorary Docteur ès Lettres, from the University of Geneva, and was decorated Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres by the French government. The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation awarded him its Research Prize in 2008 and again in 2015. Nichols co-directs JHU’s Digital Library of Medieval Manuscripts (www.romandelarose.org), and co-founded the electronic journal, Digital Philology, A Journal of Medieval Culture, published by the Johns Hopkins University Press. He chaired the Board of the Council of Library Information Resources from 2008 to 2013, and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as of the Medieval Academy of America.

FROM PARCHMENT TO CYBERSPACE | Nichols

“The past decade has seen the beginning of a major revolution in the study of digital images of medieval manuscripts, and no one has played a more vital role in that epochal development than Stephen G. Nichols. His new book, a seamless blend of theoretical exposition and historical case studies, gives a masterly overview of exactly what this has meant (and promises to mean) for medieval studies and the humanities generally.” —Michael Fried, Johns Hopkins University

www.peterlang.com

MEDIEVAL INTERVENTIONS

From Parchment to Cyberspace MEDIEVAL LITERATURE IN THE DIGITAL AGE

STEPHEN G. NICHOLS

PETER LANG

2 From Parchment to Cyberspace argues the case for studying high-resolution digital images of original manuscripts to analyze medieval literature. By presenting a rigorous philosophical argument for the authenticity of such images (a point disputed by digital skeptics) the book illustrates how digitization offers scholars innovative methods for comparing manuscripts of vernacular literature—such as The Romance of the Rose or texts by Christine de Pizan—that reveal aspects of medieval culture crucial to understanding the period.

Stephen G. Nichols, a medievalist, is James M. Beall Professor Emeritus of French and Humanities, and Research Professor at Johns Hopkins University. He has written or edited some 26 books on the Middle Ages, including Romanesque Signs: Early Medieval Narrative and Iconography, for which he received the MLA’s James Russell Lowell Prize. He holds an honorary Docteur ès Lettres, from the University of Geneva, and was decorated Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres by the French government. The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation awarded him its Research Prize in 2008 and again in 2015. Nichols co-directs JHU’s Digital Library of Medieval Manuscripts (www.romandelarose.org), and co-founded the electronic journal, Digital Philology, A Journal of Medieval Culture, published by the Johns Hopkins University Press. He chaired the Board of the Council of Library Information Resources from 2008 to 2013, and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as of the Medieval Academy of America.

FROM PARCHMENT TO CYBERSPACE | Nichols

“The past decade has seen the beginning of a major revolution in the study of digital images of medieval manuscripts, and no one has played a more vital role in that epochal development than Stephen G. Nichols. His new book, a seamless blend of theoretical exposition and historical case studies, gives a masterly overview of exactly what this has meant (and promises to mean) for medieval studies and the humanities generally.” —Michael Fried, Johns Hopkins University

www.peterlang.com

MEDIEVAL INTERVENTIONS

From Parchment to Cyberspace MEDIEVAL LITERATURE IN THE DIGITAL AGE

STEPHEN G. NICHOLS

PETER LANG

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR

From Parchment to Cyberspace “With this book one of the pioneers of the New Philology brings about a second revolution in our thinking about medieval culture and its multiple histories. Deep erudition, philosophical acumen, and up-to-date technical know-how are conjoined here in a paradigm-setting work of scholarship that is true to both components of the term ‘digital humanities.’ From Parchment to Cyberspace is simultaneously the document of a personal research journey and a sophisticated theoretical treatise. Every one of its brilliantly written pages harbors a surprising insight. The book’s impact will be felt in scholarly publications and in classrooms around the world.” —David E. Wellbery LeRoy T. and Margaret Deffenbaugh Carlson University Professor University of Chicago “From Parchment to Cyberspace is a future-oriented guidebook and must-read for students of the Middle Ages, literary studies, and the humanities writ large. Stephen G. Nichols, a pioneer in online editing, masters the digital technology of our time to lift the veil that has covered medieval literary studies for two centuries. Nichols restores the historical and cultural richness, the meaning, and the joy of medieval works. Dazzling.” —R. Howard Bloch Sterling Professor of French and Chair of Medieval Studies Yale University “From Parchment to Cyberspace is the culmination of decades of reflection on a fascinating subject that no one knows better than Stephen G. Nichols: the promise and challenges of restituting the ‘manuscript matrix’ in electronic media. Theorist of material philology and architect of the extraordinary project to recover the vast corpus of Roman de la Rose manuscripts online, Nichols probes the unexpected ways in which new digital technologies allow for an unprecedented glimpse into the variance of medieval texts. Moving with equal ease among known and anonymous writers, copyists, scribes, and illuminators, as well as contemporary means and methods, he has proposed a far-reaching and exciting vision of the future of medieval studies, understood as ‘humanistic research aided by digital resources and tools driven by critical intelligence.’” —Daniel Heller-Roazen Arthur W. Marks ’19 Professor of Comparative Literature and the Council of the Humanities Princeton University

From Parchment to Cyberspace

MEDIEVAL INTERVENTIONS New Light on Traditional Thinking Stephen G. Nichols General Editor Vol. 2

This book is a volume in a Peter Lang monograph series. Every volume is peer reviewed and meets the highest quality standards for content and production.

PETER LANG

New York  Bern  Frankfurt  Berlin Brussels  Vienna  Oxford  Warsaw

Stephen G. Nichols

From Parchment to Cyberspace Medieval Literature in the Digital Age

PETER LANG

New York  Bern  Frankfurt  Berlin Brussels  Vienna  Oxford  Warsaw

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Nichols, Stephen G. Title: From parchment to cyberspace: medieval literature in the digital age / Stephen G. Nichols. Description: New York: Peter Lang, [2016] Series: Medieval interventions: new light on traditional thinking; vol. 2 ISSN 2376-2683 (print) | ISSN 2376-2691 (online) Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2015050782 | ISBN 978-1-4331-2963-6 (hardcover) ISBN 978-1-4539-1598-1 (e-book) Subjects: LCSH: Literature, Medieval—Criticism, Textual. Criticism, Textual—Data processing. | Manuscripts, Medieval—Digitization. Humanities—Data processing. | Manuscripts, Medieval—History. Transmission of texts—History. | Codicology. Classification: LCC PN671 .N525 2016 | DDC 091.09/02—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2015050782

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek. Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the “Deutsche Nationalbibliografie”; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de/.

© 2016 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York 29 Broadway, 18th floor, New York, NY 10006 www.peterlang.com All rights reserved. Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm, xerography, microfiche, microcard, and offset strictly prohibited.

To the Memory of Thierry Delcourt (1959–2011) Directeur du Département des Manuscrits Bibliothèque nationale de France ________ Courageous, Visionary, Generous ________

John of Salisbury, Polycratique, translated for Charles V by Denis Foulechat. Incipit of the copy presented to the king. Miniature shows King Charles reading the incipit of the manuscript identified by the psalm quotation. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr 24287, fol. 2r. (Paris, 1372).

Contents

List of Illustrations Preface Introduction: Why I Wrote This Book, or Medieval Manuscripts Unchained  Part one Technologies of the Medieval Book: The Manuscript Matrix 1. What Is a Manuscript Culture?  2. Materiality and Mimesis: Anatomy of an Illusion  3. No Fool of Time: The Paradox of Manuscript Transmission 

1 17 43 55

part two Technologies

4. 5. 6.

of Manuscript Knowledge: How We Read Now in the Digital Middle Ages The Work of Reading  Variance as Dynamic Reading  Synoptic Reading: Medieval Manuscripts as Text Networks 

xi xxi

97 107 143

Part three Coda

The Anxiety of Irrelevance: Digital Humanities and Contemporary Critical Theory  Notes Index

187 201 227

Illustrations

Introduction Figure 0.1. Critical edition of Roman de la Rose, showing multiplicity of manuscripts it purports to represent. Figure 0.2. Manuscript Folio (leaf/page) as complex hand-written and -painted artifact. Christine de Pizan composing poetry. London: British Library, MS Harley 4431, fol. 4r. Paris 1406–10. Figure 0.3. Fleshing and removing hair from a cowhide in preparation for making manuscript parchment. Figure 0.4. Polishing dried cowhide with pumice stone to make it smooth enough for painting and lettering.  Figure 0.5. Example of Lyric Insertion and surrounding huitains (95–96) in a bilingual edition of Villon’s Testament. [François Villon, Oeuvres completes, edition établie par Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet avec la collaboration de Laëtitia Tabard (Paris: Gallimard, 2014), pp. 96–97.] Figure 0.6. Bi-folio from Le Testament Villon, Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 20041, fols. 113v–114r.

3

4 5 5

9 10

xii | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

Figure 0.7. Example of Lyric Insertion and surrounding huitains (“95-½ of 99”) in Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr 20041, fols. 131v–132r. Paris, 15th century.

11

Chapter 1 Figure 1.1. Grandes chroniques de France, Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr 2813, fol. 357v. Paris, 1375–80. 21 Figure 1.2. Bas-de-page drawing of a poet/scribe reciting troubadour poetry he’s copying into a manuscript (shown here as a scroll). New York: The Pierpont Morgan Library, MS. 819, fol. 63. Padua, c. 1280. 26 Figure 1.3. Author “Portrait” of troubadour Peire Milon. New York: The Pierpont Morgan Library, MS 819, fol. 103r. Padua, c. 1280. 26 Figure 1.4. Composite author “portrait” showing Guillaume de Lorris and/or Jean de Meun, the poets responsible for bi-partite Roman de la Rose in c. 1235 and 1280 C. E. respectively. Guillaume, 4,000+ lines, completed by Jean de Meun in 18,000+ lines. New York: The Pierpont Morgan Library, MS 948 fol. 5r. Rouen, c. 1525.28 Figure 1.5. Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, Le Roman de la Rose, Miniature marking the transition from Guillaume to Jean’s continuation. Rubric under painting reads: “Ci commence mestre Jehan de Meun.” Dartmouth College, MS Rauner Codex 3206, fol. 27r (Paris, c. 1330–1350). Courtesy of Dartmouth College Library. 30 Figure 1.6. Guillaume de Lorris lies dead and ready for burial, while the Lover (or Jean de Meun) stands outside the room mourning, but prepared to continue the quest/poem. Roman de la Rose, New York: The Pierpont Morgan Library, MS Morgan 948, fol. 44. Rouen, c. 1525.31 Figure 1.7. Vincent de Beauvais Speculum historiale/Miroir historiale, tr. Jehan de Vignay for Jeanne de Bourgogne, Queen of France 1328–1348. Left panel, St Louis commissioning Latin work from Vincent de Beauvais in 1251; right panel, Jeanne de Bourgogne commissioning French translation

Illustrations | xiii from Jehan de Vignay in 1332–1333. Paris: Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal 5080 réserve, fol. 1, detail. Paris, 14th century.  Figure 1.8. Vincent de Beauvais, Mireoir hÿstorial, Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr 313, fol. 1r. Paris, 1396. Raoulet d’Orléans & Guillaume de Hervi, scribes, Perrin Remiet, artist. Escutcheon in lower part of folio bears the arms of Louis I, duc d’Orléans, brother of Charles VI, indicating this was his personal copy. Figure 1.9. Saint Augustine, La cité de Dieu, translated by Raoul de Presles for Charles V from 1375–78. Folio shows translator’s identification of sources in left hand column (“Ysidore” [of Seville]), while rubric in column 2 summarizes the chapter to follow. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr 22912, fol. 249v. Paris, 1375–78. Figure 1.10. Gérard du Bus, Chaillou de Pesstain, & Philippe de Vitry, Le Roman de Fauvel. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr 146, fol. 1r. Paris, c. 1314. 

32

35

36

39

Chapter 2 Figure 2.1. Roman de la Rose, Courtly “vices:” Haÿne, Felonie et Vilainie, Convoitise. Berlin: Staatsbibliothek, MS Cod. Gall. 80, fol. 2r.  Paris, first half 14th century. Figure 2.2. Roman de la Rose, Courtly “vices:” Haigne. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr 25526, fol. 2r. Paris, 2nd half 14th century.

50

51

Chapter 3 Figure 3.1. Roman de la Rose. Courtly Vices painted on the exterior wall of the Jardin de Déduit (Pleasure Garden): “Felonnie,” “Convoitise” [Cupidity], “Avarice,” “Envie.” Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr 378, fol. 13v. Paris, c. 1290. Figure 3.2. Roman de la Rose. Courtly Vices painted on the exterior wall of the Jardin de Déduit (Pleasure Garden):

58

xiv | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

“Convoitise,” “Avarice.” Oxford: Bodleian Library, MS Douce 195, fol. 2v. Paris, 15th century. Figure 3.3. Complex manuscript page (folio). Roman de la Rose. Munich: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, MS Cod. Gall. 17, fol. 1. Paris, 1407. Figure 3.4. Coronation of Philip VI of France, the first Valois King, in 1328. Grandes Chroniques de France. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr 2813, fol. 353v. Paris, 1375–80. Figure 3.5. Page layout with alternating red and blue decorated initials and elongated flourishes. Roman de la Rose. Dartmouth College, MS Rauner Codex 3206, fol. 5v. Paris, c. 1350. Courtesy of Dartmouth College Library. Figure 3.6. “Exposicion sus ce chapitre.” “Le translateur.” Gloss incorporated into translation of Saint Augustine’s Cité de Dieu [City of God] by the translator, Raoul de Presles, at the behest of Charles V. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr 22912, fol. 269r. Paris, 1375–77. Figure 3.7. Marginal painting depicting a visual interpretation of the love “combat” in the poem it illustrates. New York: Pierpont Morgan Library, MS Morgan 819, fol. 211 (detail). Padua, c. 1280. Figure 3.8. Presentation miniature showing Christine de Pizan offering this copy of her collected works to her patron, Queen Isabeau of Bavière, wife of Charles VI of France. London: British Library, MS. Harley 4431, fol. 3r. Paris, 1406–10. Figure 3.9. Example of a basic, relatively inexpensive manuscript of the Roman de la Rose. Baltimore: Walters Art Museum, MS Walters 143, fol. 8r. Paris, c. 1325. Figure 3.10. Beginning (incipit) of the Roman de la Rose: “Maintes gens dient que en songes …” [Many people say that dreams are …]. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr 25526, fol. 1r. Paris, 14th c. Figure 3.11. The Lover at the Pool of Narcissus. Roman de la Rose. Munich: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, MS. Cod. Gall. 17, fol. 10v. Paris, c. 1407. Figure 3.12. The Lover at the Pool of Narcissus. Roman de la Rose. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr 1559, fol. 14v. Paris, 1280–1300.

59

62

63

63

64

64

65

66

68

72

73

Illustrations | xv Figure 3.13. Oiseuse (the doorkeeper), holding a mirror, admits the Lover into the Jardin de Déduit. Roman de la Rose. Oxford: 77 Bodleian Library, MS. Selden Supra 57, fol. 5v. Paris, 14th c. Figure 3.14. Oiseuse, holding a mirror, admits the Lover into the Jardin de Déduit. Roman de la Rose. Oxford: Bodleian Library, 77 MS. Douce 195, fol. 5r. Paris, later 15th c. Figure 3.15. Portrait of two of nine courtly “vices” painted on the exterior wall of the Jardin de Déduit [Pleasure Garden], Papelardie and Povreté [Religious Hypocrisy and Poverty]. Roman de la Rose. New York: Pierpont Morgan Library, MS Morgan 948, fol. 11r. Rouen, c. 1525.88 Figure 3.16. Early portrait of the courtly “vices” painted on the exterior wall of the Jardin de Déduit. “Povreté pourtraite” [Portrait of Poverty]. Roman de la Rose. Baltimore: Walters Art Museum, MS. Walters 143, fol. 4v. Paris, c. 1325. 89

Chapter 4 Figure 4.1. Ernest Langlois’s critical edition of the Roman de la Rose par Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, publié d’après les manuscrits (5 vols. Paris: Firmin Didot and Honoré Champion, 1914–1924) surrounded by a sample of Rose manuscripts ranging from the early fourteenth to the early sixteenth centuries. 

100

Chapter 5 Figure 5.1. Author Portrait showing Christine de Pizan writing the Cent ballades. London: British Library, MS Harley 4431, fol. 4r (Paris, 1410–12). Figure 5.2. Le Roman de la Rose. Youth personified as young couple embracing. Paris: Bibliothèque Sainte Geneviève MS 1126, fol. 7v (Paris, 1325–1375). Figure 5.3. Le Roman de la Rose. Youth personified as young couple embracing. Paris: Bibliothèque Sainte Geneviève MS 1126, fol. 8r (Paris, 1325–1375). 

113

120

121

xvi | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

Figure 5.4. Le Roman de la Rose. Introduction by Guillaume de Lorris (detail). Paris: Bibliothèque Sainte Geneviève MS 1126, fol. 1v-c (Paris, 1325–1375).  123 Figure 5.5. Le Roman de la Rose. God of Love shoots lover through the eye to reach his heart (to provoke love for the Rose). Lyon: 126 Bibliothèque municipal, MS 763, fol. 12r (Paris, 14th c.). Figure 5.6. Le Roman de la Rose. God of Love shoots lover through the eye to reach his heart (to provoke love for the Rose). Lyon: Bibliothèque municipal, MS 763, fol. 12r, detail (Paris, 14th c).129 Figure 5.7. Le Roman de la Rose, Incipit with initial miniature painting excised as well as mutilation from excision of miniature on verso. Dijon: Bibliothèque municipal MS 525, fol. 4r (Paris, 1355–1362). Mathias du Rivau, scribe. 130 Figure 5.8. Le Roman de la Rose, Folio from Guillaume de Lorris’s description of courtly vices painted on exterior walls of the Jardin de Déduit (Garden of Pleasure), showing excised miniatures. Dijon: Bibliothèque municipal MS 525, fol. 5r–5v (Paris, 1355–1362).  131 Figure 5.9. Le Roman de la Rose paintings of courtly vices: Felonnie (“Malice”), Convoitise (“Covetousness”), Avarice (“Greed”). Düsseldorf: Bibliothek der Kunstakademie, MS A. B. 142, 134 fol. 11v (Paris 14th c.).  Figure 5.10. Portrait of two of nine courtly “vices” painted on the exterior wall of the Jardin de Déduit: Haine [Hatred] and Convoitise [Cupidity]. Le Roman de la Rose, Munich: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, MS Cod. Gall. 17, fol. 2r.  Paris, 1407. 134 Figure 5.11. Portrait of courtly “vice” painted on the exterior wall of the Jardin de Déduit: Tristesse (“Sorrow”). Workshop of Maître François. Le Roman de la Rose. Philadelphia: Museum of Art, The Philip S. Collins Collection, gift of Mrs. Philip S. Collins in memory of her husband, 1945–65–3, fol. 3v. Paris, 1440–1480.  135 Figure 5.12. Le roman de Fauvel. Dijon: Bibliothèque municipal MS 525, fol. 158bis Mathias du Rivau, scribe. Paris, 1355–1362.  136 Figure 5.13. Courtly “vice,” Envie (“Envy”), looking askance at young lovers. Le Roman de la Rose, Paris: Bibliothèque Sainte Geneviève, MS 1126, fol. 3r. Paris, 1325–1375. 138

Illustrations | xvii Figure 5.14. Courtly “vice,” Envie (“Envy”), looking askance at young lovers. Le Roman de la Rose, New York: The Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M185, fol. 3r, detail. Paris, 1340–1350. 139 Figure 5.15. Fauvel, the horse and courtly idol, being curried and flattered by sycophantic courtiers. Le roman de Fauvel. Dijon: Bibliothèque municipal MS 525, fol. 158bis, detail. Mathias du Rivau, scribe. Paris, 1355–1362.  139 Figure 5.16. Acrostic revealing/explaining the acronym, “FAUVEL.” Le roman de Fauvel. Dijon: Bibliothèque municipal MS 525, fol. 159r, detail. Mathias du Rivau, scribe. Paris, 1355–1362.  141

Chapter 6 Figure 6.1. Description of the resignation of Cardinal Jean de ­Dormans as Chancellor of France, and the election of his successor, Guillaume de Dormans. Grandes chroniques de France, Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr 2813, fol. 461v–d (detail). Paris, 1375–1380. Figure 6.2. Incipit for Book 3, Aristote, Le Livre de Politiques, translated into French for Charles V by Nicole Oresme. Brussels: KBR, MS 11201–202, fol. 77r. Paris, 1376. Figure 6.3. Palais du Louvre c. 1412–1416, Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry, Chantilly: Musée Condé MS 65, fol. 10v. Paris, 1412–1416. Charles V established his library on three higher floors in one of the slim, round corner towers, just below his own private apartment.  Figure 6.4. Aristotle’s Physics, translated into French by Nicole Oresme for Charles V as Du ciel et du monde. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fol. 1082, fol. 3r. Paris, 1370–1380. Figure 6.5. Guillaume de Peyraut, Le livre de l’enseignement des roys et des princes…, Henri de Trévou, scribe; the Master of Charles VI, artist. Top left: king and queen seated receiving bishops; top right: king and queen seated with small princes next to king and small princesses beside queen; bottom left: king rendering justice; bottom right: king in battle. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr 1728, fol. 1r. Paris, 1375–80.

144

152

158

159

160

xviii | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

Figure 6.6. Incipit for Book 2 of Aristotle’s Politics from Nicole Oresme’s translation and commentary. Medallions represent: top left, Socrates dictating to Plato; top right, Hippodamus [Ypodamus] of Miletus; lower left, Phaleas [Helleas] of Chalcedon. Brussels: KBR, MS 11201–202, fol. 36r. Paris, 1376. Figure 6.7. Aristotle, Livre de Politiques. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr 9106, fol. 91v. Paris, c. 1397–1398. Figure 6.8. Christine de Pizan, Le Livre des fais et bonnes meurs du Sage Roy Charles V, Book 3, ch. 21: Charles V recounts the virtues of his librarian, Gilles Malet. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr 10153, f. 74v. Paris, 1404. Figure 6.9. Valerius Maximus, Facta et Dicta memorabilia, translated by Simon de Hesdin for Charles V. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr 9749, fol. 1r. Paris, 1375. Figure 6.10. Saint Augustin, De Civitate Dei (The City of God), translated by Raoul de Presles for Charles V. Frontispiece representing the heavenly city (top register), the earthly city (middle register) with a depiction of Hell-mouth in the lower register. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr 22912, fol. 2v. Paris, 1375–77. Figure 6.11. Saint Augustin, De Civitate Dei (The City of God), translated by Raoul de Presles for Charles V. Incipit page showing presentation miniature: Raoul de Presles (kneeling), sponsored by St. Augustine (standing behind Raoul) present the French translation to the enthroned Charles V. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr 22912, fol. 3r. Paris, 1375–77. Figure 6.12. John of Salisbury, Polycratique, translated for Charles V by Denis Foulechat. Incipit of the copy presented to the king. Miniature shows King Charles reading the incipit of the manuscript identified by the psalm quotation. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr 24287, fol. 2r. Paris, 1372. Figure 6.13. Schematic analysis of links between painting, rubric, and introductory text on incipit (first page) of John of Salisbury, Polycraticus, translated for Charles V by Denis

162 164

166

172

173

174

177

Illustrations | xix Foulechat, Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr 24287, fol. 2r. Paris, 1372. Figure 6.14. Juxtaposition of biblical passages cited on the incipit page of John of Salisbury, Polycraticus, translated for Charles V by Denis Foulechat, Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr 24287, fol. 2r. Paris, 1372. Figure 6.15. Introduction of Saint Ambrose’s De officiis for which Proverbs 3.13 stands as an epigraph on incipit of John of Salisbury, Polycraticus, translated for Charles V by Denis Foulechat, Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr 24287, fol. 2r. Paris, 1372.

178

182

183

Preface

Without the Internet, I would have had no reason to write this book. As it happens, though, shortly after this revolutionary technology came into its own, like many colleagues, I recognized that it offered a powerful new tool for changing medieval scholarship. With its capacity to transmit exact images, the Web could open new horizons for the study of manuscripts. As with any new technology, the early years witnessed a broad variety of initiatives seeking to make medieval manuscripts more accessible to students, scholars, and the public. In one mode, individual scholars teamed up to create sites dedicated to manuscripts of a particular work, author, or genre. Undoubtedly, however, the most innovative and far-reaching initiatives—and the ones that most profoundly affected digital studies in academia—were those undertaken by research libraries such as the Sheridan Libraries at Johns Hopkins University, the University of Virginia, Stanford University, and the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Recognizing that digitization of their collections permitted effective preservation, while also enhancing public awareness and access to their holdings—two previously conflicting mandates—research libraries began to develop new websites offering unprecedented access to their rare collections. At the same time, leading academic libraries began developing digital tools and functions that would allow scholars to study, search, and compare digitally accessible documents in new ways.

xxii | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

They then invited scholars to assist in identifying tools and functions that could make the digital resources more effective. And suddenly, a partnership evolved between two previously distinct academic divisions that changed the dynamics of scholarship. Today, these libraries that once served simply as “silent partners” of faculty research have become active players in establishing parameters for new ways of analyzing 500-year-old manuscripts. We would not be speaking of the “digital turn” in academic scholarship—and the role of research libraries in its evolution—without the foresight, leadership, and faith of the foundations whose investment has supported the digital revolution in scholarship. In my own case, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation—particularly the scholarly communications division led by Donald J. Waters—has played an incalculable role. Thanks to three grants between 2004 and 2013, Sayeed Choudhury and his colleagues at the Digital Research and Creation Center of the Sheridan Libraries and I, in partnership with Thierry Delcourt and his colleagues in the Department of Manuscripts of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, have been able to create a Digital Library of Medieval Manuscripts (www.manuscriptlib.org) that currently hosts well over half of the 250+ known manuscripts of the Roman de la Rose, and some thirty manuscripts of Christine de Pizan. Working with Thierry Delcourt and Matthieu Bonicel in Paris and then in Baltimore, when they came to Hopkins to coordinate with our team: Tim DiLauro, Sayeed Choudhury, Mark Patton, Mark Cyzyk, and David Reynolds, I had a sense of what a medieval scriptorium must have been like. Just like their forerunners hundreds of years ago, each member of our team had specialized knowledge and tasks that had to be precisely coordinated. In this case, though, they weren’t working “on” the parchment, but writing code “underneath” it to make the manuscript visible and navigable on computer screens around the world. And thanks to the teamwork that developed as we worked together on our digital library, Thierry Delcourt gained inspiration for his vision to digitize medieval manuscripts in major European national and regional libraries under the title Europeana Regia (www.europeanaregia.eu/). To know and to work with Thierry Delcourt was to discover that rarest of combinations: someone who united exceptional intelligence with vision, generosity, gentleness, courage, and compassion. Thierry Delcourt did not create the possibility for mass digitization of medieval European manuscripts, but he made it happen. Sadly, his death in 2011, age 52, meant that he did not live to see his vision realized. I will never be able to send him a copy of this book, whose premises we discussed, and which he encouraged. I can only express my gratitude by dedicating it to his memory.

Preface | xxiii Once our digital repositories were established the challenge of creating innovative research protocols became vital, given the skepticism of scholars who view digital resources as “inauthentic” and thus inappropriate for manuscript research. From Parchment to Cyberspace takes on this challenge. Digital images of original manuscripts, we’re convinced, offer new ways of seeing and conceptualizing medieval literature. In opposition to the “digital skeptics,” we advance philosophical arguments for the authenticity of digital images of medieval manuscripts. Each chapter of this book illustrates a different aspect of how digital media enables new approaches to vernacular literature’s relation to the historical context and culture of its different manuscript versions. From Parchment to Cyberspace argues that digital resources call for critical approaches that ask not how esthetic objects like manuscripts were made, but why they appear as they do in a given historical context, and why we need to understand this dynamic. Recognizing that many people have little knowledge of the nature of the medieval manuscript culture, I begin by exploring that world and the crucial role written records played in the history, politics, and culture of the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries in Europe. The final chapters explore new modes of reading these artifacts. This book has had a long gestation period. Inevitably, such a project accumulates debts of gratitude. Besides the Mellon scholarly communication grants already mentioned, a Mellon Emeritus Faculty fellowship from 2010–2012 offered affirmation and material support for my transition from full-time faculty member to emeritus. A Humboldt prize in 2009–2010—for which German colleagues at the Freie Universität in Berlin and at the Albertus Magnus Universität in Cologne generously nominated me—made possible stays in Germany to study manuscripts of the Roman de la Rose. Both of these grants contributed immeasurably to my ability to research and write this book. As always, my ongoing gratitude goes to colleagues in the Digital Research and Curation Center in the Sheridan Libraries for their commitment to a project as far off their usual beat as medieval manuscripts. They’ve been able to make that commitment thanks to the enthusiastic support of Winston Tabb, Sheridan Dean of Libraries and Museums at Johns Hopkins. Our digital library project is the stronger for his vision. Without the two decades of insight I gained from my involvement with www. manuscriptlib.org, this book would be very different. I also drew inspiration from more colleagues than I can possibly acknowledge. I do want to mention those whose collaboration helped me at crucial junctures: colleagues like Deborah McGrady at the University of Virginia, Alexandra Gillespie at the University of

xxiv | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

Toronto, Lucie Dolezolova (Charles University, Prague), Timothy Stinson (North Carolina State), Ben Albritton (Stanford), Kathlin Smith and Charles Henry of the Council of Library Information Resources in Washington, D. C., Howard Bloch (Yale), Jacques Neefs (Johns Hopkins), Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet (Paris 4), Sarah Kay (NYU), Joachim Küpper (Freie Universität, Berlin), Andreas Kablitz (Albertus-Magnus-Universität zu Köln), Mathew Driscoll (University of Copenhagen), and Max Grosse (Tübingen University) who obtained digitization rights to the German Rose manuscripts. Conversations with Michael Fried (Johns Hopkins) and David Wellbery (Chicago) spark insights I’d surely miss without their thoughtful observations. The loyalty, encouragement, and friendship of Daniel Heller-Roazen (Princeton University) mean more than he can know. Tamsyn Rose-Steel, our CLIR-Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in digital medieval studies, and now Digital Scholarship Specialist in the Sheridan Libraries and the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, brings her special energy and creativity to our projects, and the gift of friendship to me. To my former student and research assistant, Jeannette Patterson (SUNY-Binghamton), I owe special thanks for her incomparable research talents and friendship. To Jackie Pavlovic, my editor at Peter Lang, I am indebted for her patience and dedication in transforming a jumbled typescript into a handsome book. Finally, but always first, my thanks and love to Edie, whose low tolerance for academic pretension, special brand of supportive skepticism, and unerring eye for “the point of it all” inhabit everything I write. Baltimore, December 20, 2015

Introduction Why I Wrote This Book, or Medieval Manuscripts Unchained

This book tells a story. The story is partly about me—or at least about my quest for new ways of discovering and teaching medieval literature—and partly an account of a revolution that makes medieval documents accessible to everyone. At the heart of the story lies a paradox that I noticed early in my career. While medievalist colleagues in History of Art or Music worked directly with medieval artifacts—paintings, frescoes, sculpture, manuscript illuminations, music scores, for example—literary scholars pursued their research using modern critical editions prepared by scholars specially trained in deciphering the handwriting of medieval scribes, and analyzing technical aspects of medieval bookmaking. In short, there was a division of labor between textual critics trained in paleography and codicology (the sciences of old handwriting and manuscript construction) and literary historians concerned with the work transmitted by the manuscript. There was good reason for the separate tasks of textual scholars and literary historians. Unlike a medieval painting, fresco, or sculpture, which are unique creations, literary works often exist in a number of manuscripts produced at different times and places throughout the Middle Ages. They have survived partly by chance and partly because they formed part of important institutional or private libraries in the late Middle Ages, and are now held in rare book repositories all over the world.1 Faced with multiple and diverse copies of a given work, textual

2 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

scholars wanted as authentic a text of a literary work as possible. By “authentic,” of course, scholars of the last several centuries meant a text close to what the original author had written. We’ll go into the reasons for this belief and its impact on critical editions of medieval works in subsequent chapters. Suffice it to say for the moment that the aspiration to recreate the “original” version—or something as close to it as possible—meant that the work of textual critics and literary historians fell into different spheres. The former were trained to study and classify manuscripts in order to determine which ones, in their opinion, offered versions closest to the author’s own time and thus, presumably, best representing his intention. Armed with information about the manuscript tradition, textual scholars could then produce a critical edition. But in the quest to recreate an authentic text of the work, everything that made it a truly medieval artifact was jettisoned. By virtue of presenting the text as a printed book, the critical edition necessarily modernizes medieval works. And as a text-only document, it retains none of the distinguishing features of manuscripts, such as rubrics, marginalia, decorations, or illuminations (as miniature paintings in manuscripts are called). The rationale for the critical edition, of course, was that literary texts needed to be studied qua literature, and that meant stripping away all multi-disciplinary elements. The argument ran that once the textual critic had established a reliable text based on studying the available manuscripts and choosing those that seemed freest from errors or idiosyncrasies, the literary scholar would then be free to study the literary merits of the work. As Figure 0.1 suggests, however, anyone reading such a text would have only the vaguest idea that the printed version represented scores of manuscript copies all differing in a variety of ways from it (and from each other). As a graduate student and young faculty member, I didn’t have time to give much thought to such questions. We were assigned works to read and told which of the editions were the current scholarly “gold standard,” and those were what we bought, studied, and on which we based our research and writing. I knew vaguely that there were different editions of the works I was teaching, and registered a correlation between the number of critical editions and the popularity of a work: popular works had more editions. More to the point, language, length, and the text of a work varied from one edition to another. These variations, I knew, stemmed from the differences in the base manuscripts editors used. Soon, it dawned on me that the versions of medieval literature used in my courses and research were far more mediated than I’d thought. For the best of scholarly reasons—at least according to the lights of the time—editions inserted themselves between what medieval people read, and what my students and I were reading. We were very far from the medieval culture we thought we were studying.

Introduction | 3

Figure 0.1.  Critical edition of Roman de la Rose, showing multiplicity of manuscripts it purports to represent.

Reflecting on the differences between editions of a work—differences involving content, narrative sequencing, dialect, among other things—led me to ponder the contradiction between the modern concept of a fixed text as the rationale for the critical edition and the medieval concept of a work. Did medieval readers share our understanding of what constitutes a literary text? Did they mean the same thing that we did by the term “author?” Was the idea of an original author particularly important for medieval readers (as distinct from the authors and poets themselves)? If so, how could they have tolerated so many different versions of popular vernacular works? What would constitute the value of a literary work in a non author-centric culture? Could it be the case that our modern notion of literary originality as tightly linked to authorial identity—one rational for the critical edition—was unknown … or at least not a factor in the transmission of literary manuscripts? Pondering these questions led me to speculate about another feature of medieval manuscripts: Why do their pages often contain so much more than the text of a work? Look at Figure 0.2, for instance. It shows how a manuscript folio

4 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

Figure 0.2.  Manuscript Folio (leaf/page) as complex hand-written and -painted artifact. Christine de Pizan composing poetry. London: British Library, MS Harley 4431, fol. 4r. Paris 1406–10.

or page can be an intricately “choreographed” space where picture, text, rubric, decorated initials, marginal decoration all signify simultaneously in mixed media. Decorated column delineators marshal the array of sign systems so as to enhance their symphonic effect. It’s impossible to spend even a brief time with a folio like that in Figure 0.2 without realizing how much each register depends upon and enhances the others. Gazing at the manuscript page, we recognize that the elegantly hand-lettered text—with ornate initials slightly offset from the beginning of each line—flows together with the other visual registers, blurring the sharp distinction between text and image, writing and picture, that modern print imposes. It’s impossible not to feel that the text depends for meaning on the visual and sonorous experiences orchestrated by the design of the manuscript page. Why not? After all, a major difference between modern books and manuscripts is the corporeality of the latter. As we will see in the next chapter, manuscripts are embodied objects. By its very mode of existence, a manuscript folio is the result of intensive human activity. First, there’s the parchment itself made from animal

Introduction | 5

Figure 0.3.  Fleshing and removing hair from a cowhide in preparation for making manuscript parchment.

Figure 0.4. Polishing dried cowhide with pumice stone to make it smooth enough for painting and lettering.

skin—cow (France), sheep (England), or goat (Italy)—whose flesh and hair sides must be scraped clean (Fig. 0.3), and then treated by artisans skilled in this craft. These skilled parchment makers have to soak the skins in lime baths, and then place them on stretchers to dry. Once dry, the skins must be made smooth enough for writing and painting by polishing with pumice stones (Fig. 0.4). Once the stationer received the parchment skins, the master scribe had to plan the form of the book by determining the number of skins needed, the content—text, images, rubrications, decoration—and page layout. Finally, the scribes, painters, and decorators worked painstakingly by hand—often with very fine brushes, writing tools, colors and inks they made themselves—to produce the codex (as manuscript books are called). Once we recognize the hand labor required to produce a single volume, we can also understand why no two copies of a medieval work can be exactly alike. But I’m getting ahead of the story. We know these things now because we have the means of looking at these beautiful objects on our computer screens

6 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

whenever we wish. We know it also because they’ve come to play a major role in contemporary medieval studies. How this came about and what it means is the story this book tells. Forty years ago, few people had experienced medieval manuscripts at first hand. As priceless rare books, they were held under tight security in rare book repositories. Accredited scholars could gain access to them, but the public at large would have no way to see them except as part of an exhibition where the volumes would be enclosed in glass cases with the volumes only showing a single bi-folio (two-page spread). Such conditions offered little more than a sense of what the physical object looked like, with no way to gain a sense of the whole. Access to manuscripts for literary scholars was easier in principle, but in practice conditions militated against frequent consultation for at least three reasons. The artifacts could only be consulted in a reading room of the repository holding a given manuscript during the (sometimes restricted) opening hours. Repositories are geographically dispersed requiring scholars to incur the expense of travel, board and lodging to reach them. A third reason could be even more inhibiting: in the case of a work preserved in a number of codices, study of the manuscripts necessitated visiting multiple repositories, exponentially increasing the expense. It’s true that scholars could apply for grants to defray expenses, but they rarely covered the full cost. In fact, leaving aside the issue of expense, travel to repositories was time consuming and frustrating: library hours were never long enough to afford the time required for intensive study. But beyond the expense and complicated logistics of consulting manuscripts lay a disciplinary disincentive. Scholarly protocol demanded that books and articles on medieval literature be based on approved critical editions of the works in question. I’m not sure exactly when I began to question the logic, let alone the wisdom of the primacy of critical editions over the manuscripts of medieval literary works, but I do know that my skepticism crystalized one autumn day in Paris when I was looking at manuscripts of the poet François Villon in the Bibliothèque de l’Arsensal. I had been asked to write a long essay on his poetry for a handbook on medieval European Writers.2 The editions of Villon’s poetry that I was accustomed to using all presented his two poetic sequences—Le lais (The Legacy) and the longer Le Testament Villon—as possessing the organic unity then considered esthetically requisite. That did not pose a problem in the case of Le Lais, tightly constructed of forty huitains (eight-line stanzas) with a clearly defined beginning and ending. Villon’s Testament, however, proved unruly when editors attempted to make it conform to their ideas of unity. It’s not just that Le Testament has some 186

Introduction | 7 huitains, but it also intersperses ballads irregularly as it progresses. Furthermore, Villon’s ballads evoke graphic scenes and mini-narratives quite at variance with the style of the surrounding huitains. The ballads disrupt the flow of the huitains, on the one hand, while also forcing the reader to recognize that the latter— almost invariably introduced by the testamentary formal term Item—constitute a list of bequeaths whose relationship to one another lies deep in the poet’s idiosyncratic principle of association. Or perhaps one should say principle of dissociation since, as a list of bequeaths, each huitain records Villon’s farewell to the person in question (many of whom he cites in order to record his distaste for them). Unity seeks closure. But, as Jacqueline Cerquilini-Toulet observes, “The Testament creates a dual directional movement of closure and open-endedness.”3 By inserting ballads in the midst of the huitains, Villon creates “a tension between continuity and discontinuity, between narrative and lyric,”4 thereby, we might add, calling attention to the contingency of life as narrative and death as elegy: Je sois François, dont il me poise, Né de Paris emprés Pontoise, Et de la corde d’une toise Saura mon col que mon cul poise.5 I am François, which fusses me, Born in Paris, near Pontoise, And now from a fathom of hemp, My neck will feel the mass of my ass.

I don’t remember what struck me about the poetry itself that fall day in the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal as I pored over Le Testament Villon in MS 3523. What I do recall—and will never forget—was feeling a shock of recognition, a sense of connecting with a palpable human presence as I read words formed by the hand of an unknown scribe. I suddenly saw that not only was medieval textuality personal, even intimate, it projected dual—if not multiple—personalities. I had opened the codex expecting to confront Villon’s persona. What I didn’t expect was to find it so clearly mediated by the scribe, Villon’s near contemporary, perhaps even an acquaintance. His handwriting drove home to me, as print never could have done, that the manuscript text conveyed not only Villon’s poems, but his work as read and understood by someone who walked the same streets of the Latin Quarter, someone who may have heard him recite his ballads, or more probably recited them publically himself.6

8 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

These reflections had logical corollaries. If medieval textuality were personal, if texts were refracted through a scribe’s own perception (that is, understanding as well as misperception), and if versions of a work were produced serially over decades and centuries, then contingency was an inevitable mode of medieval literary transmission. Studying the carefully penned lines of a huitain or a ballad in Arsenal 3523—or later in BnF fr. 20041—I was struck by the contrast between Le Testament Villon conveyed in the manuscripts, and the starkly different impression of Le Testament in printed editions. Figure 0.5 shows two pages of Le Testament from the excellent new Pléiade edition of Villon’s Œuvres completes edited by Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet and Laëtitia Tabard. The pages show the lay/rondeau Mort, j’appelle de ta rigueur, inserted between huitains 94–95 of Le Testament. The printed text displays the poems symmetrically on the page while also providing unambiguous signs of orderly sequencing of the Testament as a whole. The huitains, for example, are numbered consecutively in Roman numerals, which inevitably conveys the impression that each eight-line stanza has a determined place in an ordered progression. Similarly, lines are numbered consecutively from 1 to 2023, a practice that includes lyric insertions—ballade, double ballade, lay/rondeau, bergeronnette, verset—in the numbering. Clearly delineated spacing allows the reader to distinguish easily the configuration of the huitains from that of the shorter and longer stanzas of the lyric insertions, as well as the refrains of the latter. And, most obviously, Villon’s text has been transcribed, corrected, had the abbreviations and obscure passages resolved, and finally printed in an attractive typeface. All these things make the medieval work accessible to the modern reader, which is precisely what a printed edition is supposed to do and makes them such important interfaces. Nevertheless, an inevitable effect—at least psychologically—of print is to deracinate or de-medievalize a work by remediating it in a format and layout similar to editions of modernist poets, such as Baudelaire, Rimbaud, or Valery. In other words, print subtly undermines the manuscript as the authentic historical medium of the work. Which means that as print becomes the recognized vehicle for medieval literature, modern readers lose touch with its historic manuscript format, now felt as an object of estrangement, or Verfremdung. Granted that print offers immediate access to—if not the sense of—medieval poetic texts. Granted also that facing translations of the transcribed text renders the work even more accessible to the modern reader. But what cost accessibility? What do we lose by distancing the medieval artifact so radically? To begin with, we lose the immediate shock of coming face-to-face with the otherness of medieval artifacts. And a key sign of that alterity is contingency,

Introduction | 9 uncertainty, or, as Jean de Meun and François Villon both put it in different ways, the contrariness of communication. If print seeks to minimize contingency by anchoring the text in a fixed form, the scribe writes the text onto the manuscript folio (page). The latter is a space of contingency, of uncertainty, requiring constant reflection to determine meaning, yes, but also concentration to navigate the written text. One quickly senses that the codex depends upon human presence at all stages, in the making and the reading of the text. In short, the manuscript folio is a generative matrix, a space filled word-by-word, line-by-line by a scribe who performs by writing and reciting simultaneously. Conversely, the reader has to repeat the sound and rhythms of the words and lines—to perform them in his

Figure 0.5. Example of Lyric Insertion and surrounding huitains (95–96) in a bilingual edition of Villon’s Testament. [François Villon, Oeuvres completes, edition établie par Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet avec la collaboration de Laëtitia Tabard (Paris: Gallimard, 2014), pp. 96–97.]

10 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

Figure 0.6.  Bi-folio from Le Testament Villon, Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 20041, fols. 113v–114r.

or her turn as it were—in order to grasp the form and meaning of the verse. And in Villon’s manuscripts, there are few external markers or signs to guide one. It’s when we compare the print version (Fig. 0.5) of the same verse sequences to a manuscript version (Fig. 0.6) that we realize that the dissimilarity between them is not that the two technologies produce different phenomena—they don’t in this case since the text is largely the same in both formats—but that we experience them very differently. It’s not exactly trivial that the manuscript has no line numbers, no Roman numerals sequencing the huitains, and no clearly delimited spaces separating the verse units. At another interpretive level one might note the implications of boundedness, of organic unity such signs seek to impose. But they have little to do with the way we experience Villon’s poetry in the two formats. What jumps out—or it did to me at least that autumn day in l’Arsenal—is the way a scribe’s hand, his writing—the flourishes, the extenders, the descenders the thick strokes, the swirled letters, in short its panache and sprezzatura—“performs” the verse. It is handwriting imitating voice … the scribe’s hand standing in for the poet’s voice. Or, even more intriguing, a scribe’s hand appropriating the poet’s voice. We see the personality of this scribe the flourishes with which he executes

Introduction | 11

Figure 0.7. Example of Lyric Insertion and surrounding huitains (“95-½ of 99”) in Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr 20041, fols. 131v–132r. Paris, 15th century.

initials at the start of the huitains. Look, for example at the bold, dagger-like “I” of “Item”—with its stroke descending half-way down the outside of the stanza—at the beginning of four of the five huitains here.7 He does the same with “P”—Par faulte d’ung huys g’y perdiz—at the beginning of the huitain at the bottom of fol. 131v, and with the “M,” “O,” and “D,” the first letters of the words beginning each stanza of the “Lay” beginning two lines from the top of fol. 131v. But there’s no need to limit these observations to particular letters. Every letter, every word, every line bears the imprint of the scribe’s distinctive hand— his “voice,” as it were. By the time one reads even a few folios, one has a sense of intimate conversation with the writer. It’s as though one were reading letters from the poet—for the scribe’s hand becomes that of the poet. Whoever it is, it’s coming from the poet’s world, the scribe’s world—or both conflated. In any case, there’s no doubt that we feel intensely the presence of another person, another time, another place. Naturally, I didn’t see these things immediately. It took time, several years in fact before I began to tease out the implications of my shock at seeing the Villon manuscript that first time. What I did realize was that I couldn’t look at medieval

12 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

literature in quite the same way any more. I could no longer view manuscripts as “raw material” for critical editions. Manuscript copies had to play more of a role in the life of medieval literature than they’d been credited with. It struck me that the versions of works produced over decades or centuries represented a process of transmission where individual copies would necessarily bear witness to the work’s reception at the moment the copy was produced. If so, they had a role to play in the way we defined medieval works. More radically still, when there were many manuscript versions of the same work, each presenting a unique—and often different—iteration, it suggested a need to look more critically at what was meant by “the medieval work,” rather than assuming it was a single, unitary thing. Rethinking the definition of the “work,” of course, would also mean viewing medieval authorship in some cases as more “collaborative” than hitherto envisaged. These reflections led me to conclude that medieval poets and their public, unlike their modern counterparts, did not expect—or even imagine—that a literary work could be represented by a unique text as conceived by its author. It seemed to me that the key to these works lay in understanding their many versions. That was the state of my thinking when, in 1989, I was asked by the Medieval Academy of America to guest edit a special issue of its journal, Speculum. I called the issue The New Philology, where “new” meant “renewal” (renovatio, in the medieval sense of the term) of the ways we looked at and thought about the artifacts we studied. On the one hand [I wrote], it is a desire to return to the medieval origins of philology, to its roots in a manuscript culture where, as Bernard Cerquiglini remarks, “medieval literature does not produce variants; it is variance.”8 On the other hand, a rethinking of philology should seek to minimize the isolation between medieval studies and contemporary movements in cognitive methodologies, such as linguistics, anthropology, history, cultural studies, and so on, by reminding us that philology was once among the most theoretically avant-garde disciplines (cf. Vico, Ampère, Michelet, Dilthey, Croce, Vossler, Spitzer, Auerbach).9

New Philology’s call for a return to manuscripts resonated in 1990. It faced a major problem, however: the logistics of consulting a sufficient sample of manuscripts of a given work in an era when one could only study these artifacts under supervision in individual rare book repositories. In the case of a work like the Roman de la Rose, represented by over 250 manuscript copies, their comparative study would have required incessant travel, but even then it would not have been possible to make side-by-side comparisons. True, there were some microfilm copies, but they were in black and white, often grainy, and intended primarily for

Introduction | 13 textual study. Moreover, many of the subtleties of the manuscript page, where contrasting colors play an important role, and where miniature paintings form a counterpoint to the text, fail to register in microfilms. We had computers in 1990 and imagined how useful they’d be for our research if we could use them to access hi-resolution digitized manuscript images. To do so would require the Internet whose use, at least in the humanities, was then in its infancy. Still, it seemed promising as a means of achieving unfettered access to high quality images of codices. When I discussed this idea with a French colleague, Bernard Cerquiglini, in Paris, his enthusiasm and support convinced me to proceed.10 Initially it didn’t cross my mind that anything more than open access to manuscripts was at issue. I certainly didn’t imagine that creating an online library of medieval manuscripts would change the “environment” for scholarly research, and consequently affect the way we looked at our discipline. But that is eventually (and inevitably) what happened. To begin with, instead of working alone, the digital environment thrust me into a world of collaboration, with medieval colleagues, on the one hand, and IT specialists on the other. Medievalists were a given since there’d be no point in creating a digital repository if scholars weren’t motivated to use it. Involving interested (often skeptical) colleagues from the outset meant achieving a broad consensus on aims, as well as discussing key questions: What kinds of tools or functions should be available once the site went live? Are there larger, meta-critical issues raised by the ready availability of multiple versions of a literary work, rather than just one or two authorized editions? If so, how might they affect our concept of “the medieval literary work?” or the idea of “authorship” in the period, given the fact that most of the manuscript versions were created long after the death of the original poet(s)? But the collaboration necessary to realize our project extended beyond humanists. It was one thing to hypothesize the tools we needed on the site, but quite another to design and program them. For that, we would need to rely on the good will of IT colleagues … and quite a lot of good will at that. This was literally a case where each partner had to make an effort to understand the tools of the other’s trade. Just as we were going to have to grasp at least the basics of the digital medium, so our technical colleagues had to learn idiosyncrasies of medieval French (such as its lack of consistent spelling for the same words), familiarize themselves with the multimedia nature of manuscript layout, and understand enough about the structure of the work to design tools enabling readers to navigate easily within each manuscript. Happily, I found the perfect IT collaborators in the Digital Research and Curation Center at the Sheridan Libraries at Johns Hopkins University. The

14 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

library seemed the logical place to host the project and website—both because the staff had experience with digital endeavors and because they would be able to sustain it.11 So early in 1995, I began working with my IT colleagues— digital library architects, programmers, metadata specialists—who enthusiastically embraced the venture and patiently enlightened me on the technology involved. Beginning with five Rose manuscripts from three repositories—the Walters Art Museum (Baltimore), the J. Pierpont Morgan Library (New York), and the Bodleian Library (Oxford)—we set out to create an online library of all (or as many as we could get) of the 250+ manuscripts of the Roman de la Rose: http://romandelarose.org/. By 2010, thanks to our partnership with the Bibliothèque nationale de France, and the generosity of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, we had added more than 130 manuscripts to our site from 41 repositories on three continents including several private collectors. Much has changed in the last twenty years. We now accept as a matter of course that the large amount of data we have accumulated about the many manuscripts of the Rose force us to look differently at it, … to think differently about it. In my own case, unrestricted access to medieval manuscripts as digitized artifacts revealed an irony: an abyss opened between what I thought I knew about medieval vernacular literature and a new sense that I was looking at objects for which my previous understanding had not prepared me, but to whose elaboration I was already committed. Digital images of medieval codices were uncanny in being both familiar and yet—in their immediacy and multiplicity—strange, unfamiliar, disruptive, and disorienting.12 By disruptive and disorienting I mean just that, for they continually revealed new dimensions, forced me to abandoned long-held opinions and replace them with new insights, as well as to explore hidden dimensions of their nature that kept surfacing. Disciplinary disruption and disorientation are hard to pin down, though I do trace the irony implicit in digital study in the final chapter (Coda). What ironic revelation can do, however—and that is why I have written this book—is to demonstrate how digital resources challenge and enrich our study of vernacular medieval literature.

Part One

Technologies of the Medieval Book: The Manuscript Matrix

1

What Is a Manuscript Culture?

On a recent June morning, I turned to the science section of the New York Times and was intrigued to read the following headline: “Medicine’s Hidden Roots in an Ancient Manuscript.” Under the banner, but before the text of the article, I saw a large photograph of the open manuscript showing dark lines of text set off by red initials and interspersed with rubrics (section headings in red). The opening lines hint at a mystery: “The first time Grigory Kessel held the ancient manuscript, its animal-hide pages more than 1,000 years old, seemed oddly familiar.” Quickly we learn that the enigma is two-fold: a search for crucial pages scattered in libraries around the world, and then the even more complex task of deciphering a medical treatise by the Greco-Roman physician, Galen of Pergamon (d. 200 C. E.), hidden beneath the visible text. The manuscript turns out to be a palimpsest, which is the term scholars use to describe a book whose parchment pages have been scraped by scribes in order to inscribe new texts. In this case, Syrian monks in the eleventh century wanted to make a hymnal, and used a ninth-century Syriac copy of Galen’s “On the Mixtures and Powers of Simple Drugs” for the purpose. Happily, parchment absorbs the vegetable and mineral inks used in the period, so it’s possible to detect traces of the original writing in a palimpsest. That’s where the second part of the mystery comes in: the quest to reconstitute the medical treatise.

18 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

The quest links modern science with medieval frugality to recover knowledge lost for a millennium. The science in this case is called spectral imaging whereby “each page is photographed digitally at extremely high resolution with varying configurations of light, which in various ways illuminate the inks, grooves from writing and parchment itself. Computer algorithms exploit these variations to maximize the visibility of the undertext.”1 Uploading the recovered images to an online site enables viewers from all over the world to see the manuscript, with its missing pages restored, and with the Syriac translation of “On Simple Drugs,” Galen’s handbook for physicians, permanently available to historians of medicine. Consider one other fact about the Galen palimpsest to be gleaned from the Times article: its millennial obscurity. We know very little about the whereabouts of the manuscript from the ninth century when Syrian monks recycled it into a hymnal until it surfaced in a book sale in the 1920s only to disappear again into a private collection in Germany. Some eighty years later, in 2002, an anonymous collector purchased it, and this time, thanks to the owner’s public spirit, it met a very different fate. Not only was the owner willing to finance the spectral imaging necessary to recover the Syriac translation of “On Simple Drugs,” he also made it available to the public online via a creative commons license, which permits the images to be freely used for non-commercial purposes. Now, for the first time since the ninth century, the text of Galen’s medical treatise, a mainstay of ancient medicine, can be viewed anytime, anywhere by anyone with a computer and Internet connection. While not all ancient manuscripts have such compelling stories, the Syriac Galen palimpsest does have a lot in common with them. They all benefit from a paradox: the compatibility between their artisanal but complex nature and that of digital technology. As we will discover in the following chapters, digital technology and the Internet have radically changed the status of ancient and medieval manuscripts. For the first time in history, thousands of these priceless artifacts are available for scrutiny with sophisticated digital tools. Such unprecedented access profoundly affects how we view manuscripts and their cultures. To begin with, we now have a better sense of the anomalous position of medieval manuscripts in modern culture. Collectors pay large sums for them, especially the illuminated examples; museums organize exhibitions around them; libraries acquire and preserve them; text editors base critical editions on them; and scholars extol them as authentic artifacts. So they are indeed visible. But do we really register what they have to tell us about the role they played in shaping the culture of their own time (c. 1200–1550 C. E.), especially in France?

What Is a Manuscript Culture? | 19 If we don’t, it’s because we’ve been conditioned to think of them not for what they actually are, but rather as archaic precursors of printed books, on the one hand, and unreliable witnesses of medieval works, on the other. That is why textual scholars have long sought to supplant them with printed editions. In the following pages, I want to mention some misconceptions surrounding these authentic medieval cultural artifacts and then to propose ways of listening to their story. In the modern imaginary, medieval manuscripts, however artistic, figure as a primitive form of publication for at least three reasons. First, their uniqueness: as artifacts handwritten by a scribe and decorated by an artist, each is original; that is, it’s not one of a (mechanically reproduced) series of identical items. Secondly, because each manuscript was produced individually, they lack the uniformity moderns associate with accurate representation. This means, thirdly, that manuscripts did not transmit an author’s work integrally in its original form. Manuscripts, in short, were held to represent artisanal rather than technological reproduction and were thus prey to the vicissitudes of idiosyncratic and contingent factors. In fact, they could not have been more different from our own standards of reproduction when even personal letters tend to be typed. To the post-print world, then, manuscript transmission of medieval works conjured the image of an individual scribe, whose hand graphically imposed its presence as the tenuous link between author and reader. How could one be certain that a scribe’s mind and imagination had not exceeded “the strictly mechanical task” of copying the author’s text? The answer, of course, was clear: scribes not only could not avoid leaving their mark upon the work, there was no expectation that they should efface themselves. After all, scribes frequently worked with versions of a work the poet himself (who was often long dead) had never seen. If a passage in the work suggested other examples or anecdotes, why not simply include them? For the Middle Ages this did not pose a problem. Modern philologists viewed the situation differently. In search of a fixed text reflecting so far as possible the author’s original intention, text editors not surprisingly viewed textual transmission as susceptible to scribal “error” and commentary. To correct such contingencies, they devised the critical edition based strictly on the text and excluding all information contained in the manuscripts judged extraneous to the work narrowly construed. This means ignoring paintings, rubrics, commentaries, decoration, and marginalia; in short, all the components that typify manuscript representation. To avoid scribal error and bias found in individual manuscripts, text editors consult multiple manuscripts of a work in order to construct a printed edition whose text, in their view, reflects as closely as possible the author’s original intentions purged of scribal

20 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

interference. The critical edition thus transforms a medieval artifact into a printed book reflecting modern principles of textual scholarship. Although a modern construct, the “restored” work stands as a “master version” to be read in place of its medieval (i.e., manuscript) iterations. But medieval manuscripts were not books in the way printing came to define them. Nor were their contents solely “literary” as texts in print publications have long been regarded. How do they differ, then? The short answer is “In almost every way imaginable,” beginning with how they were produced. Although the medieval scriptorium (workshop for copying and painting manuscripts) is often portrayed in a monastic setting (as, for example, in Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose), by the late thirteenth century major manuscript production occurred in workshops located in city centers. In Paris, for instance—the major center of book production in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries—manuscript ateliers clustered in contiguous streets of the Latin Quarter near the Seine. This means that manuscript books were products of an urban micro-culture where every aspect of production was carried out by artisans living in the same or nearby streets. Preparation for copying a text included transforming the animal skin into parchment, grinding minerals and plant products for pigments and ink, planning the layout of the codex in columns with spaces for miniatures, decorated and historiated initials, marginalia, and rubrics.2 The actual production of the work involved copying the text, decorating the margins, and painting the illuminations, determining the binding, and, finally, delivering the codex to its patron. This micro-culture also left its imprint on the contents of the codex. While the work or works to be copied furnished the impetus for the commission, they were but one component of the book’s dispositio (layout). Although modern critical editions have taught us to eschew non-textual components, it would be a mistake to discount their crucial contribution not only to the way the codex represents its work(s), but also to the sense of the works themselves. These components include both verbal and visual elements such as rubrics, miniature paintings, decorated or historiated initials, marginal embellishments, glosses, etc. The crucial contribution of these components to the reception and perception of a work can be seen when we view the “same” work as represented by different manuscripts. For moderns accustomed to finding the same (or virtually the same) text of an author—e.g., Mann’s Der Tod in Venedig, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, or Balzac’s Cousine Bette—in editions published at different times, it’s startling to discover the wide variation of treatments accorded a work in different codices. More unsettling still is the great difference in reading experience and understanding of a work from one manuscript to another. These

What Is a Manuscript Culture? | 21 variations have everything to do with the non-textual components of the codex that critical editions claim to be extraneous. Figure 1.1, for example, shows a page from a manuscript copy of the Grandes chroniques de France. As the official history of France, compiled and kept current by the monks of the Royal Abbey of Saint-Denis from the early thirteenth century, this was a work much in demand by nobles or institutions requiring a copy of the nation’s history. The page shown here comes from the personal copy of King Charles V, and illustrates how manuscripts were used to shape cultural and political perceptions. It does so thanks to the interaction of text and image, rubrics and interpolated passages. In other words, by representational components that medieval manuscript culture invented and cultivated as its own unique form of multi-media literacy.

Figure 1.1.  Grandes chroniques de France, Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr 2813, fol. 357v. Paris, 1375–80.

We can understand the significance of this page (and the codex as a whole) for King Charles when we see how adroitly it addresses the controversy surrounding the transition from the Capetian to the Valois dynasty in 1328. In that year, Charles IV, the last Capetian monarch, died without a male heir. Philip VI, Count of Valois, and a cousin of Charles IV was chosen to succeed him by the French

22 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

barons. Their choice deliberately bypassed Edward III, King of England, who felt that he had a more legitimate claim to the French throne. Initially, Edward appeared to accept this decision. In 1329, he wrote a letter acknowledging Philip VI as his suzerain for the lands he held in France. Later that year, he crossed the Channel to Amiens where he made the feudal act of homage to Philip. The miniature painting on folio 357v of BnF fr. 2813 portrays that act of homage by showing Edward, as vassal, kneeling before King Philip and placing his hands between those of the king in the symbolic gesture known as inmixtio manum.3 That the viewer might not miss the significance of this act, and the fact that Edward did indeed perform inmixtio manum, the artist has exaggerated the size of Edward’s hands between Philip’s correctly proportioned ones. Meanwhile, rubrics at the bottom of the first text column, then at the top and further down on the second column of text describe the context and actions portrayed in the miniature painting. The first states, “How the King of England performed homage to the King of France at Amiens for the Duchy of Aquitaine and the County of Ponthieu, just as he was bound to do.” The second, beginning on line six of the second column, marks an important moment in the text that the reader should pay special attention to: “Here follows the sense of the letter bearing his official seal that the King of England sent and which contains the form of the homage that the King of England performed at Amiens to the King of France for the above-named lands.”4 Meanwhile on the previous folio (fol. 357r), Raoulet d’Orléans, one of Charles V’s favorite scribes, rewrote the rubric accompanying a miniature showing King Edward kneeling before Philip VI at Amiens. Raoulet’s new wording reads: “How the King of England traveled by sea to the city of Amiens where the aforementioned King of England had to perform liege homage to the King of France for the Duchy of Aquitaine and the County of Ponthieu as vassal (homme) of the King of France.”5 However interesting in themselves, these historical details illustrate the ease by which scribes could retroactively inflect historical manuscripts with evidence in support of subsequent political policy. In this case, a half-century after the events described, Charles V desired his official court copy of the Grandes chroniques to record unequivocally—in pictures, text, and rubric—that Edward III had violated his sworn oaths of fealty to the French crown when, in 1337, he invaded France. In 1377, Charles V wished to leave no doubt as to English responsibility for starting the Hundred Years’ War. To make this happen, Raoulet d’Orléans simply scraped away earlier text to substitute new wording. That does not mean, however that the effaced text would necessarily disappear. Parchment is organic and medieval inks were natural dyes made from vegetable matter. As

What Is a Manuscript Culture? | 23 animal flesh, parchment absorbs the dyes of the ink used by scribes. This means that nothing written on parchment is ever entirely lost. While the surface may be scraped clean and written over, faint traces of the underlying text remain under the surface. This constitutes a palimpsest, as we saw at the beginning of the chapter with the case of the Galen Syriac Palimpsest. The effaced text can, as we saw, be reconstructed by such modern technologies as ultraviolet light and computer-enhanced imaging. More interesting from our viewpoint than the mechanics of “updating” manuscripts is why such interventions should take place so readily. To alter an historical document suggests that manuscript technology and cultural perception must have had a degree of consonance with attitudes about written records. They must, in short, reflect shared viewpoints. To understand the manuscript folio as “a partner” in the representational process, we have to understand manuscript culture itself as a way of representing the world in accord with contemporary—as opposed to historical—perception. In short, manuscript culture was presentist in orientation. That’s not so surprising if we conceptualize the parchment page as a space where the hand of the writer slowly enters an amalgamation of what he or she (there were female scribes) perceives—where perception is the synthesis of seeing and thinking. It is not by accident that images—aptly named “illuminations”— play so prominent a role in manuscript culture.6 The dynamics of the parchment page—which I like to think of as the “manuscript matrix”—conjure not an inert place of inscription, but rather an interactive space inviting continual representational and interpretive activity.7 We might also think of the parchment page as composed of interstices inviting insertion, such as images, rubrics, or interpolations. What medieval rhetorical treatises call energeia (ἐνέργεια) is the rhetorical force driving the dynamics of interstice.8 This means that we can view the manuscript matrix as first: “a place of radical contingencies: of chronology, of anachronism, of conflicting subjectivities, or representation. The multiple forms of presentation on the manuscript page can often provoke rupture between perception and consciousness, so that what we actually perceive may differ markedly from what poet, artist, or artisan intended to express or from what the medieval audience expected to find. In other words, the manuscript space contains gaps through which the unconscious may be glimpsed.”9 And secondly, in consequence, we might conceive it as a space of “gaps or interstices, in the form of interventions in the text made up of interpolations of visual and verbal insertions which may be conceived, in Jacques Lacan’s terms, as

24 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

‘pulsations of the unconscious’ by which the ‘subject reveals and conceals itself.’ If the effects of language in ordinary speech divide the subject, then the doubling of perceptual fields in the manuscript matrix into verbal and visual forms produces conditions favoring an even greater split in the subject represented by the speaking voice(s).”10 For these reasons, it’s helpful to think of dispositio, or layout, as the dynamic element that transforms the manuscript page or folio into a multi-media space. As such, it distributes representational elements logically to promote dynamic perception. This means understanding the folio’s representational space as iconic and distributed rather than texto-centric and hierarchical. Whereas reading privileges verbal text and relegates images to the task of simply “illustrating” textual meaning, dynamic perception holds all representational signs as iconic, positing key meanings in different ways. It’s easier for us to comprehend writing as graphic sign when we remember that each letter in a manuscript was drawn by hand, and thus unique, in the same way as paintings were drawn by the artist’s brush. Since medieval “readers” had no conception of mechanical printing, it was natural for them to view the parchment page as consisting of different kinds of images, each positing meaning that engaged the other systems. It was up to the viewer to register and synthesize the several systems and interpret their collective meaning. Once we begin to think of the parchment page as a system of signs each contributing components whose synthesis confers meaning to the work as a whole, we can also understand how the signs interact to guide the viewer’s experience and understanding.11 By now it should be clear why it’s not simply anachronistic, but misleading to think of medieval codices as books in the same sense as print publications. To do so is to define the medieval codex retroactively from the perspective of mechanical printing. And yet that sums up the way modernism has defined written artifacts of the Middle Ages: by isolating them from the culture they reflect and helped to shape. Since that culture was intensely imbricated with the natural world and consequently conscious of the place of humans in nature, we should not be surprised to find codices obsessively incorporating these themes. In particular, they represent the making of manuscripts—and the works they represent—as reflective of larger human endeavors. As urbanism progressed in the fourteenth century, human activities are perceived as conquering an ever-expanding social and cultural space from the natural world.12 Evolving manuscript technologies were very much a part of the new landscape of human encroachment on nature, which helps explain why poets, scribes and artists tell it so frequently and in so many ways. Let’s listen.

What Is a Manuscript Culture? | 25 In the dead of winter in 1456, François Villon—a somewhat problematic cleric, but a genuinely original poet—ended his first series of poems, Les Lais (The Legacy), with an unforgettable image. It’s late on a winter’s night in a garret in the Latin Quarter of Paris. Exhausted, Villon’s trying to finish a poem, but the fire’s gone out for want of fuel, his ink’s frozen, the last candle’s snuffed by the wind whistling through the walls: Puis que mon sens fut a repos E l’entendement desmellé, Je cuiday finer mon propos, Mais mon ancrë trouvay gelé Et mon cierge trouvay soufflé; De feu je n’eusse peu finer, Si m’endormis, tout enmouflé, Et ne peuz autrement finer.13 Since my mind’s stalled, frayed, and my wits scattered, I thought it time to end this, but found my ink frozen, and my candle snuffed; no hope of finding a light, so I went to sleep, all muffled up: no other way to end …

Villon’s image could be the origin of the idea many people have of how medieval books were written: by a lone monk sitting in the scriptorium or library of his monastery, laboriously copying a text onto parchment. Every now and then, he’ll stop to warm his fingers over a fire hardly big enough to heat the large room. That’s the romantic image of how these beautiful texts took shape portrayed by 19th-century writers and historians like Victor Hugo or Jules Michelet. But it’s one they found to a certain extent in their medieval sources. Self-referentiality is one of the fascinating things about medieval manuscripts: artists, writers, and scribes take pride in depicting themselves. In a moment we’ll look at some paintings showing the author at work on the manuscript one’s actually reading. Such paintings conflate author and scribe to suggest what to the medieval mind was self-evident: scribe and poet are inextricably bound as two parts of the creative and reproductive process. Let’s look first at a more modest example of self-referentiality notable for its spontaneity. Figure 1.2 shows a bas-de-page sketch from a troubadour chansonnier (songbook) produced in Padua in the atelier of Giovanni Gaibana around 1280 C. E. Unlike some chansonniers, this one (MS Morgan 819, also known as Chansonnier N) has no regular program of miniature paintings, but it does feature an incomplete set of author “portraits” (Figure 1.3), where each poet appears in an historiated initial at the head of the section devoted to the songs of that troubadour.14

26 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

Figure 1.2.  Bas-de-page drawing of a poet/scribe reciting troubadour poetry he’s copying into a manuscript (shown here as a scroll). New York: The Pierpont Morgan Library, MS. 819, fol. 63. Padua, c. 1280.

Figure 1.3. Author “Portrait” of troubadour Peire Milon. New York: The Pierpont Morgan Library, MS 819, fol. 103r. Padua, c. 1280.

What Is a Manuscript Culture? | 27 Figure 1.2 occurs in the section devoted to the poems of the troubadour and bishop, Folquet de Marselh, where marginal or bas-de-page sketches appear for the first time in the manuscript. Superscripted signs (sigla) link particular words or passages to the sketches that illustrate them. The interest of the sketch in Figure 1.2 lies in its two-fold self-consciousness: first as representing the scribe-assinger, recalling that troubadour lyrics were once performed orally by jongleurs, who went from one court to another singing songs here “performed,” instead, in writing. The author “portraits” and this bas-de-page sketch evoke the absent performer. Secondly, the sketch shows the scribe at his writing desk with a scroll rather than a parchment (the scroll being the convention often used in manuscript paintings to represent singing). The archaic scroll convention and the presence of the unusual sketch itself suggest a consciousness of loss, a sense of the limits of manuscript representation: although the codex can represent the text in the voice, it cannot reproduce the voice in the text. Written performance preserves the substance of lyric, but not its voice. So Figure 1.2’s bas-de-page sketch mimes the sound of music by way of reminding the reader that the scribe is not a jongleur (singer). This suggests an ambivalent consciousness on the part of the makers of manuscripts. Whereas we tend to think of the codex as a means of preserving medieval culture, scribes themselves—at least in the case of troubadour song— appear conscious of a vanished world of oral performance beyond the reach of writing. Or, less nostalgically and following the lead of Figure 1.2, we could argue that placing the author portrait within historiated initials symbolizes a positive view of the transition from oral to written performance in the codex. The capital letter at the beginning of each author section in Morgan MS 819 “contains,” or even “imprisons” the poet behind the cross-bar of the capital “S” as with Peire Milon on folio 103r (Figure 1.3). The poet literally stands behind the text as a guarantor of its authenticity, an attestation he had been wont to make either in person or through his surrogate, the jongleur, when they sang the songs in person. Author portraits have another role in codices, and one that also suggests something more than meets the eye. In this case, the manuscript incorporates images of the author, either at the beginning, to point to the authentic filiation of the work back to its originator, or, in the case of works with several authors, they might be represented at the juncture where the first author’s text stops, and his successor’s begins. That all sounds straightforward enough until we realize the blurred boundaries between poet and scribe in a manuscript. The scribe stands in for the poet, having responsibility for transmitting the latter’s work as authentically as possible … or at least as the scribe understands that concept. In the case

28 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

of Figure 1.4 from Girard Acarie’s version of the Roman de la Rose—produced c. 1520 for King François 1er—Girard’s talent as a painter tends to dominate the codex, with miniatures regularly taking up half, if not three-quarters of a given folio. Aside from suggesting Girard’s natural desire to display his artistic talent for his royal patron, the dominance of paintings over verbal text perhaps signals Girard’s shrewd sense that King Francis would prefer to look at his paintings of the Rose, than to read it.

Figure 1.4.  Composite author “portrait” showing Guillaume de Lorris and/or Jean de Meun, the poets responsible for bi-partite Roman de la Rose in c. 1235 and 1280 C. E. respectively. Guillaume, 4,000+ lines, completed by Jean de Meun in 18,000+ lines. New York: The Pierpont Morgan Library, MS 948 fol. 5r. Rouen, c. 1525.

Poet portraits are thus as much about the presence of the scribe in the manuscript as the original author. Since the dispositio, art, and handwriting of later manuscripts tend to be more accomplished than those of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, it’s understandable that scribes should have taken pride— and credit—for their work. Still, the original poet(s) is/are very much “the ghost in the machine.” It suits the living scribe to portray the (dead) author because readers would recognize that credit for the sumptuous parchment book they’re

What Is a Manuscript Culture? | 29 reading (in the case of aristocratic patrons) could only be the work of the scribe and his atelier. In other words, we can’t discount the role of an esthetics of luxury objects in enhancing the experience of owning a codex in the Middle Ages. Of course the majority of manuscripts in the Middle Ages were not luxury items, even if a disproportionate number of the latter have survived (for obvious reasons). Figure 1.5, for example, shows what would have been the quality of codex that merchants could afford. It’s a copy of the Roman de la Rose showing the point where Guillaume de Lorris’s unfinished dream allegory breaks off and Jean de Meun begins his 18,000+ continuation: a philosophical treatise and satire on the principles and concept of fin’amors or what moderns call courtly love. The Dartmouth Rose marks the transition from Guillaume to Jean by a miniature painting showing Guillaume seated at a writing desk, with Jean coming out of the “wings” on the right to take over Guillaume’s task. A large decorated initial immediately below the miniature marks the first word of Jean’s text by way of underlining the break between the two. The miniature and enlarged initial are additions of the artist, since Jean’s text does not acknowledge the change of poet for another 6,000 lines. All of which indicates very clearly that medieval scribes were as conscious as we are of the seismic shift between Guillaume’s beautiful but conventional poem, and Jean’s revolutionary creation. The concern of scribe and artist to mark the precise moment of authorial transition suggests that medieval readers were impatient with Jean’s ruse of concealing his authorship for thousands of lines before retroactively announcing the point where Guillaume’s section breaks off and his begins. Scribes recognized that medieval readers, aware of the difference between the two poets—but also aware that Jean takes pains to mask the transition—wanted a visible marker to tell where he picks up from Guillaume. The demarcation images also remind us that, since medieval manuscripts did not have line numbers, it was not so easy to determine the exact moment of transition. The Pierpont Morgan Rose executed by Girard Acarie for François 1er marks the transition from Guillaume to Jean even more dramatically. As shown in Figure 1.6, Girard Acarie chooses to illustrate the break by following the God of Love’s description from the poem’s mid-point some 181 folios further on. There Love says that Guillaume died before finishing the poem but that he (Love) has a loyal poet named Jean de Meun who took over where death prevented Guillaume from continuing. Girard Acarie’s painting vividly competes with Jean’s narrative description of loss and continuity, the inconstancy of fortune, and the power of art, all prominent themes for Jean. The image shows the dead figure of Guillaume de Lorris,

30 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

Figure 1.5.  Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, Le Roman de la Rose, Miniature marking the transition from Guillaume to Jean’s continuation. Rubric under painting reads: “Ci commence mestre Jehan de Meun.” Dartmouth College, MS Rauner Codex 3206, fol. 27r (Paris, c. 1330–1350). Courtesy of Dartmouth College Library.

What Is a Manuscript Culture? | 31

Figure 1.6.  Guillaume de Lorris lies dead and ready for burial, while the Lover (or Jean de Meun) stands outside the room mourning, but prepared to continue the quest/poem. Roman de la Rose, New York: The Pierpont Morgan Library, MS Morgan 948, fol. 44. Rouen, c. 1525.

laid out on a table awaiting burial. Shelves of books on the walls, and an alcove where we glimpse a bed and writing desk (themes from Guillaume’s allegorical dream vision) identify the corpse as the poet, Guillaume. The two columns of

32 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

text in the lower register of the folio, as well as the pathway leading to the horizon graphically convey the power of art to surmount death. Author portraits are as varied and numerous as medieval codices themselves. Related to them but with a more profound socio-political and esthetic dimension are the presentation miniatures found at the beginning of many illuminated (and often luxurious) manuscripts. They are somewhat akin in motivation to the donor panels to be seen at the base of many stained glass windows in Romanesque and Gothic churches in that they hope to win favor for the donors. But donors of stained glass and book patrons have very different roles. Quite simply, patronage is one of the most important motivating factors in medieval bookmaking. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, parchment books were largely scriptural in nature—Bibles, and other kinds of ritual volumes—so religious foundations, churchmen and the nobility were the principal patrons. By the thirteenth century, when the rise in vernacular literature created a demand for codex copies, the social base of patronage broadened considerably to include the urban professional and merchant classes who lived in the bourg or secular part of a city. Nevertheless, the nobility remained a driving force in literary patronage, particularly for large, illuminated codices. Figure 1.7, for example, shows the frontispiece illumination of a fourteenth-century French translation of Vincent de Beauvais’s Speculum historiale (Mirror of History) in the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal in Paris. It portrays Jeanne de Bourgogne, Queen of France from 1328 to 1348, and patron of Jehan de Vignay’s translation of Vincent’s Latin text. Regally crowned by a gold, fleur-de-lys

Figure 1.7.  Vincent de Beauvais Speculum historiale/Miroir historiale, tr. Jehan de Vignay for Jeanne de Bourgogne, Queen of France 1328–1348. Left panel, St Louis commissioning Latin work from Vincent de Beauvais in 1251; right panel, Jeanne de Bourgogne commissioning French translation from Jehan de Vignay in 1332–1333. Paris: Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal 5080 réserve, fol. 1, detail. Paris, 14th century.

What Is a Manuscript Culture? | 33 diadem, a retinue of ladies-in-waiting behind her, Jeanne instructs Jehan with raised hand and index finger extended in the consecrated gesture of authority while her right hand rests on the top of the Latin Speculum she’s commissioned Jehan to translate for her son, the future Jean II (1350–1364). Before the queen sits Jehan de Vignay making the translation, a copy of Vincent’s Latin text on the desk above the codex he’s writing in. He gazes intently at the book resting on the writing desk while his right hand inscribes the fourteenth-century French words of his translation.15 Jeanne de Bourgogne was a bibliophile who instilled her love of books in her son. She organized a program of translations from the works of significant Latin and Greek philosophers and historians, as well as Christian Fathers and theologians. Jean II continued the practice begun by his mother, but it was her grandson, Charles V, who saw practical political advantage in translating great works of the past. By commissioning translations of major Greek and Latin thinkers as well as Fathers of the Church, and by founding the first royal library after his accession, he transformed his grandmother’s modest initiative into a politics of knowledge in which authoritative thought and letters became instruments of State governance. We can see the beginnings of this policy illustrated in the diptych of this frontispiece. The key lies in the double statement of the sequential scenes portrayed in the two panels. In the left panel, over the first column of text, we see a mirror image of the scene to the right, but with significant differences indicating that the authority for the transaction in the right panel—its spiritual and intellectual power—stems from the central figure on the left. That image, regally clad and doubly distinguished by royal crown and saintly nimbus, shows Saint Louis (Louis IX) commissioning the Speculum historiale (Mirror of History) from the Dominican scholar, Vincent de Beauvais. Like Queen Jeanne, Saint Louis stands with his courtiers behind him, facing the seated monk with the open book on a writing desk in front of him. The words Deus adiuva me (“God assist me”) cannot be found on the page in this painting, but they are clearly visible in the later fourteenth-century version of the presentation codex at the Walters Art Gallery (Walters 140) in Baltimore. Parenthetically, let’s note several important technical details of book composition and production revealed in the two panels. The scene on the left shows Vincent de Beauvais composing his Mirror of History, which is a compilation of episodes from world history demonstrating how great men of the past have responded to political crises. The episodes were chosen and presented as exemplars to teach royal princes—and by extension heirs of noble families—the art of governance. This is Jeanne’s purpose in commissioning the translation for her son, Jean.

34 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

Precisely because Vincent’s Speculum or Mirror draws upon a plethora of historical records, it is a work of compilation—a distillation of episodes from sacred and secular sources from antiquity to recent times. That is why the scene on the left shows a shelf with bound volumes and loose documents above Vincent. Note also that his writing desk has two inclined supports, the lower one for writing, and the upper one, jutting forward, to hold the copies of the sources from which Vincent chooses and glosses his examples. Looking at the right panel, Jehan de Vignay has only the one book he’s copying, that is Vincent’s Latin Speculum, which rests on a shelf above the lower writing surface. This scene informs the viewer of the nature of translation: it needs no other volumes than the one it’s rendering from Latin to French. The presence of only the two codices, Latin original and French target, in this image on the incipit, or opening page, assures the reader that the French text does indeed represent its Latin counterpart. By recording the details of the different aspects of book production, the artist illustrates the complex technology of the métier. It is no accident that Vincent de Beauvais undertook his great encyclopedic work in the mid-thirteenth century, just at the moment when Paris was becoming the major center for parchment-book production in Europe. His Speculum historiale was one of three such compilations, the other two being the Speculum naturale (dealing with nature and the natural world), and a treatise on scientific knowledge, the Speculum doctrinale. Together, they were known as the Speculum majus of Vincent de Beauvais. The work was so successful that it inspired a fourth treatise, the Speculum morale, ascribed to Vincent, but in reality produced later in the century, after his death in 1264. The manuscript tradition associated with Vincent’s Speculum treatises is important for reasons having as much to do with the evolution of medieval manuscript culture as with Vincent himself. The success of Vincent’s speculum treatises was due at least in part to the powerful connection between the intellectual tradition underlying the teaching and preaching mission of the new Dominican Order, on the one hand, and the political influence of the French monarchy, on the other. There can be no doubt that this resulted in no small measure from the close association of Louis IX (later Saint Louis) and Vincent de Beauvais commemorated by the Speculum historiale frontispieces. Many of the most important Latin and French codices of Vincent’s works were produced for and owned by the French royal family and other members of the nobility active in French and Burgundian politics in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Figure 1.8, for example, shows a codex produced in 1396 for Louis I d’Orléans, the second son of Charles V, and brother to Charles VI. The scribe was Raoulet d’Orléans, one of the master scribes working for Charles V until his death in 1380, and thereafter for his son, Charles VI.16 The artist was the

What Is a Manuscript Culture? | 35 famous Paris master, Perrin Remiet.17 Note how Remiet maintains the basic concept of the frontispiece seen in other versions, while considerably modifying the style and details of its rendering. Note also the genealogical continuity between Saint Louis, Jeanne de Bourgogne and Louis d’Orléans. As the great grandson of Jeanne de Bourgogne, and the namesake of his more distant ancestor, Louis IX, Louis d’Orléans continues the rapport between patron, book, and scribe (Roulet d’Orléans here taking the role of Jehan de Vignay).

Figure 1.8. Vincent de Beauvais, Mireoir hÿstorial, Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr 313, fol. 1r. Paris, 1396. Raoulet d’Orléans & Guillaume de Hervi, scribes, Perrin Remiet, artist. Escutcheon in lower part of folio bears the arms of Louis I, duc d’Orléans, brother of Charles VI, indicating this was his personal copy.

The Speculum treatises illustrate how a complex manuscript technology—particularly the multi-media dispositio or layout—allows composition-by-compilation, by which authors can incorporate exempla from different epochs and sources. Until manuscript technology developed means of ordering and organizing large quantities of disparate knowledge, this would not have been possible. Prior to that time, when literary and historical works tended to be diffused orally, authors relied on interlaced plot sequences to organize the narrative coherently.18 Vincent de Beauvais produced his treatises in the mid-thirteenth century just at the period when manuscript technology became more sophisticated.

36 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

Coordinated metadata such as lists of contents, chapter headings, rubrics, decorated and historiated letters separating sections, numbered folios, marginal labels, miniature paintings, glosses and commentaries, allowed manuscripts to present heterogeneous material intelligibly. We see this clearly, for example, in Figure 1.9, a page from Raoul de Presles’s translation and commentary of Augustine’s De civitate Dei (City of God). In the margin beside the first column, Raoul identifies exemplary material from Isidore of Seville that he incorporates in his commentaries, while in the second column, he summarizes the gist of chapter XIV by the rubric: xiiij. De regreter et retrancher l’amour de loange humaine pour ce que toute la loange des justes est de Dieu (“xiv. On the need to regret and resist the love of human praise because all praise of the righteous comes from God”  ). Similarly, on other pages, Raoul scrupulously adds marginal labels to distinguish his own (often long) commentaries from the translated words of Saint Augustine.

Figure 1.9.  Saint Augustine, La cité de Dieu, translated by Raoul de Presles for Charles V from 1375–78. Folio shows translator’s identification of sources in left hand column (“Ysidore” [of Seville]), while rubric in column 2 summarizes the chapter to follow. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr 22912, fol. 249v. Paris, 1375–78.

What Is a Manuscript Culture? | 37 The ability of the manuscript matrix to configure different sign systems led to innovative treatises on specialized subjects, such as music. Manuscripts proved effective for bringing new developments in music and court life into metaphorical congruence. The parchment page offered a practical way to close the gap between the universe of things and the world of signs. If flamboyant Gothic architecture is the pinnacle of fourteenth-century monumental display, its musical and artistic counterpart is the complex multi-media phenomenon known as Ars Nova. Responsible for some of the most elaborately illuminated manuscripts ever produced, Ars Nova deployed incredibly complex musical arrangements of part singing to constrain disparate voices and seemingly discordant rhythms in a flowing, soaring harmony. Treatises of the period recognized the metaphorical congruence between a technology of instrument, voice, and language capable of imposing order on confusion and the voice of royal authority. Christine de Pizan, in her treatise on good governance that takes Charles V as model, stresses the king’s proficiency in literature and music as causal factors for his mastery of statecraft. She tells us that Charles’s passion for learning and knowledge led him to amass an impressive collection of important books of all the greatest authors in his “magnificent library.” “Whether it be Holy Scriptures, theology, philosophy, or any other branch of learning,” she writes, “all his volumes were richly illuminated and of the finest calligraphy. For this work, he employed only the most accomplished scribes.”19 When Christine goes on to praise Charles’ musical adeptness, she acknowledges the city’s long tradition as the pre-eminent center for the theory and practice of music by theologians at the University of Paris and by the Notre Dame school of polyphony. She also recognizes the intimate link between music, philosophy, and theology that gave it so central a role in medieval theories of knowledge: Musica symbolized the underlying structure of disparate things … and was a method of thinking which bound all things together. As Isidore of Seville noted: Sine musica nulla disciplina potest esse perfecta. Nihil sine illa (‘No discipline is complete without music. Nothing is without music.’).20

Christine’s analogy between musical mastery and good governance directly acknowledges the innovative technology of composition proposed by Philippe de Vitry in a treatise called Ars Nova (“New Music”) written in Paris in 1322. This treatise featured new, complicated notational schemes that pressed the frontiers of the new manuscript technology even further. “The new art was primarily a change in the notation of rhythms, and these principles of measuring note values pervade most of the music of the century … Vitry’s treatise describes a new musical practice used by the most advanced Parisian composers.”21 But just as Walter

38 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

Benjamin’s reflections on the Arcades in Paris pointed beyond their architectural esthetic to their social and political implications, so, in the fourteenth century, Ars Nova was much more than a simple change in musical style.22 It was so popular that it quickly came “to designate the entire musical production in Italy and France between 1320 and 1430.” Its sensational success resulted in no small measure from its liberation of complex music from the sacred world to profane venues, from church to court, and from glorifying the word of God to celebrating a more lascivious deity, Amour. Conservative reaction prompted Pope John XXII to denounce it in a Bull, Docta Sanctorum, issued in 1325. Critics were reacting to the secularization of polyphony by Ars Nova in creating what we would recognize today as “popular” lyric songs: ballads, virelais, rondeaux and particularly a new form, the isorhythmic motet, invented by Philippe de Vitry and perfected in daringly complex part-settings by Christine de Pizan’s poetic mentor, Guillaume de Machaut (1300–1377). Without denying that dazzling technique opened new vistas of performance, which created a new level of virtuosity for poet-musicians at the Valois court, there’s another aspect of this phenomenon that’s equally important … and interesting. While Ars Nova has its polyphonic roots in sacred music, it makes its debut in a secular event that also produced one of the most complex manuscripts of the Middle Ages. This event was both a court performance and new kind of parchment book known as the Roman de Fauvel, a court satire by Gervais du Bus, with music by Philippe de Vitry, first presented in 1314. As we can see in Figure 1.10, Fauvel is a hybrid work—what we would today call hypertext—since it intercalates miniature paintings, prose text, poems and songs to present an allegorical satire of a donkey clad in regal raiment. The satire is the more cutting in choosing the donkey as the object of courtly envy, since the donkey by its nature parodies the horse (cheval), the sign of knightly status (chevalier = “knight”). In this lampoon of sordid competition among courtiers, even the highest-ranking nobles vie for the privilege of currying Fauvel’s coat or mane. In fact, the expression “to curry favor” [originally “to curry Favel”] originates with this work, giving some idea of its popularity. Fauvel is a precocious index for the role that the high art of courtly composition will play in the fourteenth century. Incredibly complex, technically speaking, the intricate structures of musica nova—or of Fauvel itself—mimic the rarified life and etiquette of the court. By its vigorous representation of court etiquette as devoid of meaning in the “real world,” Fauvel shows how remote courtiers were from the outside world. They were in Paris but not of it, living a life of splendid isolation.

What Is a Manuscript Culture? | 39

Figure 1.10.  Gérard du Bus, Chaillou de Pesstain, & Philippe de Vitry, Le Roman de Fauvel. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr 146, fol. 1r. Paris, c. 1314.

And this brings us to another aspect of manuscript culture. Manuscripts are keen observers—reflectors if you prefer—of their historical moment and context. If we look at Fauvel from this angle, we see what Walter Benjamin perceived in studying nineteenth century Paris. In any social figuration, observers stand out. They remind us that those best situated to offer insight into a social figuration are those who, like Benjamin, had a fervor for observation, who could see more and above all see differently.23 Gérard du Bus and Philippe de Vitry were such seers. Fauvel presages the disintegration of the Capetian dynasty from within thanks to the moral blindness of its courtiers. While the Valois dynasty replaced the Capetian in 1328, the transition was a family affair in which more powerful heirs, like Edward III of England,

40 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

or Charles II of Navarre, were disinherited. This decision created an international family Romance that precipitated vicious political feuds and sordid betrayals that haunted the fortunes of France for more than a century. If European authors and poets of the late Middle Ages manifest intense awareness of one another and engagement with the latest work, this phenomenon, too, may be ascribed to the way manuscripts circulated, that is, by multiple copies of the “same” work side-by-side with others. In the circumstances, comparison and influence were inevitable. Think, for example, of how many copies—each different from one another to varying degrees—of a given work circulated at any given time. There’s the Roman de la Rose, for instance, which even today numbers over 250 manuscripts dating from the end of the thirteenth to the early sixteenth century. Since so many Rose manuscripts were illuminated, often sumptuously— Charles V had five copies in his library at one point—Rose scribes and artists were conscious of one another’s work and that of their predecessors. But this awareness did not simply mean stylistic variation; it also inspired poets to write new works that could profit from the Rose’s popularity—and notoriety. To name but two subsequent poets whose work engages the Rose: Guillaume de Deguileville (1295–c.1358) explicitly composed his Pèlerinage de la vie humaine (Pilgrimage of Human Life) as a response to Jean de Meun’s Rose, which also inspired spirited responses by Christine de Pizan at the beginning of the fifteenth century. Two characteristics of manuscript technology facilitated and fostered such poetic referentiality and influence: compilation and illumination. The first— composition-by-compilation—fostered new kinds of literary works, particularly allegorical and moral compositions, where the loose narrative framework strung together quotation, allusion, and emulation. The allegorical romance—particularly the dream vision—offered the pretext of a bildungs narrative where edifying citations or stories from antiquity, theological, or contemporary sources were readily adapted to the ostensible narrative. Since the Roman de la Rose was the vernacular prototype for allegorical compilation romance, this is yet another instance where the wide circulation of its many copies stimulated creative emulation. Dynamic imaging is the second manuscript technology I wanted to mention here. While manuscript illumination evolved much earlier, fourteenth century illustration cycles offer an entirely new kind of critical engagement with textual material. This development flows naturally from the increase in circulation of versions of important works like the Rose, the Grandes Chroniques, the Miroir historial, the Pèlerinage de la vie humaine, and other key works. The more versions of a work there are, the greater the likelihood that scribes and artists of new versions

What Is a Manuscript Culture? | 41 will try to differentiate their work. By the same token, their efforts will, inevitably and however subtly, reveal traces of their awareness of other contemporary versions and works. The self-referentiality that we noted above is yet another manifestation of this specular engagement with contemporary manuscript production. Programs of illumination, although coordinated with and serving as commentaries on the text of a work, were stylistically influenced by contemporary esthetics independent of literary concern. Since the visual images and layout were immediately apparent—as opposed to the verbal text, which took time to read and assimilate—their influence on other works is readily apparent. Indeed, visual and graphic aspects of manuscripts offer reliable guides for determining date and place of production. Interesting as these technical details may be, however, they point to a time when the culture of the codex played a major role in determining content. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, romance compilation and image production encouraged new kinds of hybrid literature that mixed music, art, and lyric thanks to the multi-media potential of the manuscript matrix. So if we learn nothing else from listening to what manuscripts of the period have to tell us, it’s the story of a moment when poets, artists, scribes, readers, and all those responsible for producing parchment, ink, and colors, lived and worked in close collaboration with one another and as part of an interdependent court and urban society. Medieval manuscripts convey that story dynamically and in what Hollywood used to call “living color.”

2

Materiality and Mimesis Anatomy of an Illusion

Some years ago, I was invited to address a seminar at the Heinrich-Heine-Universität in Düsseldorf. The students were studying the materiality and modes of production of medieval manuscripts. My assignment was to discuss the rationale for digitizing codices taking as an example the collaboration between the Sheridan Libraries at Johns Hopkins University and the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris. Jointly we had digitized and put on line some 150 codices of the Romance of the Rose produced between the end of the thirteenth and the first quarter of the sixteenth centuries (manuscriptlib.org, formerly romandelarose.org). Besides explaining the advantages for study and research of digitizing such artifacts, I also wanted to demonstrate new research techniques for medieval studies that digital resources made possible. It never crossed my mind that graduate students wouldn’t be excited to discover that artifacts largely inaccessible to them (and frequently to senior scholars as well) were now freely available to anyone with a computer and Internet access. It seemed to me that we had at last managed to reconcile two principles of libraries that had long seemed irreconcilable when it came to medieval manuscripts: access and preservation. Finally, readers would be able to study manuscripts intensively without fear of damaging them. Students, I reasoned, would want to avail themselves of these new scholarly resources immediately. After all, digital resources open new horizons for studying authentic medieval artifacts and their historical context. At the very least, wouldn’t

44 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

the students be interested in learning about new tools for transcription, annotation, and the ability to compare different manuscript versions simultaneously in the same browser window? Alternatively, we might have seen how data compiled from dozens of versions of a work inevitably alter our understanding of the mode of existence— or even the definition—of medieval literature. These are all questions made possible by unlimited access to digital versions of manuscripts, and I couldn’t imagine others not feeling the excitement sparked by endless vistas of unknown territory. The students had other ideas. Intelligent and engaged, they had spent the year learning about the materiality of the book, a position my presentation appeared to ignore. Even though most of them had never physically studied manuscripts in repositories, they argued that digital artifacts undermine the materiality of the object. In vain did I deny arguing for the superiority of the digital over the physical object, still less claiming that the former should somehow replace the latter. Even so, my interlocutors feared that digital artifacts somehow posed a threat to their “originals.” How so? I countered, it’s not as if one has to choose one over the other. On the contrary, everyone understands that codicology and paleography require access to the original document. And one of the ironies of large-scale manuscript digitization is that that they have made paleographical and codicological studies more urgent than ever, since we need accurate dating, provenance, scribal hand identification and other such expertise to validate observations drawn from large-scale comparison studies. My views did not prevail that day. In the ensuing period, I’ve thought a good deal about the reasons for the impasse, and particularly about the limitations of my own premises. It isn’t sufficient, I realized, to demonstrate digital methodology without recognizing that, as with any new technology, it inspires resistance. And resistance cannot be addressed without analysis. For the time-tested methods the new technology seems to critique are just as integral to the discipline of manuscript studies as are digital protocols. More to the point, digital approaches cannot be effective without ascertaining what part of the resistance stems from misunderstanding their nature and what part from disapproval of technology tout court. The former may be addressed, the latter not.

Why Digital Copies of Medieval Manuscripts Are Not Imitations of the “Real Thing” Few scholars today would deny that digital technology has radically challenged and altered (for better or for worse) protocols of medieval studies. What Bruce

Materiality and Mimesis | 45 Holsinger terms “the digitization of the parchment inheritance” has opened an Aladdin’s Cave of access to manuscripts that could only be viewed previously by traveling from one repository to another.1 Alexandra Gillespie refers to this trove as “the growing ‘data footprint’ of medieval studies,” noting that the “new technologies have changed the form”—and, one might add, the questions we ask—“of that data.”2 Whether the change has been for better or for worse, however, is, for some, a matter of debate. I’m not referring to the die-hard technophobes, who, like William Morris decrying the advent of the typewriter as bad for art and artist alike, condemn digital humanities outright.3 Of more interest to me are students and colleagues whose ambivalence manifests itself through caution, usually on scholarly grounds. The most common reservations expressed in this respect concern the loss of presence, or physical contact with the artifact, and the fear that the perfectly replicated image will somehow replace the “real” artifact. One of the most cogent expressions of this sentiment that I’ve read comes from Deborah McGrady, a colleague from the University of Virginia, who—in conjunction with Benjamin Albritton of Stanford University—has devoted considerable time, energy, and perspicuity, to a fascinating digital project involving manuscripts of Guillaume de Machaut (http://www.stanford.edu/group/dmstech/ cgi-bin/drupal/node/19). Although referring to herself as “a digital philologist trained to celebrate the manuscript matrix, variance, and mouvance,” she characterizes “the encounter with a digitized manuscript” as “somehow the more insidious because perceived as so close to the ‘real,’ its radical difference is often overlooked.”4 McGrady later goes on to say, What I came to believe is that the digitized manuscript openly mocks the material, peddles in nostalgia, and cultivates a desire it cannot satisfy. The digitized manuscript promises intimate knowledge of a distant handcrafted object, but it also exposes and even flaunts its status as a ‘remediated’ product defined by its distance from the desired original.5

The expressions—“insidious,” “mocks the material,” “peddles in nostalgia,” “cultivates a desire it cannot satisfy”—convey an ambivalence toward digital representations of manuscripts that may seem surprising, even unmotivated: “What’s so offensive about them?” In fact, the negative energy taps into an age-old antagonism between “original” and “imitation” or “copy.” The roots of that mistrust lie deep in religion, moral philosophy, and esthetics. Some religions reject images as illegitimate portrayals of a deity or other sacred objects on the grounds that they

46 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

may lead the faithful into idolatry. But Iconoclasm is not simply the province of religion. Philosophers like Plato rejected mimesis on grounds that the image or copy of an object is specious in comparison to the object itself. As he argues in Cratylus: Would there be two things, Cratylus and the image of Cratylus, if some god should not merely imitate your color and form, as painters do, but should also make all the inner parts like yours, should reproduce the same flexibility and warmth, should put them into motion, life, and intellect, such as exist in you, and in short, should place beside you a duplicate of all your qualities? Would there be in such an event Cratylus and an image of Cratylus, or two Cratyluses? […] Do you not perceive how far images are from possessing the same qualities as the originals which they imitate? […] Surely, Cratylus, the effect produced by the names upon the things of which they are the names would be ridiculous, if they were entirely like them in every respect. For everything would be duplicated, and no one could tell in any case which was the real thing and which the name (432b–d).6

Because “insidiously misleading,” verbal and visual images as found in poetry, painting, and graphic arts were perceived as purveying “falsehood, immorality, and the psychological power … to imprint these effects on its audience.”7 Republic 10 “picks up the allegations of falsehood and psychological harm, but it enlarges and modifies the import of both, and thereby carries altogether further philosophy’s quarrel with poetry (607b5). The attack is now more radical, and revolves around the fresh understanding of mimesis as a process of specious image-making which accounts for all poetic and visual art.”8 Hostility toward mimesis often arises, paradoxically, concurrently with accounts that speak of the usefulness of images for given purposes. This is true both for the context of Professor McGrady’s comments about the digital images of Machaut’s manuscripts that she and her students had been working with, and for Plato’s discussion of the intimate link between name and image in Cratylus 432b–c. In Plato’s case, scholars have long remarked the seeming contradiction between the scathing denunciation of mimetic arts in Republic 10, and his more favorable view of them in Republic 3 where he makes the case for the necessity of the arts in education: “Must we rather seek out craftsmen/artists who are by nature able to pursue what is fine and graceful in their work, so that our young people will live in a healthy place and be benefited on all sides, and so that something of those fine works will strike their eyes and ears like a breeze that brings health from a good place, leading them unwittingly, from childhood on, to resemblance, friendship, and harmony with the beauty of reason (401c–d).9 In a curious, if predictable way, Plato’s ambivalence testifies in fact to the power of images, a power that inspires both awe and apprehension. Awe, in the

Materiality and Mimesis | 47 face of the power of images to induce “harmony with the beauty of reason” but also apprehension that this same force might prove difficult to control. Images conceal as well as reveal. What lies beneath their surface? How can one discern their effect? How can a human artist imitate divine creation? Is the beneficence and harmony genuine, or a mask covering an abyss for the unwary viewer? From the beginning, humans have known that the enchantment of images came at a cost: suspicion in the face of the uncanny power of non-natural replication. As Sophocles puts it in the Cratylus passage: “no one could tell which was the real thing” (432d). Professor McGrady’s assessment of the “insidiousness” of digitized manuscripts because “perceived as so close to the ‘real’” echoes Plato’s thought. Given that nearly two-and-a-half millennia separate the two, we can see just how entrenched in Western culture is the mistrust of images that duplicate an original. The flashpoint has less to do with esthetics than with ontology and metaphysics, in other words with identity. Sophocles raises the issue of “identity theft” in his discussion of the two Cratyluses. Being able to distinguish the real Cratylus from a doppelgänger cloned by the gods is obviously important, especially for Cratylus himself. But what about the identity of non-human objects that have been exactly reproduced? In their case, identity focuses on issues of originality and intentionality. At least that is the case for a great work of art like Rembrandt’s The Nightwatch. Even a perfect replication of that painting would be inauthentic, because not from the hand of Rembrandt. It would only be “a falsehood” or a forgery, in Plato’s sense, if someone created the copy with the intent of passing it off as an original Rembrandt; for example, a hitherto unknown copy purportedly executed by Rembrandt for a member of Amsterdam’s Nightwatch. But what about medieval vernacular literature that could only circulate as hand written, painted, and decorated “copies” that were unique instances of a given work? Can we really think of them in terms of “original” and “imitation?” Can we point authoritatively to an extant holograph “original” manuscript of a work of medieval literature as we undoubtedly can for Rembrandt’s great painting? In Languages of Art, Nelson Goodman argues that the history of production of a work of art determines whether we can speak in terms of an authentic original or forgery. By “history of production,” Goodman means that material and conventional aspects of creating an artwork play a role in determining how and whether one can meaningfully invoke such distinctions as “original” and “copy.” In music, for instance, where performance is the means of realization of a composition, “there is no such thing as a forgery of a known work.”10 It’s possible to claim that a work is Haydn’s, just as “there are paintings falsely purporting to

48 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

be by Rembrandt; but of the London Symphony, unlike the Lucretia, there can be no forgeries” (LA: 112). Haydn’s manuscript is no more genuine an instance of the score than is a printed copy off the press this morning, and last night’s performance no less genuine than the première. Copies of the score may vary in accuracy, but all accurate copies, even forgeries of Haydn’s manuscript, are equally genuine instances of the score. Performances may vary in correctness and quality and even in ‘authenticity’ of a more esoteric kind; but all correct performances are equally genuine instances of the work. In contrast, even the most exact copies of the Rembrandt painting are simply imitations or forgeries, not new instances of the work. (LA: 112–113, my emphasis)

The reason for these differences, Goodman avers, arises from the nature of their production. He labels artforms for which original and copy matter “autographic” works, as opposed to “allographic” artforms which can’t be forged, because each instantiation is a unique representation … a performance, as it were. “The composer’s work is done,” says Goodman, “when he has written the score, even though the performances are the end-products, while the painter has to finish the picture. No matter how many studies or revisions are made in either case, painting is in this sense a one-stage and music a two-stage art” (LA: 113–114). Genetic criticism having attuned us to the significance of holograph manuscripts of modern writers, we might intuitively think of literature as an autographic artform. Yet when we stop to think about it, even holograph manuscripts are not traditionally published as such, but in a print edition containing the final text of a work intended for silent reading by individuals. Since that doesn’t constitute performance, Nelson sees literature as a single-stage artform, but still allographic. It’s not autographic because it can’t be counterfeited, Goodman notes: “There is no such thing as a forgery of Gray’s Elegy [Written in a Country Churchyard]. Any accurate copy of the text of a poem or novel is as much the original work as any other” (LA: 114). Goodman is correct in so far as modern literature is concerned, where, he asserts, “what the writer produces is ultimate; the text is not simply a means to oral readings as a score is a means to performances in music” (LA: 114). In a preprint culture, however, where a writer has no possibility of producing and circulating “an ultimate (i.e., fixed) text,” we encounter a situation more akin to Goodman’s conception of the two-stage condition of a work of music. Medieval literature, for example, manifests rich and regular generic evolution between the twelfth and early sixteenth centuries. Imaginative transformations of rhymed chivalric romances into intricately-interlaced prose sequences—known as “continuations” of verse romances—are possible precisely because scribes were free to reformulate and “update” popular works transmitted from generation to generation by scribes

Materiality and Mimesis | 49 who never knew the initial author and for whom the idea of an “original” manuscript could not have been more foreign. While the literary history of generic transformation offers important testimony to the improvisational freedom available to medieval scribes and writers in transmitting texts, it’s tangential to our more immediate concern of considering works that, despite modifications to the text and (often considerable) changes in accompanying material, manage to maintain their general form and content over several centuries of “versioning.” Here, the constraint of following a complex “score” or narrative schema, while executing innovative iconographic programs, glosses, and rubrication, illustrates not only the differences that distinguish manuscript versions of a work from one another, but also, and for that very reason, the sense in which each version is a unique performance. The impetus for the representational virtuosity of manuscripts stems from the mode of production, from the fact that each parchment page is a virtual space with multicolored, multimedia potential: e.g., text, painting, decoration, and rubrication. Medieval codices were not books in the way printing came to define them. Nor were their contents solely “literary” as texts in print publications have long been regarded. While the work or works to be copied furnished the impetus for the commission, they were but one component of a book’s content. Although modern critical editions have taught us to eschew non-textual components, it would be a mistake to discount their crucial contribution not only to the way the codex represents its work(s), but also to the sense of the works themselves, and ultimately to the vigor of the folio page where diverse sign systems vie to convey meaning. Verbal and visual components—rubrics, miniature paintings, decorated or historiated initials, marginal embellishments, glosses—all contribute different interpretations to the “same” work in different manuscripts. For moderns accustomed to finding the same (or virtually the same) text of an author’s work in editions published at different times, it’s startling to discover the varied treatments accorded a work in medieval codices. For example, Figures 2.1 and 2.2 feature two nearly contemporaneous fourteenth-century Parisian manuscripts which offer different representations of the same passages from the beginning of the Roman de la Rose, the shorter part of the poem written around 1235 C.  E. by Guillaume de Lorris.11 This section features a series of colorful descriptions of psychological states purportedly antithetical to the kind of emotions acceptable to the courtly love code, e.g. Haine (Hatred), Vilanie (Villainy), Convoitise (Cupidity), Avarice (Greed), Envie (Envy/Jealousy), etc. Guillaume imagines these portraits as painted on the exterior walls of the “Garden

50 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

of Delight,” into which the protagonist, Guillaume’s young lover, desires to be admitted. Scribes and manuscript artists who created subsequent versions of the Rose took up the challenge of Guillaume’s vivid poetic descriptions, interpreting them imaginatively in their miniature paintings with scenes that gloss the verbal text with humor and nuance. The series of eight to ten paintings that accompany this part of the Rose, coming as they do at the beginning of the poem, gives a different experience to each manuscript version. As I tell my students, Rose manuscripts are “objects in motion,” constantly experiencing parthenogenesis.

Figure 2.1. Roman de la Rose, Courtly “vices:” Haÿne, Felonie et Vilainie, Convoitise. Berlin: Staatsbibliothek, MS Cod. Gall. 80, fol. 2r. Paris, first half 14th century.

Materiality and Mimesis | 51 As Chapter 5 argues, we need to reformulate our study of variance in manuscript performance to ask why their mode of production experienced representational reformulation so naturally.12 It was not simply that the production network tended to be concentrated around a few centers. In Paris, for example, the book trade constituted a micro-culture whose participants inhabited the same part of the city in the Latin Quarter close to the Seine. So it was that the artisans who converted animal skins into parchment pages lived and worked in the same neighborhood as the scribes, artists, bookbinders and sellers. Of these, the scribes and

Figure 2.2.  Roman de la Rose, Courtly “vices:” Haigne. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr 25526, fol. 2r. Paris, 2nd half 14th century.

52 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

artists were responsible for orchestrating words, images, glosses, rubrics, and decorations into a single performance, the manuscript-book. In proposing that we think of each manuscript of a work like the Rose as a performance, I’m making an analogy with Goodman’s concept of music as a twostage process: composition and performance. The composer conceives and notates the musical composition, but its performance requires another set of skills. The performance takes the composition as the point of departure, but the conductor interprets it in his or her own way. As a result, while we recognize, say, Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony from one performance to another, we also recognize that a performance of the Sixth conducted by Ricardo Muti will differ from one conducted by Marin Alsop. There is of course a major difference between Muti’s or Marin’s performing Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony and a manuscript version of the Rose. The conductors actually plan their performances from a printed score that reproduces more or less faithfully the composition printed from Beethoven’s holograph manuscript. That’s not the case for most medieval literary works. No extant manuscript of the Roman de la Rose can be said to represent a holograph of Guillaume de Lorris or Jean de Meun, because they do not exist. Furthermore, when, around 1280, Jean de Meun undertook to complete his predecessor’s unfinished work, he certainly did not possess an original of Guillaume’s poem from the 1230s. Instead, manuscripts of the Rose proliferated during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in direct proportion to its growing popularity (or notoriety). That is to say that the manuscript versions themselves, individually and collectively, represented “the work.” In short, there was no “original” of the Roman de la Rose, only a series of manuscript performances, some of them quite spectacular. Let’s return now to the question of digital representation of manuscripts. If the latter are, as Goodman argues, allographic artforms—performances—they cannot be “copied” in the sense of replication with fraudulent intent. Nor are they analogous to Plato’s instance of the two Cratylus, where the clone threatens to usurp the “real” Cratylus’s identity. We recall that Professor McGrady voiced the same fear, mutatis mutandis, that the realism of the digitized manuscript was so real that it threatened to replace its medieval avatar. That’s an unlikely scenario for several reasons, beginning with the nature and purpose of the digital artifact. To revert for a moment to the musical analogy of Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, we naturally want to hear the best possible recording of a great performance. That’s why engineers have developed digitally mastered recordings of outstanding fidelity that are prized by music lovers and musicologists alike.

Materiality and Mimesis | 53 The former anticipate listening pleasure, the latter—while equally engaged esthetically—prize an accurate recording as an invaluable aid to scholarship. The same is true for digital representations of medieval manuscripts. They are neither copies, nor forgeries, nor clones threatening to usurp the rightful place of the manuscript they preserve in images. Strictly speaking they are, like the digital sound recording of Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, a digital recording of the manuscript with vision replacing sound. Precisely because they attest the existence of the manuscript so perfectly, they acknowledge their secondary status as record. They do not conceal their status as a dynamic transposition of an historical artifact into a preservation format that also realizes a mandate as important for libraries as preservation: public access. Whereas in the past, only a privileged few could view, read, and study these artifacts, now they are widely available to scholars, students, and those who are merely curious. We would be remiss in failing to point out one of the most novel aspects of large-scale digitization programs of medieval codices: the scholarly resource represented by scores of versions of a work produced over centuries. Curiously, given its potential contribution to our understanding of the role of longitudinal transmission of versions of a work like the Roman de la Rose, those who argue the primacy of the original over the digital artifact don’t factor it into their rationale. The simple fact of reproducing by hand a lengthy and complex work hundreds of times over a span of several centuries raises questions that we can now study in depth. But only because digital images offer a comparative perspective of works whose physical objects are often separated by countries or even continents. One of the major conundrums posed by artisanal versioning over appreciable time spans is the basic, but far from obvious question: how does a work manage to maintain its essential structure and narrative while undergoing constant representing? That is the paradox of manuscript transcription that we’ll examine in the next chapter.

3

No Fool of Time The Paradox of Manuscript Transmission

Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O no; it is an ever-fixed mark, That looks on tempests, and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken. Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle’s compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved. —Shakespeare, Sonnet 116

In the wake of the New Philology, it has become common to view the Middle Ages as a period of mutable texts, or as the French term has it, textes mobiles. Since 1990, I myself have argued the case for textual relativism on more than one occasion. At the same time, I noted that it is simply an alternative to entrenched views asserting the primacy of a fixed text established by exacting critical methods. Such a text derives its authority from the long tradition of textual criticism whose protocols

56 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

have been refined over several centuries of rigorous practice. An important goal of critical editing seeks to purge the work of “errors” introduced during the process of transmission—which might occur over a period of several hundred years or more—when scribes copied works by hand for clients. The point of divergence between those arguing in favor of mutable textuality and those favoring a single, authoritative text lies in the definition of the textual variations of a given work from one manuscript version to another. Whereas text critics construe variance as scribal errors—such as misreading words or skipping lines—or errors of judgment—e.g. changing the “original” text by omitting or interpolating passages or rearranging scene sequences—new medievalists welcome them as examples of creative participation by scribes seeking to make the work pertinent for new readers or patrons. That is to say, that new medievalists believe it’s important to understand vernacular literary works in the way medieval readers would have encountered them: in manuscript versions differing one from another, for whatever reasons. Existing tensions between views of manuscript textuality—fixed text vs. mutable—are far from a modern perspective. Medieval poets also wished their work to survive long-term transmission intact. And it is certainly not the case that manuscript technology espoused mutable textuality as a principle. It was, rather, simply the way things were. But what does that mean: “simply the way things were?” Does it imply a high tolerance for change in the works being copied? Does it suggest that scribes deliberately set out to transform works they were copying to make them their own? And finally, in light of the undoubted fact of textual relativism, how is that vernacular literary works managed to retain their overall structure and shape so consistently? After all, despite an extraordinary record of innovation, invention, and discovery, the Middle Ages are an era that resisted change in and for itself. And yet this same veneration of conservative values underlies a fascinating paradox of medieval culture: its delicate and seemingly contradictory balance between stability, on the one hand, and transformation, on the other. It may be that only an era that saw no contradiction in promulgating an omnipotent, unchanging divinity, which was at the same time a dynamic principle of construction and transformation, could have managed the paradox of what I want to call “mutable stability.” While we can find this principle at work in a number of domains—not least in the myriad art forms known as “Romanesque,” as Meyer Schapiro long since noted—I will limit myself in this chapter to the manuscript transmission of vernacular works of literature. In particular, I want to look longitudinally at transmission practices of manuscripts of the Roman de la Rose to demonstrate several aspects of mimetic transformation of the text that illustrate a basic principle of

No Fool of Time | 57 stability, namely, the ability of an object to adjust to load changes without any reduction in performance.1 What exactly does this mean? How can we speak of a literary work—medieval or otherwise—in terms of “stability,” “load stress,” and “performance dynamic”? Strange as it may seem, the terms make sense once one recognizes manuscript transmission as both a technology and a sophisticated model of communication, in essence, a dynamic system. Dynamic systems are designed to perform functions within proscribed parameters that define its nature. Since each performance results in input stresses of one kind or another, these forces necessarily produce changes as the system adapts to the pressure. That’s only to be expected since no two performance-situations will ever be identical. If systems cannot accommodate load stress during the performance of their functions, they will fail. Consequently well-designed dynamic structures are those flexible enough to accommodate new demands, while still performing essential functions (which also evolve over time).2 We’ve considered the material components of manuscripts in the first two chapters. There, we viewed them as products of a generative process whose activities formed the basis of our inquiry. Inevitably, those discussions focused on the formal, aesthetic, and thematic unity of each codex. What we have not considered to date is the effect that transmission per se—the fact of being one copy among many—has on the manuscript artifact. It’s tempting to think of each manuscript version as one link in a chain stretching from the creation of a vernacular literary work—in, say, the thirteenth century—to the sixteenth (or the date of the last extant copy of a given work). Seductive as the chain analogy may be, however, it’s not the best way to look at the phenomenon of manuscript transmission. Consisting of contiguous, interlocking units, a chain extends across space in an orderly linear progression. While it’s true that vernacular works were transmitted longitudinally throughout the Middle Ages, the process was stochastic and contingent, rather than orderly or symmetrical. As with any luxury good, manuscript book production correlated closely with demand, where demand would have been contingent on a number of social, economic, and cultural variables. This means that manuscript production of any particular vernacular literary text would likely come in irregular clusters. We should not be surprised, then, to discover that each manuscript version of a literary work had a story to tell about itself, a story conveying something about the social, economic, and cultural conditions leading to the creation of that particular manuscript and its choice of text(s). Viewed from this perspective, the manuscript is no less dynamic and complex, but the dynamism and complexity are distributed differently.

58 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

The first difference is asynchronicity between the narrative material and its representation; that is to say, text and language bear marks of originating in a different time and place, while the scribal hand and graphemes betray their contemporaneity. In the case of the Roman de la Rose, for example, whose manuscript versions extend from the thirteenth to the early sixteenth century, we can trace an every-widening gap between text and language and the variety of scribal hands and scripts. The difference may be seen clearly in Figures 3.1 and 3.2; the first shows a folio from a

Figure 3.1.  Roman de la Rose. Courtly Vices painted on the exterior wall of the Jardin de Déduit (Pleasure Garden): “Felonnie,” “Convoitise” [Cupidity], “Avarice,” “Envie.” Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr 378, fol. 13v. Paris, c. 1290.

No Fool of Time | 59 Roman de la Rose manuscript copied in Paris around 1290, while Figure 3.2 shows the same scene in a Paris Rose from the fifteenth century (c. 1440). The second manuscript, Bodleian Library Douce 195, bears witness to the fact that during the thirteenth century, Paris had become the cultural capital of Europe, a center of refinement and production for all kinds of luxury goods, illuminated manuscripts being one of the most conspicuous of such products. It’s worth bearing in mind that this transformation of Paris into a cultural capital and the largest city in Europe took place during tumultuous times: the Hundred Years’ War, and the Black Death.3

Figure 3.2.  Roman de la Rose. Courtly Vices painted on the exterior wall of the Jardin de Déduit (Pleasure Garden): “Convoitise,” “Avarice.” Oxford: Bodleian Library, MS Douce 195, fol. 2v. Paris, 15th century.

60 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

Visual elements constitute yet another source of transmission variables. Miniature paintings, marginal decoration, decorative and historiated initials, rubrics, even marginalia play a major role in the way manuscripts convey knowledge (as we’ll see in the following chapters). Each varies from the others, and are different from one manuscript version of a work to another (even if certain ateliers employ a recognizable style). While we’ve had occasion to comment on visual elements previously, it has not been for the purpose of noting their role in the “transmission narrative.” From this viewpoint, visual representation in manuscripts has a lot to tell us about the time and place of a manuscript’s production. While iconographic details of painting may, like textual elements, evolve slowly, styles of painting tend to reflect contemporary esthetics, and thus offer help in anchoring manuscript production to time and place. Medieval vernacular manuscripts are designed not simply to transmit literary works, but, just as crucially, to enhance the reader’s understanding by incorporating ancillary visual and written information. As Figures 3.3–3.6 illustrate, folios or leaves of vernacular manuscripts are mixed media constructions combining a number of complex and contingent elements, of which the following list offers a representative example. • A physical base (parchment or rag paper) supporting a text layout, usually in two columns written in one of a number of the writing styles developed during the period. Not infrequently—as shown in Figure 3.3—miniature paintings and rubrics (“captions” or short labels added by the scribe in red ink) accompany the text as both illustration and commentary. This is particularly the case on the first page (incipit or “beginning”), as in Figure 3.3, where the picture serves to give the reader a glimpse into what the work is “about.” • Marginal decorations that frame and separate the columns, sometimes connected to the writing by elaborately formed lines emerging from stylized, enlarged initials; • Elaborately crafted, colored historiated or decorated initials often three or four lines deep at the beginning of a text section. Frequently, such pronounced initials accompany miniature paintings depicting portentous events such as the coronation of King Philip VI of France in 1328, portrayed in this fourteenth century manuscript of the Grandes Chroniques de France in the miniature shown in Figure 3.4. The coronation of Philip VI inaugurated the Valois dynasty and, by passing over Edward III of England—who, as a direct Capetian heir through his mother, Isabelle daughter of Philip IV, had a more direct claim to the French throne than

No Fool of Time | 61

• •

•

•

Philip VI—set the scene for the Hundred Years’ War. Copied 50 years after the event, this manuscript is fiercely partisan to the Valois cause, casting Edward III as a perfidious vassal of Philip VI. Smaller initials in alternating colors (often red and blue) meant to signal textual subsections as illustrated by Figure 3.5; Red-lettered rubrics in the text columns to guide the reader by commenting on narrative events, identify speakers in a dialogue; or describe scenes in a miniature as in figs. 3.2, 3.6, 3.9, 3.11, 3.12, 3.13–3.16. Marginal rubrics identify the glosses (commentaries) on the work intercalated with the text by the scribe or—as in this case of Figure 3.6—by the translator, Raoul de Presles. The glosses added to the text of Saint Augustine’s Cité de Dieu by Raoul de Presles offer a fascinating example of the way transmission of a work (in this case by translation) can spark a dialogue between the original author and his work, and the translator who seeks to interpret it for his patron and contemporaries: Charles V and his courtiers. Sometimes marginal or bas-de-page drawings, paintings, or comments are found that may date from the production of the manuscript, or else represent later additions. Figure 3.7, for example, shows a painting in the margin of a troubadour chansonnier (songbook) that offers a visual interpretation of the love “combat” described in the poem in the column next to the scene.

In short, vernacular manuscripts evolved during the thirteenth and especially the fourteenth centuries into complex semiotic artifacts. While the basic function of the manuscript remained constant—that is, the need to represent and transmit written works—the production of individual manuscripts could be affected by such issues as: cost, purpose, changes in artistic style, place of production, public taste, fluctuations in moral tolerance (in the case of works—like the Roman de la Rose—with controversial passages), or the effort to render older works in a contemporary mode, to name but a few such causes. We know, for example, that occasion and patron affected not just the appearance of a codex, but also essential aspects of content. A copy of a work intended for a royal or noble patron typically may boast such refinements as extensive illumination, an elegant scribal hand, well-executed historiated and decorated initials, well-planned rubrication, brilliant marginal decorations, glosses on the text, all executed on the finest parchment, as in the magnificent codex, shown in Figure 3.8, that the poet Christine de Pizan prepared of her work as an offering to Queen Isabeau de Bavière (wife of King Charles VI) in Paris in 1410. Figure 3.9, on the

62 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

Figure 3.3.  Complex manuscript page (folio). Roman de la Rose. Munich: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, MS Cod. Gall. 17, fol. 1. Paris, 1407.

other hand, illustrates a less expensive copy of a popular work—produced, perhaps, for a merchant of modest means—containing far fewer (and less refined) illuminations, with simple decorated initials, no marginal decoration, no vine motifs framing text columns, a less elegant script, minimal rubrication, and the whole often copied with less care on coarser parchment or paper. When one adds to these characteristics the variable of size—codices could be, and often were, voluminous—it’s evident that even the best-laid scheme would

No Fool of Time | 63

Figure 3.4. Coronation of Philip VI of France, the first Valois King, in 1328. Grandes Chroniques de France. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr 2813, fol. 353v. Paris, 1375–80.

Figure 3.5. Page layout with alternating red and blue decorated initials and elongated flourishes. Roman de la Rose. Dartmouth College, MS Rauner Codex 3206, fol. 5v. Paris, c. 1350. Courtesy of Dartmouth College Library.

have difficulty keeping all these independent components within the prescribed system. It’s true that master scribes did plan the layout of a given codex with great care. Execution of the plan, however, introduced another set of variables. Factors such as skill, experience, reliability, attentiveness, distraction, fatigue, failure to complete the project, etc., were but a few of the dynamic variables we find in extant manuscripts. And then, again, the context of production added yet another variable. Manuscripts were not copied in isolation, but in scriptoria where other works were being produced simultaneously. It would be naïve to imagine that environment would not favor a “dynamic of influence” as scribes—consciously or unconsciously—transferred techniques, or even bits of text or image, from one work to another. And yet, in spite of all these pressures, manuscripts did manage to perform as intended precisely because they were able not simply to accommodate change, but to transform it creatively.

64 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

Figure 3.6.  “Exposicion sus ce chapitre.” “Le translateur.” Gloss incorporated into translation of Saint Augustine’s Cité de Dieu [City of God] by the translator, Raoul de Presles, at the behest of Charles V. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr 22912, fol. 269r. Paris, 1375–77.

Figure 3.7.  Marginal painting depicting a visual interpretation of the love “combat” in the poem it illustrates. New York: Pierpont Morgan Library, MS Morgan 819, fol. 211 (detail). Padua, c. 1280.

No Fool of Time | 65

Figure 3.8.  Presentation miniature showing Christine de Pizan offering this copy of her collected works to her patron, Queen Isabeau of Bavière, wife of Charles VI of France. London: British Library, MS. Harley 4431, fol. 3r. Paris, 1406–10.

That’s why it’s important to recognize that load stress on the codex as dynamic system came as much from the function of the structure—what it was designed to do—as from external forces (which were themselves considerable). And the

66 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

Figure 3.9. Example of a basic, relatively inexpensive manuscript of the Roman de la Rose. Baltimore: Walters Art Museum, MS Walters 143, fol. 8r. Paris, c. 1325.

chief source for both was the phenomenon of transmission itself. From the earliest extant vernacular manuscripts down to the end of the Middle Ages, textual transmission performed the seemingly contradictory task of reproducing a work composed in the past whose name and popularity conferred recognition and thus foreknowledge of its plot and characters, while nonetheless rendering the new version compatible with current taste and style so as not to make the narrative seem hopelessly archaic. This meant that for medieval literary works narrative continuity and some form of “load change” were requisite functions of textual transmission. So true is this observation that one might say of it what Don Fabrizio, the

No Fool of Time | 67 protagonist of Giuseppe Lampedusa’s Il Gattopardo, says of Italy: “Things must change so they can remain the same.” As with all dicta, Lampedusa’s is an exaggeration. In this case, however, it’s one that allows us to understand the paradox of medieval narrative forms whose “stability” over time—in some cases over several centuries—depends on what I call the generative—or regenerative—force of transmission. Why “regenerative” if transmission involves reproducing the “same” work from one representation to another? The answer to that question involves recognizing the complex forces at play in the transmission of medieval texts, beginning with concepts like “the same” and “seeing” or “perspective.” After all, in a culture where the technology of transmission depends on copying each text by hand, what the scribe sees, or thinks she or he sees, must be factored into our definition of “sameness” when comparing original and copy. In the event, “sameness,” for the medieval mind had a very different connotation from our modern senses of the term. Indeed, it even involves a different process of perception and imagination. Whereas in our age of mechanical and digital reproduction, we are used to standards of “exactness” for things we recognize as identical, medieval people had neither the means nor the expectation to make “same” and “exact imitation” synonymous. Indeed, one may even question the existence at that time of such a concept as “exact imitation,” at least as we understand it. The reason may be found in texts that involved “seeing,” which was a never failing topic of interest and curiosity not only in lyric, epic, romance and drama, but also in theories of vision. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries witnessed a growing and intense exploration of vision theory with major treatises by Ibn al Haytham or Alhazen, Robert Grosseteste, Roger Bacon, and Witelo.4 Their expositions reflected profoundly on the relationship between perceiver and perceived, treating such fundamental topics as the mechanics of vision, geometric perspectivism, and other aspects of the interaction between the knowing subject and the object known. No thirteenth-century poem exploited new theories of vision and perception more innovatively than did Le Roman de la Rose in its two unequal sections: Guillaume de Lorris’s modest 4,000+ line beginning (c. 1235 C.  E.) and Jean de Meun’s exuberant and baggy continuation of some 18,000 lines (c. 1280–85 C. E.). Vision and truth are major themes in the Rose, as well as key factors differentiating Guillaume de Lorris from his more skeptical—not to say cynical— successor. From the beginning of the poem, Guillaume explores the “sameness” of different forms of representation. His dream vision recounts adventures that he assures us are so similar to what he experienced in real life as to be virtually

68 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

identical. He confidently equates seeing and believing in the preface to his poem, which famously opens with the lines (see Fig. 3.10): Maintes gens dient que en songes N’a se fables non et mençonges; Mes l’em puet tel songe songier Que ne sont mie mençongier … 5 (People say that dreams are nothing but lies and stories; but it’s possible to dream dreams that are not at all mendacious …)

He continues by saying that at twenty years of age he dreamed a story every detail of which subsequently befell him in “real life.”

Figure 3.10.  Beginning (incipit) of the Roman de la Rose: “Maintes gens dient que en songes …” [Many people say that dreams are …]. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr 25526, fol. 1r. Paris, 14th c.

No Fool of Time | 69 Si vi .i. songe en mon dormant Qui molt fu biauz et molt me plot; Or en ce songe onc riens n’ot Qui trestout avenu ne soit. Si cum li songes devisoit. Si veil ce songe rimaier Por voz cuers plus fere esgaier. Amors le me prie et comande Que se nus ne nule demande [C]omment je veil que cist rommans Soit apelez, que je commans, Ce est le romans de la rose Ou l’art d’amors est toute enclose. La [materere] est bonne et neuve, Et doinst dex qu’en gré le recueve celle por cui je l’aÿ empris: C’est celle qui [tant] a de pris par tant est digne d’estre amée Qu’elle doit estre rose clamée.6 (Then I saw a dream while sleeping that was very beautiful and pleased me greatly; for there was nothing in the dream that did not come to pass exactly as the dream portrayed it. So now I’d like to turn dream to poem to gladden your hearts. Love begs and commands that if man or woman asks how I want this poem, that I’m starting, to be called, it’s the Romance of the Rose where the art of love is all enclosed. The subject matter’s good and new, and God grant that she for whom I’ve begun it will welcome it: for she has such great worth, and is so worthy of love, that she must be called “Rose.”)

But Guillaume pushes this theme still further to motivate the primal scene of the whole poem. For the work to become, as he asserts, Li romans de la Rose/Ou l’art d’Amor est toute enclose (“The Romance of the Rose/where the art of Love is all enclosed”), Guillaume must demonstrate love as first and foremost an image process and imaginative experience whereby the lover’s gaze appropriates the beloved-as-perception and then projects it onto his psyche so as to alter the way he perceives himself and the world. Classical and medieval theories of the soul viewed the imagination as the psyche’s “image processing” faculty.7 They also recognized perception as a destabilizing agent provoking change in the viewer who performs perception by assuming aspects of the viewed object.8 So when Guillaume speaks of “enclosing the art of love,” he uses the expression both literally and figuratively. Literally, to describe “enclosing” the image of the beloved in the lover’s psyche, and figuratively to express the reprocessing of this perception into the “Rose”: the name given to

70 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

the beloved after her Narcissus-inspired metamorphosis into a projection of the lover’s libido.9 In short, for Guillaume the narrative involves not simply the dream visionas-frame, but also the mechanics of “seeing as loving”—the erotic equivalent of seeing as believing.10 The mechanics involve both physical and psychic perception leading to affective identification between perceiver, perception, and perceived object. Love for Guillaume is fate, that is, a transformation of self from at least the appearance of freedom to a being who willingly exchanges independent agency for a life governed by strict rules of conduct decreed by Amour (the god of love). In this process, the eyes—what an agent looks at and how he controls his vision—are central to Guillaume’s thesis of the self-as-agent of its own fate—a view Jean de Meun shares with his predecessor (though for very different reasons). On Guillaume’s account, the eyes are accomplices guiding the Lover’s psyche into the snare of erotic vision. In the famous scene at the mythic Fountain of Narcissus when the Lover, peering into the pool, sees not himself on the surface, but the image of the beloved refracted by deus pierres de cristal (two crystals, Poirion l. 1538) deep down at the bottom, the limpid pool and twin crystals become the head and eyes of the lover when viewed from inside the skull. The deus pierres de cristal are not simple lenses. They are instead prisms or mirrors that bend and distort as they refract, in the manner described by thirteenth-century optical treatises. It is here that Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun diverge in their understanding of the transparency of perception. But while they come to different conclusions, it’s interesting to note that le regard (the gaze) and the mirror as an instrument of discrete and universal imaging figure prominently in each of their poems.11 We’ll come to Jean’s views in a moment. Here, let’s stop to appreciate the way Guillaume weaves his poem not around the fountain’s natural beauty à la Ovid, but rather around its power as a reflecting basin, a place of brilliant sunlight, of mirrored surfaces, of refracting crystals. In short a scene whose surface enchants, but whose depths ensnare. Quant li solelz qui tout agueite Ses raiz sus la fontaine geite, et la couleur aval descent, Lors prirent colors plus de.c. li cristal contre le soleil Devient ynde, jaune, vermeil. Si ot le cristal merveilleus, Ytel force que tout li lieus, Arbres et flors et la verdure

No Fool of Time | 71 Apert a cil qui y met cure. Et por fere la chose entendre, .I. exemple vos veil aprendre: Ausi con li miroër monstre Les choses qui sont a l’encontre Les voit en eulz sanz couverture Et la couleur et la figure, Trestout ausi vouz di ce voir Que li cristaulx sanz decevoir Tout l’estre del vergier accusent A ceuz qui dedenz l’eve musent. Car touz jors quelque part qu’il soit, L’une moitié du vergier voit; Et s’il se torne maintenant, Si puet voir le remenant; S’i n’i a si petite chose, Tant reposte ne tant enclose, Dont demonstrance ne soit fete Con s’ele ert el cristal pourtrete. C’est le miroër perilleuz, Ou Narcisus, li orgueilleuz, Mira sa face et ses yex vers, Dont il jut mors toz envers. Qui en ce miroër se mire Ne puet avoir garant ne mire Que tel chose a ses iex ne voie Qui d’amer le metra en voie. Maint vaillant home a mis a glaive Cil miroër car li plus sage Y sont molt pris et aguetiez.12 (When the sun, which spies all, throws its rays on the fountain, and the colors splay into more than a hundred hues, the crystal, reflecting the sun, becomes indigo, yellow, vermillion. The marvelous crystal has such power that all parts of the garden—trees, flowers, and greenery—may be seen by anyone who takes pains. But to make this better understood, I’ll give you an example: you know how a mirror reveals anything in front of it—colors, form, everything—well, in the same way the crystals (and I tell you this in truth) accurately reflect every being in the garden to those who gaze at the water. For always, no matter where one may be, he can see one half the garden; then when he turns now, he’ll see the rest. There isn’t the smallest thing—no matter how hidden away or enclosed—that won’t be revealed once it’s portrayed in the crystal. This is the perilous mirror, in which proud Narcissus gazed at his countenance and his blue-grey eyes, until he lay dead. Whoever looks at himself in this mirror must abandon hope of a cure, for whatever his eyes perceive, he will be on the way to loving. This mirror has killed many a valiant man, for even the wisest, [the bravest, the most confident] are soon ambushed and captured.)

72 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

By showing the peril of mediated sight, Guillaume transforms the mythic fontaine de Narcissus into the real miroërs perilleus for the lover … though not for the reader. While we tend to focus on the poet’s genius, it’s also worth understanding how artists infused their paintings with the textual nuances of erotic vision (Figs. 3.11–3.12). We read in the except how Guillaume plays upon visual reflexivity—mira sa face et ses yex vers … qui en cest miroër se mire—but also the fact that the viewer will be changed (even mortally wounded) by what he sees. An early fifteenth-century Rose manuscript now in Munich (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cod. Gall. 17), Figure 3.11, captures the ambivalence of erotic reflexity when it portrays the dual identity of the Lover-as-Narcissus gazing into a pool on whose surface we decry his mirror image.

Figure 3.11.  The Lover at the Pool of Narcissus. Roman de la Rose. Munich: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, MS. Cod. Gall. 17, fol. 10v. Paris, c. 1407.

No Fool of Time | 73 Above and beside the fountain, we see the rosebush with its rosebud whose reflection the lover espies in the pool only to be ensnared by the sight. The face in the pool of the Munich Rose, then represents a conflation of both the Narcissus visage and Rose image. The rubric identifying the image reads: “De Narcissus qui vit son ombre en la fontainne” (“Concerning Narcissus who saw his reflection in the pool”). A much earlier view of the same scene, found in BnF MS. fr. 1559, Figure 3.12, was painted by Thomas Mauberge around 1290 C. E. Instead of conflating Narcissus and the lover, Mauberge’s picture portrays the latter leaning over the fountain whose surface, suggested by wavy lines, seems too turbulent either to reflect anything, or to permit looking below it, as the text specifies. We do see a stylized bush just behind and above the lover, where it could be reflected by the “crystals.” One must look to the rubric, immediately below the miniature, to find the meaning of the scene, since the painting includes only the most obvious elements: Ci devise l’aucteur comment il remira tant en la fontainne qu’il vit un rosier charchié de roses (“Here the author shows how he gazed so intently into the pool that he saw a rosebush covered with roses”).

Figure 3.12.  The Lover at the Pool of Narcissus. Roman de la Rose. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr 1559, fol. 14v. Paris, 1280–1300.

74 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

Guillaume’s dramatic evocation of the Narcissistic fate awaiting unwary viewers of this mirror may well distract the reader from noting the abrupt shift in mode from the lines just above where the mirror appears as a useful—even beneficent—visual instrument. Now one finds a more ambiguous quality to the fountain’s specular revelations. The picturesque landscape recedes to the background as the mirror probes the most secret recesses of the garden and its inhabitants … or at least those whom the narrative will henceforth pursue. Clearly the mirror is the same in both instances—Guillaume’s prismatic “crystals” embedded in limpid water. Where difference enters the picture, as it were, is in the kind of contemplation in question: mirer versus se mirer, which we can characterize as transitive versus intransitive looking.13 Using a mirror to see the natural world spread out before one’s eyes may inform the viewer and even offer aesthetic pleasure, but it poses no danger. In the event, the mirror serves simply as an instrument to contemplate (muser) the world around one. That being the case, why does Guillaume insist so forcefully on the mirror’s ability to probe—sans decevoir—everything before it? Why does it matter if a scene we contemplate for our own amusement is faithfully reproduced? Aside from the fact that Guillaume maintains that everything in his dream vision will turn out to be “true,” he emphasizes the verisimilitude of specular representation as a critical component of his moral philosophy. It matters very much whether the mirror reflects without deception (sans decevoir) because li cristaus determine two kinds of erotic love: one benevolent—or at least morally defensible—the other deadly. When li cristaus are the medium of the transitive gaze that cathects affectively with another being, the narrative lies within the bounds of fin’amors (courtly love). This is the mirror-fountain in which Cupido, le filz Venus, Sema là d’amors la grainne, Qui toute a teinte la fontaine … (“Cupid, the son of Venus,/sewed the seeds of Love,/which color the fountain,” BnF fr 25526, fol. 13c, 9–11). And so: Por la grainne qui fut semée Fust ceste fontainne clamée La Fontainne d’Amors par droit, Dont plusors ont en maint endroit Parlé en romanz et en livre. (BnF fr. 25526, fol. 13c, 16–20) (For the seed that was sewn, this fountain was aptly named the Fountain of Love, of which many poets have written in books and romances.)

In this scenario, Guillaume casts the eyes-qua-mirror as an unwitting instrument of fate, linking lover and beloved in a unitary vision. Seeing is fate in this

No Fool of Time | 75 monovisual erotic world, because one becomes what one perceives. Psychic image processing shapes a narrative “romance” purporting to show how duality dissolves into unity: “two hearts become one,” “two selves merge into one,” and so on.14 The logic that motivates this story springs from the supposition that transitive erotic perception and other-directed aesthetic appreciation can overcome the vision of the world as intransitive, impersonal, and exclusionary—Ovid’s lesson in the Narcissus myth.15 But what about the other face of the mirror, the erotic gaze that turns deadly? Following Guillaume’s lead, we can call this the “Narcissus principle,” which he evokes when he retells Ovid’s story of Narcissus (Poirion, ll. 1425–1522). Guillaume’s elaborate revision of his model embeds the principle of specular representation in a strongly ambivalent semiotic force field. Lest the reader miss the point of the Narcissus principle, he reformulates it in an exemplary double couplet (Poirion, ll. 1571–74) quoted above: “C’est li miroërs perilleus,/Ou Narcissus li orguilleus/Mira sa face et ses yex vers,/Dont il jut puis mors touz envers” (This is the perilous mirror, in which proud Narcissus gazed at his countenance and his bluegrey eyes, until he fell dead.) The Narcissus principle occurs when li cristaus are used reflexively (se mirer) as a mirror turned back on oneself in an intransitive, deadly gaze. Although the Ovidian reference seems sufficient to convey its negative valence, Guillaume renders it doubly lethal by melding the Christian tradition of the seven deadly sins with the classical model. In Christian iconography, the mirror symbolizes the sin of luxuria “luxury,” whose Latin connotations include “wantonness,” “extravagant living,” “excess,” “dissipation,” and “lust”—all states or desires where vision was believed to figure prominently. In Christian iconography the mirror signifies luxury’s penchant for self-contemplation and extravagant toilette. Émile Mâle long ago pointed out the figure of Luxury in the rose window at Notre-Dame de Paris: a voluptuous woman holding a mirror while primping.16 Guillaume himself invokes the type with a fifty-line virtuoso description of the svelte and comely Oiseuse (“Indolence”), the gatekeeper of the Garden of Pleasure (le Jardin de Déduit, Poirion, ll. 525–574). When the Lover finally discovers the discrete gate into the garden, Oiseuse greets him holding a mirror in one hand, as shown in Figures 3.13 and 3.14, the first in an early fourteenth-century manuscript, the second in a fifteenth-century version, both held now at the Bodleian Library in Oxford:17 .I. chapel de roses tout froiz Ot dessus le chapel d’orfroiz.

76 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

En sa main tint.i. miroër; Si ot d’un riche trechoër Son chief trechié molt richement. (BnF fr. 25526, fol. 5v, 2–6) (A circlet of roses fresh with dew she wore above a gold-worked circlet. In her hand she held a mirror; she’d woven a rich ribbon elegantly into her hair.)

The long encomium to Oiseuse as a paragon of courtly beauty and elegance signals a major shift from the world outside the Garden where the Lover has heretofore been wandering, and the superheated atmosphere within. The paean to Oiseuse is the first visual test Guillaume sets for the Lover in the Garden to see whether he has the ability to apprehend the underlying reality of the world he has just entered. While the Lover takes Oiseuse at face value for an attractive attendant, the reader recognizes the disjunction between appearance and reality, literal and figurative meaning. More exactly, the reader asks why the poet bothers to suspend the narrative just when the Lover finally gets into the Garden in order to indulge in a virtuoso lyric display? After all, Oiseuse seems to be only a minor character, and one that we will not see again. And why should some thirty-two lines (out of fifty) of this portrait be devoted to a minute description of the woman’s face, hair, and neck, while the remaining eighteen lines describe her rich raiment and elegant toilette? It can hardly be the case that Guillaume, having just devoted nearly three hundred fifty lines to personifying courtly vices whose portraits appear on the exterior wall of the Garden, now seeks to apply the same treatment to the “real” personages the Lover encounters inside. As it happens, the heightened imagery of Guillaume’s portrait of Oiseuse in fact makes a break with the previous section. It’s in keeping with his technique of using visually descriptive passages to make a transition from one section of his poem to another, a technique that many of the manuscripts emphasize either by means of miniatures (cf. Figs. 3.13–3.14), or by large decorated or historiated initials. The technique is a logical one for a dream vision. We recognize this transition after reading barely a few lines of the seductive poetry Guillaume deploys for Oiseuse’s portrait. The lingering gaze the lyric bestows on her, the caress of the poetic cadences bearing softly mellifluous similes, all these and more subtly perform the absorptive gaze of the mirror turned toward self-contemplation. Rhetorically, we recognize ekphrasis—poetry’s admiring gaze watching itself outdo painting—as a verbal analogy to Luxury’s intransitive mirror gaze. But Guillaume offers less subtle clues to Oiseuse’s heritage. Her lyric portrait incorporates a number of iconographic attributes traditionally associated with Luxury.

No Fool of Time | 77

Figure 3.13. Oiseuse (the doorkeeper), holding a mirror, admits the Lover into the Jardin de Déduit. Roman de la Rose. Oxford: Bodleian Library, MS. Selden Supra 57, fol. 5v. Paris, 14th c.

Figure 3.14. Oiseuse, holding a mirror, admits the Lover into the Jardin de Déduit. Roman de la Rose. Oxford: Bodleian Library, MS. Douce 195, fol. 5r. Paris, later 15th c.

The most obvious sign, of course, is her name: “Oiseuse,” “Indolence,” which Guillaume glosses by saying “It was evident from her appearance that she had little to do: once she had combed her hair, groomed and dressed herself, her tasks for the day were done” (Poirion, ll. 566–570). Later, she introduces herself to the

78 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

Lover: “My friends, she said, call me Oiseuse. I am a rich and powerful woman, and have time for everything, because I think about nothing except to play and amuse myself, and to comb and adorn my hair” (ll. 582–588). We have already learned that she wears a gold circlet more beautiful than any maiden ever wore, and over that a second circlet of fresh roses (ll. 551–556). Oiseuse has the distinction of being the first allegorical personification whom we meet in the Rose. Since all the characters in the poem are personifications of positive and negative human attributes, emotions, or impulses—Delight, Love, Beauty, Riches, Reason, Danger, Jealousy, and so on—it’s significant that the first “live” figure should be a personification whose attributes, minutely detailed by Guillaume, associate her with one of the Seven Deadly Sins: Luxury. We begin to see why Guillaume’s portrait emphasizes the seductiveness of Oiseuse qua image, a characteristic originally attributed to Luxuria by the Roman poet Aurelius Prudentius Clemens (348–c. 410 C. E.). Born in Northern Spain, Prudentius is thought to be the first Christian poet to make extensive use of allegorical personification in his poem, Pyschomachia or Battle for the Soul. In his allegorical combat between the cardinal Virtues and Vices for the possession of the human soul, Prudentius paints an unforgettable portrait of Luxuria as a paladin in the host of the Vices who nearly succeeds in vanquishing the soldiers of Virtue not by armed combat but by overwhelming them sensually, beginning with their sight. Luxuria wheels into battle in a splendid chariot “gleaming with precious gems of all colours, its axle of solid gold, wheels silver-spoked with platinum rims, and golden reins guiding the horses.”18 In lieu of arrows or javelins, “she showers the enemy lasciviously with violets, rose petals, yellow garlands of bright lilies, red floral wreaths and baskets of flowers.” Overwhelmed by this vision of loveliness, by the sweet-smelling floral cascade, by the alluring breath she wafts over them, the combatants desire only to yield to the hedonistic scenario she sets before them. This vision contrasts starkly with the preceding lines, which portray Luxuria’s night of debauchery and drunkenness. As trumpets sound the call to battle, we see Luxuria arise from her couch and stagger unsteadily through the debris of the night’s revels to answer the call. This is, of course, the image of Luxuria that Prudentius means for the reader to superimpose on the subsequent scene when she dazzles the Virtues with her extravagant equipage. We are invited to register—and deplore!— the misprision of the soldiers blinded to reality by Luxuria’s theatricalized image. Prudentius relies for her unmasking on contemporary discussions of the nature of the sins Luxuria represents. Initially denoted in Greek by the term porneia, then in Latin by fornicatio, luxuria had replaced the first two by the end

No Fool of Time | 79 of the fourth century, undoubtedly because it referenced a broader category of sins of the flesh and of perception.19 But if they ceased to be explicit designators for this sin, porneia and fornicatio remained very much a part of its semantic field. More to our point, however, Luxuria came to signify the erotic gaze that turns deadly by initiating a duplicitous double vision. If one had to put a name to Prudentius’s melodramatic personification of the dual perspective Luxuria exemplifies, we might call it “the parallax principle of perception.” This means that medieval concepts of narrative in the service of moral philosophy—the purpose for which allegorical personification was created—focus parallel perspectives on the same object or image. Parallel sight lines, each originating at a different location, thus converge on the object of focus from separate narrative vantage points. Each view thus yields different facets of “the same” object. Luxuria is the same figure for Prudentius as for the Virtues, but each sees something very different. Besotted by Luxuria’s sensual onslaught, they contemplate her intransitively, whereas the poet sees her—quite literally—on the bias, obliquely. Unwittingly, the bemused Virtues adopt the Narcissus gaze that binds the viewer to the surface, the reflecting plane that returns what the viewer’s libidinal desire projects: a reflection of the subject’s own phantasms. An obvious avatar of Prudentius’s Psychomachia, the Roman de la Rose incorporates the parallax principle of perception repeatedly. Aside from Guillaume de Lorris’s and Jean de Meun’s very different view of the dream vision they construct, we have the example of divergent understandings of love—the rationale of the poem—as expressed by a whole range of characters including: Amor, Vénus, Raison, Le Jaloux, La Vieille, Nature, Génius, Pygmalion, or the Lover himself at various points. But conflicting views are not limited to love. In both parts of the poem, other concepts or behaviors spark vigorous debate among the characters. This parallax factor is built into the very structure of the work from its opening lines where we learn that the principal actor (l’Amant) is “the same” person as the poet; only the reader recognizes that this cannot be quite as transparent as it appears, since the poet, we learn, is five years older than the Lover, and they are engaged in very different activities: the Lover in dreaming and living an amorous adventure in a locus amoenus, and the poet in making the poem and reflecting on the difference in perspective between his naïve younger self and his mature poet-persona. Jean de Meun complicates this scenario still further by adding yet a third perspective, which he conceals for almost six thousand lines before revealing the death of Guillaume de Lorris after having completed only about 4,200 lines of a poem that ultimately runs to some 22,000 verses.

80 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

In picking up the pen Guillaume had dropped, as it were, Jean maintains Guillaume’s fictional setting. This means following the Lover’s avid pursuit of the Rose whose form reflected in the moroër perilleus had bewitched him—according to Raison—as fatally as Luxuria had ensnared Prudentius’s Virtues. Clearly, however, Jean’s Lover and Guillaume’s Lover must be very different. For one thing, once he reveals the place where Guillaume’s poem ends and his begins, Jean can no longer maintain the fiction that the Lover is his younger self. Nor does he wish to do so. From the time Jean begins his continuation at the point where l’Amant and Raison engage a dialectical analysis of eros versus agape, the Lover ceases to be an independent agent to become a spokesman for a naïvely literal worldview that other characters debate—frequently with outré theses. By casting his Lover as an interlocutor in a philosophical dialogue (à la Plato), Jean transforms the Rose into a scholastic disputatio. Throughout the vigorous dialectical exchanges, he maintains at least a semblance of the allegorical courtly romance. Indeed, he reasserts its mode forcefully even as he explodes Guillaume’s view of the genre in the final scene—which can only seem shocking to those who have not grasped the implications of his dialectic and its illustrations. Seeing how Guillaume and Jean figure as readers of their own poem(s), and how they exploit the parallax principle, we can recognize another component of generative transformation: participation. The Rose illustrates how the dynamic divergences between viewing subject and perceived object affect reading. By a logical extension, we should not be surprised that it affected the transmission of literary texts as well. We can better understand the philosophical implications of participation, however—and for the Middle Ages, they were crucial—if we ask why the interaction between perceiver and perceived was so critical. The answer reflects a major difference between theories of perception in the ancient and medieval worlds. For the medieval period, perception implicates the principle of resemblance, and that, in turn, implicates philosophical anthropology. Augustine illustrates the concept in Book 6 of Confessions where he recounts how he had been “particularly struck with one of the themes of Ambrose’s preaching in Milan in the year 386, the theme of man’s being made in the image of God.”20 It was Ambrose, he tells us, who first made him understand what— as a Manichee—he had found incomprehensible. Namely, how man could be made after the image of God without implying an anthropomorphic concept of the deity?21 Whereas Ambrose spoke of “man’s being to God’s image and likeness, without distinguishing the two concepts of image and likeness,”22 Augustine’s more

No Fool of Time | 81 analytical mind sought to differentiate and define these key terms. He did so by casting “image” as the model and “likeness” as its dynamic agent. In Robert Markus’s classic summation, Augustine reasons as follows: The concept of image includes the idea of likeness, for nothing can be said to be an image of something else unless it is in some way like it. Something may, however, be like something else without being its image—as two eggs are like each other, but are not one the image of the other; hence the idea of likeness does not include that of image. The special feature which distinguishes an image-likeness from any other likeness is that an image is somehow dependent on an original which it expresses … Examples of likeness which are also images are the likeness of a child to its parents, or of a painting or mirror-image to its original. In all these cases the image is in some way ‘dependent’ on the original which it also resembles.23

Having established the logical hierarchy correlating these terms, Augustine then casts them as performative agents in a ritual for human reform and renewal based on Genesis 1:26–27. A brief look at the actual text of these two verses shows that as an acute reader of Scripture, he perceived the potential metaphysical work that the key terms of the passage, imago and similitudo, could enhance the metaphysical dimension of his spiritual program. Gen. 1:26 et ait faciamus hominem ad imaginem et similitudinem nostram et praesit piscibus maris et volatilibus caeli et bestiis universaeque terrae omnique reptili quod movetur in terra And he said: Let us make man to our image and likeness: and let him have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and the beasts, and the whole earth, and every creeping creature that moveth upon the earth. 1:27 et creavit Deus hominem ad imaginem suam ad imaginem Dei creavit illum masculum et feminam creavit eos And God created man to his own image: to the image of God he created him: male and female he created them.

If Genesis 1:26 establishes the authority of imago and similitudo as the principle of resemblance linking humans to God—with the added concept of authority over lesser beings that divine resemblance confers—the next verse offers a reading that is even more interesting from the standpoint of our inquiry. To begin with, it’s a rhetorically complex, asymmetrical chiasmus ab:b(a) that calls attention to the repetition of the verb creavit … creavit … creavit, always with the

82 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

same subject, God, but with three different predicates each referring to a different attribute of the created human being: (1) the collective hominem; (2) the deictic accusative singular illum; (3) the sexually-differentiated masculum et feminam creavit eos. One could hardly imagine constructing a more succinct statement of the immutability of God-as-maker opposed to the contingency of his human creations. While God figures as the unitary creative force, humans have varying references in accord with their mutable and various states. This is an excellent example of what I will later term “differential imitation,” that is, the iteration of an object with nuanced variation. In other words, it’s no accident that we find three different references to humans in this poetic verse. The references are not innocuous synonyms. Just as the verse unfolds in time, so the different designations—hominem, illum, masculum et feminam—suggest an inherent category instability that Augustine will point to as signaling the human potential for change. And not just a potential for change, but a full-blown philosophical anthropology predicated on the dynamic of imago and similitudo as played out in a Bildungsparadigma for which Augustine’s own spiritual itinerary, as recounted in Confessions, serves as model. On his understanding of these verses, Augustine derives the concepts of absolute likeness and absolute unlikeness as defining the twin poles of existence.24 He identifies absolute likeness with Scripture, that is, with God’s Word, and absolute unlikeness with formless matter, that is, what falls outside of—or fails to make itself into the image of—Holy writ. “And so man, far from God in a place of unlikeness, is required to return to himself and to likeness with God.”25 That this scale exists as a measure of the degree of proximity or distance from God’s Word may be seen from Book Seven, chapter 12 of De Trinitate. Indeed, he explicitly states that the image of the Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit in the Trinity assist humans to “subsist as the image of God.” He continues: But because that image of God was not made altogether equal to Him, as being not born of Him, but created by Him; in order to signify this, he is in such a way the image as that he is “after the image,” that is, he is not made equal by parity, but approaches to Him by a sort of likeness. For approach to God is not by intervals of place, but by likeness, and withdrawal from him is by unlikeness.26

While the idea of degrees of distance or proximity imply spatial reference, that is not the case here. In the first place, it is impossible to predicate spatial reference of God. That is why something like the parallax principle cannot function when God is the object of contemplation; for not only do spatial coordinates have no meaning, but also the vantage point makes no difference since contemplation of

No Fool of Time | 83 the divine image is an inner meditation. As such, it is the quality of the contemplation that matters. When Augustine speaks of degrees of likeness and unlikeness in divine contemplation, he conceives of something akin to what we discussed above as the “transitive” and “intransitive” gaze. When a human “approaches God by likeness” this betokens a receptive and open mind wholly focused on a point beyond self. It is then that one may experience that brief union with the “sort of likeness” known as theosis or epiphany. The enlightenment accompanying that epiphany is what Augustine calls “being transformed by the renewing of your mind.” To become a new man is to approach the likeness of God, that is to say, “to be renewed to the knowledge of God, after the image of Him that created him.”27 Of particular importance for our ultimate goal here is the transformative or dynamic role of likeness. As we’ve seen above, Augustine conceives a dialectical relationship between “image” and “likeness.” Image is a model, likeness a dynamic modeling of the image. As early as 388 C. E., Gerhard Ladner tells us, in De quantitate animae, Augustine developed the concept of reform, conceived in terms of a revision of one’s self, which he couches in terms of “putting off the old man and putting on the new.”28 No matter how great the revision needed by an individual to make his likeness approximate the model image, one should never imagine that the image of God is ever lost entirely. “The image is deformed and in need of reformation, not lost; image and likeness are there at the beginning—both at man’s primordial beginning in his paradisial integrity, and at his own individual beginning disfigured by sin—and at the end.”29 While Augustine was primarily concerned with the use of Scripture to develop a love of the mind as a key to renewing the self, later Fathers opened this dialectic to include aesthetic contemplation generally. This was logically consistent with Augustine’s paradigm since among the other attributes of the divine image was beauty, a material manifestation of the good. Furthermore, the concept of beauty as pleasing proportionality came to be a commonplace expressing the metaphysical correlation—“likeness” again—linking humans to the universe at large. The idea had scriptural authority from the Book of Wisdom, Chapter 11, verse 21, where God is said to have “ordered all things in measure, and number, and weight” [… sed omnia mensura et numero et pondere disposuisti]. While we may be able to judge proportion at a glance, abstract measures like weight, number, and measure require an engagement of the intellect with the object—scrutiny and judgment, in short forms of contemplation. For that matter, it surely did not escape the attention of the Fathers that the concept of a divinely

84 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

created order based on the principles of measure, number, and weight, does not occur just anywhere in the Bible, but specifically in the Book of the Wisdom of Solomon, which begins by affirming that wisdom can never inhabit a soul given to unlikeness, but can only inhabit a soul that strives for likeness: For perverse thoughts separate from God: and his power, when it is tried, reproveth the unwise: For wisdom will not enter into a malicious soul, nor dwell in a body subject to sins.30

Church Fathers sought to make full use of scriptural passages that authorized the moral value of aesthetic contemplation by the subject who engaged it. As Umberto Eco puts it: “Is beauty something ontologically self-subsistent, which gives pleasure when it is apprehended? Or, is it rather the case that a thing appears beautiful only when someone apprehends it in such a way as to experience a certain type of pleasure?”31 At the same time, they realized the value of narrowing the gap between the spiritual and the material worlds by finding ways to equate the two. By encouraging Christians to measure the world in terms of the beauty and proportion of Scripture, humans could overlay on their mundane existence a transcendent vision that was both spiritually and aesthetically pleasing. It follows logically that artistic works should “ordain a range of effects for the sake of human perfection, and that only this encounter of a work with the perception of it could give birth to beauty.”32 This principle reveals an awareness that art had social as well as religious utility which could be formulated in rules that “made possible the birth of an aesthetico-philosophical consciousness” that reconciled two strong currents of medieval sensibility: the spiritual and the artistic.33 Knowledge was common to both kinds of sensibility, and—as Augustine insists—it requires the collaboration of the senses and the psyche. In practice, sight and hearing were the senses the Fathers considered most conducive to intellectual activity. In Augustine’s hierarchy of the senses, sight and hearing were both important, but sight, because of its association with reading and inner vision (“the eye of the mind”), was paramount. As the conversion scene in Confessions shows, divine admonitory hearing—“et ecce audio vocem … quasi pueri an puella, nescio: tolle lege, tolle lege”—commands attention, but sight, the act of reading, directs understanding.34 Naturally, as soon as one corporeal sense had been granted the status of maxime cognoscitivus, “fully involved with knowledge,”35 then the other cognitive sense, hearing, could be considered. But it took the genius of Boethius to elevate hearing, and with it the concept of rhythm, onto the same footing as sight.

No Fool of Time | 85 Boethius did so by showing that music, based as it is on rhythm, embodied the very notion of proportion that Wisdom 11:21 claimed as the divine principle of world order. “Consonance,” he writes, … which regulates all musical modulations, cannot exist without sound. But consonance is not simply an objective datum, for it has to do with a correspondence between sound and perception. Consonance is a mixture of high and low sounds striking the ear sweetly and uniformly. Both the body and the soul are subject to the same laws that govern the universe, and these are musical laws. The human soul modulates its feelings in the manner of the musical modes …36

While the ear captures and resonates to musical harmony, “only the intellect is able to discriminate and appreciate the notes and chords.”37 “Only the intellect is able to discriminate and appreciate …” Let this stand as a call to order; or at least as a reminder of my purpose, which is to explore the dialectics of “reform and revision”—to use Augustine’s terms—in the transmission of vernacular literary texts. This is a matter that scholars have usually treated empirically as a question of “reproduction,” or copying, rather than as representation. As we know, the process involves triage of the extant manuscripts in order to postulate a “best text”—by which is understood something approximating the work as the author wrote it. The best manuscript version serves as the basis for an authoritative critical edition. Divergences from the text of the critical edition are perceived as variants due to scribal error or whimsy. Longer passages not found in the master text acquire the status of “interpolation,” a term, like variant, that designates a supplement. We know this story, and have all reacted to it in one form or another. Most recently, of course, many of us have argued against the concept of a fixed or master text whose coherence has been marred by variation due to incompetent scribes. Without renouncing that concept, I would like to suggest a slightly different scenario that would enable us to situate the whole question of manuscript transmission within the history of the Patristic development of perception and aesthetic appreciation that I have been retelling here. For that history is a lesson in the sensory and intellectual engagement of reader or listener with an external object. Reading and hearing certain kinds of works do not simply impress the mind; they can change the whole being. Augustine speaks of reform or renewal—“putting on the new man”—while Boethius tells how the psyche appreciates musical modes by imitating its harmonies. Hence the famous story he tells of the drunken youth

86 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

from Taormina whose fury ceased when the musicians in the room changed their playing from the Phrygian to the Hypophrygian mode.38 The lesson impressed on the literate was that reading mattered. It mattered because it was not something external, something that happened “out there”, beyond the self … precisely the lesson Augustine teaches in the conversion scene in Confessions VIII, 28–29. On the contrary, reading or listening involved engagement with and participation in a text. As the senses assimilated the words, and as the intellect processed the sensual data, two things happened. First, the narrative became part of the reader’s experience thereby revising or reforming his view of the world to bend it into conformity with that expressed by the work. Secondly, the reader’s own worldview functioned as a force field that nuanced and reformatted, as it were, the image of the work taking shape in the mind. In short, the reader’s understanding of the work was bimodal, consisting of values and insights undeniably derived from the work, but synthesized with the reader’s preexisting beliefs and understanding which undergo modification themselves in the process. Normally, of course, these processes would not be visible. We can trace accounts of them only when they become a theme of personal meditations such as Augustine’s Confessiones, Boethius’s Consolatio Philosophiae, Abelard’s Historia Calamitatum, treatises of various sorts, and of course literary works. I would like to suggest, however, that another source of evidence for such dynamic reading practices lies at hand, although not recognized as such. That evidence may be found in the transmission of manuscripts of the Roman de la Rose, the most popular vernacular French text of the Middle Ages. But what exactly do we mean by transmission? And—the corollary question—isn’t it time to think of it as both a process of reading and representation? One way of approaching transmission as evidence of dynamic reading-as-representation would be to study Rose manuscripts across time to see how versions vary in response to new modes of representation. Then one could subject the evolving modes to comparative analysis of other vernacular works produced at the same time as specific Rose manuscripts. Since manuscripts reflect the particular moment and context in which they were executed, one would expect to find evidence of works produced at the same time and place influencing one another. That is to say, that those responsible for producing new versions of the Roman de la Rose, might find themselves incorporating styles and techniques developed for vernacular works written at a later time. This is particularly true for works which themselves engage the Rose, such as Deguileville’s Pèlerinage de la vie humaine, or some of Christine de Pizan’s works. In such cases, we have examples of works that ‘were reading each other’, as it were. Let me explain.

No Fool of Time | 87 “The study of Old French literature can never be divorced from the question of transmission” writes Sylvia Huot in introducing The Romance of the Rose and its Medieval Readers.39 “Transmission,” in this case, means the insertion of a literary work into the dynamic process of rewriting, adaptation, and revision that leads Daniel Poirion to call medieval writing manuscriture.40 In the case of the Rose, manuscript production in the fourteenth century signals the growing prestige of the work, which in turn stimulated the demand for more copies at all levels of society. As Pierre-Yves Badel pointed out thirty years ago, the Rose attained popularity in every echelon of the reading public, with manuscripts owned by members of the aristocracy, royalty, ecclesiastics, and the bourgeosie.41 He also notes that the reputation of the Rose meant that vernacular French literature attained a prestige akin to that of Latin. While Badel and Huot agree that the fourteenth century saw the “making” of the Rose as the most prestigious vernacular work and thus a model to emulate, they focus primarily on the phenomenon of the work itself as it moves through time and space. Badel, in particular, traces elements of the Rose that later works borrow, while Huot focuses on the changes wrought on it via transmission. In other words, from their perspective manuscripts are less a creative initiative in their own right than a means to an end—the end being to convey the work to a public. On that view, the Rose is essentially a unitary work—however polymorphous—whose influence is unidirectional: shaping, but not susceptible to being shaped. From this perspective, transmission is a “mechanical” function performed with variable fidelity to the text. But this view ignores the dynamics of participatory reading we discussed earlier. Aesthetic contemplation, we recall, initiated a dynamic engagement with the perception of the work acquired in the reading process. That perception becomes a double image in the reading process. On the one hand, the force field of the work inflects the reader’s own view of the world towards the likeness of the work’s Weltanschauung. On the other hand, the reader’s views subtly nuance the image of the work he assimilates. In the event, the reader’s image of the work is a composite of these two forces. Chronology is another variable that can inflect the reader’s image of the work. In this case, its aesthetic norms may be perceived by the reader as archaic, insufficiently in keeping with prevailing artistic norms of his own time. In that case, he may subtly nudge his image of the work towards the aesthetic likeness dictated by the norms of his own day. While this risks anachronism—which did not much trouble medieval readers—it satisfies his aesthetic sensitivity—which was, after all, one of the criteria of “beauty,” as we saw above.

88 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

In such cases, the force of the reader’s own Weltanschauung and aesthetic sense nudge the Rose that he fashions towards a “likeness” of contemporary aesthetic and moral modes as found in current works. Parenthetically, one should say that this effect may be seen most strikingly in the manuscript paintings, decorations and mise-en-page of late fourteenth and fifteenth century manuscripts when compared with earlier examples (Figs. 3.15, 3.16).

Figure 3.15.  Portrait of two of nine courtly “vices” painted on the exterior wall of the Jardin de Déduit [Pleasure Garden], Papelardie and Povreté [Religious Hypocrisy and Poverty]. Roman de la Rose. New York: Pierpont Morgan Library, MS Morgan 948, fol. 11r. Rouen, c. 1525.

No Fool of Time | 89

Figure 3.16. Early portrait of the courtly “vices” painted on the exterior wall of the Jardin de Déduit. “Povreté pourtraite” [Portrait of Poverty]. Roman de la Rose. Baltimore: Walters Art Museum, MS. Walters 143, fol. 4v. Paris, c. 1325.

These facts cannot help but alter the way we think about the variety of and variation in manuscripts of a work like the Roman de la Rose, whose extant manuscripts extend over more than two centuries of artistic innovation. The often-considerable differences between manuscript versions tell us that the poem was admired and consequently gained prestige precisely because its transmission exhibits a dynamic process of “differential repetition.” Differential repetition describes the generative dynamic of transmission whereby the master scribe responsible for planning a manuscript could—and often did—produce a version that followed the main episodes of the work in

90 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

question, but with differences resulting from new textual insertions, unusual rubrics and glosses, new miniatures, and so on. When we ask what motivates differential repetition and where do the changes come from, then things begin to get interesting. Manuscript versions illustrate the generative force of medieval literary transmission, its energeia (ἐνέργεια) or dynamic activity that transforms as it transmits. This is why I say that manuscript transmission is an authentic form of artistic representation in the full sense of the term. But what do I mean by a “generative force” and why do I associate it with energeia? These terms will be explored at greater length in Chapter 5, “Variance as Dynamic Reading.” Let me say briefly here that by “generative force” I mean the ability to move or change something for a particular end. That is very close to the way Aristotle defines energeia as an agent of motion and change, a being-at-work. At Metaphysics 1050a 21–23, he comments: “The act is an end and the being-at-work is the act and since energeia is named from ergon it also extends to the being-at-an-end (entelechia).” We find similar passages in Physics, Metaphysics, and De Anima, to name only these treatises. In Physics 202a 1, for example, Aristotle argues that change is an energeia; also a purposive acting on something is an energeia. In his Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, St. Thomas Aquinas defends Aristotle’s concept of motion as indicating that objects are not just the complex of characters they possess now, but also contain potential elements as yet unrealized. In short, objects are dynamic, continually evolving. Thus “motion is the mode in which the future belongs to the present, and is the present absence of just those particular absent things which are about to be?”42 The reverse side of the work’s manuscript actualization is the dialectical interaction that takes place between a given version of itself and other works being produced in the same context. Since manuscript copies were made in response to public demand or to fulfill commissions, they had to find favor with the clients who ordered them by conforming to prevailing aesthetic norms. In short, they had to look contemporary. It did not matter that the Rose had been written originally between 1235 and 1280; a patron who ordered a copy in 1375 wanted his copy to be “up-to-date.” That means there’s an ongoing dynamic exchange taking place between a work and its context of production. I call the dynamic between manuscript and its context “differential imitation,” which is another aspect of the activity of transformation associated with energeia. Here the mimetic energy flows in two directions: it is not simply the work that is being copied in the manuscript, but the whole “moment,” the contextual impetus for that copy at that moment in that place. And since other literary works

No Fool of Time | 91 are being created at the same time, as part of the same contextual impetus that sees the need for a new version of the Rose, the same generative dynamic that responds to that request also produces other literary works. Is there any reason to suppose that the generative dynamic is unidirectional? While the Rose certainly does serve as a model for fourteenth century works, why should its own manuscripts not reflect the same literary actualization (energeia) as newer ones, especially since they’re produced at the same time? Once we accept that the more famous model is being “re-created” at the same time as works that acknowledge it, then it’s not difficult to imagine a dialectic of transference in which each is made to assume attributes of the other—at least so far as the manuscript representation is concerned. That this was in fact the case would explain the prevalence of “interpolations” in the Rose during this period, as well as the increase in miniatures, the ingenuity of their historiation, marginal and bas-depage paintings that often form an ironic counterpoint to the narrative text, the extensive rubrication, and other innovations found in manuscript representations of the Rose at this time. By way of demonstrating how Rose manuscripts in the fourteenth century participate in the generative dialectic of literary production, one might point to a group of six manuscripts now owned by German libraries.43 They were all produced in Paris bookshops during the course of the long fourteenth century. This group of manuscripts is particularly interesting, not least of all for having been acquired by German collectors in the nineteenth or early twentieth century precisely because of their individuality. They are important for multiple reasons, such as textual additions to Jean de Meun’s section of the poem, or for the significance of their illuminations from major masters of the period, and not least of all because they have not been studied or described as a group, or even for reasons of their recent history. The Rose, in the Düsseldorf Academy (Bibliothek der Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, MS A. B. 142), for instance, contains two important interpolations in Jean de Meun’s continuation—the Litany of Love and the Interpolation of the Privileges. This same manuscript is noteworthy for being the only Rose codex to exhibit a Nazi swastika, since it was seized from a German-Jewish owner in the 1930s and became part of a collection “donated” by Hermann Göring to the Hermann Göring-Meisterschule für Malerei in Kronenberg, Germany.44 Other manuscripts represent examples of miniature painting from notable masters. For example, the Frankfurt Rose (Frankfurt Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek lat. qu. 65) has been ascribed to the Maubeuge Master working for Thomas de Maubeuge in Paris c. 1320. The Master of the Duc de Berry, to take another instance, painted the Stuttgart Rose (Stuttgart Cod. Poet. et phil. 2° 6)

92 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

soon after 1400. Knowing the bookshops of origin in such cases enables comparison of the Rose codex with fourteenth-century vernacular works produced in the same workshop. For example, Richard and Mary Rouse have authoritatively attributed the Düsseldorf Rose to the Parisian bookshop run by Richard de Montbaston and his wife Jeanne de Montbaston.45 From their shop on the Rue Neuve Notre Dame, for twenty-five years from c. 1330 until c. 1355, this husband and wife team produced notable examples of thirteenth-century works such as this Rose or La Légende dorée, as well as new works with significant links to the Rose, e.g., Guillaume de Deguileville’s Pèlerinage de la vie humaine, Richard de Fournival’s Bestiaire d’amour, a Roman de Fauvel, and—of particular interest to the interconnection between projects—a number of manuscripts of the Bible historiale.46 Jeanne de Montbaston has been identified as the bas-de-page illuminator of the famous Rose codex, BnF MS. fr. 25526 (from which the texts of Guillaume de Lorris quoted above were taken), a Deguileville Pèlerinage de la vie humaine, and three manuscripts of works from Jacques de Longuyon’s Peacock cycle (the text that first codified the legend of les neufs Preux or Nine Worthies). She also collaborated with her husband on the illumination of BnF fr 15391 (a Bible historiale). Richard painted folios 1–8v, 131 to 204, and 283v to 311v, while Jeanne did folios 11 to 114v, 228 to 265, and 318 to 340.47 Since similar evidence can be adduced for the workshop of Thomas de Maubeuge as well as for the Master of the Duc de Berry, there is ample evidence, then, to connect the German Rose manuscripts to the flourishing book culture in Paris in the fourteenth century. That observation is strongly reinforced by the knowledge that Richard and Jeanne de Montbaston’s atelier produced some nineteen Rose manuscripts—of which the Düsseldorf codex is one. The triangulation of Rose codices, a particular workshop, and popular fourteenth century texts becomes even more interesting—and compelling—when we remember that the Montbaston and Maubeuge workshops produced a number of Bibles historiales (sometimes even working together). At least nine Bible historiale codices, for example, have been ascribed to Richard and Jeanne de Montbaston, all made between 1330 and the mid1350s.48 It is particularly interesting to think of comparing the Pèlerinage de la vie humaine painted by Jeanne de Montbaston and her Rose manuscripts, on the one hand, and, on the other, the Montbaston Bibles historiales. Deguileville’s text specifically references the Rose, so one would expect to find a generative dialectic in that case—though its variable manifestations are what would be of interest. But in the case of the Bible historiale the differential imitation can’t be predicted

No Fool of Time | 93 in advance, but only intuited on the basis of the long discourses of Nature and of Genius in which Jean de Meun glosses theological doctrine in a new—and controversial—mode. Once the interaction of Rose manuscripts with book production in the first half of the fourteenth century has been explored, the same exploration of generative dialectics could be made in the case of the Stuttgart Rose—from the hand of the Master of the Duc de Berry—and works of Guillaume de Machaut, a poet intimately familiar with Jean de Meun, and whose work is associated with the Rose in at least one important codex, Bibliothèque Municipale d’Arras, MS. 897. This Manuscript is of particular interest because it contains, aside from Machaut’s Jugement du roy de Behaigne, ten other works (including Jean’s own Testament), whose themes relate directly to aspects of the Roman de la Rose.49 The influence of Jean de Meun on the poetics of Machaut has been noted with growing frequency in recent years. Machaut’s subtlety in transforming thematic oppositions of ideas and characters from Jean’s work into very different configurations and genres may be seen, for example in an article by Kevin Brownlee published in Early Music History, “Machaut’s Motet 15 and the Roman de la Rose.”50 Other studies could be cited as well, but as in the case of studies on the transmission of Rose manuscripts by Badel and Huot, these comparisons also assume unidirectional influence. Again, one finds an underlying assumption that the generative mimetic force emanates from a hyper-concept we can call the Rose-qua-work. From that perspective the manuscript that instantiates the poem remains external to it. It seems hard to imagine how anyone could dismiss the drama of manuscript recreation as adventitious. Still, when one conceives the “work” as somehow above or beyond any given manifestation of it, when one thinks of it as the sum of n-manifestations—as opposed to having its very mode of being in them—then the individual representation does become invisible. Without denying that there is indeed a “hyperconcept” of the Rose emerging from the sum of our experiences with it, we must recognize that that is matter for a different kind of critical and philosophical project. What’s at issue here is to recognize that the generative force of each manuscript representation is not unique to the Rose-qua-work, but emerges from the culture of literary productivity itself. In this view, the process of differential imitation does not simply affect the content of works produced contemporaneously by a bookshop, it can even influence the choice and poetics of the works copied. Yet, at the end of the day, is this the whole story? Is it really the case that we’re forced to choose between a concept of the work “as somehow above or beyond any manifestation of it,” and “the work-that-has-its-being in a given manuscript

94 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

version?” I think not. After all, for a work to manifest what I’ve called “generative force” sufficient to motivate a transmission history lasting well over two centuries and running to hundreds of manuscript versions, it must also generate in its readers a very strong “hyper-concept.” If, as noted above, that is matter for a different theoretical study, we can at least see that the starting point of the inquiry—and the ending point for this chapter—lie in contemplating the tensile strength of literary form. Poetic structure in the manuscript age is dynamic; it constantly accommodates the stress of modification without losing its ability to adjust to load changes or to suffer any reduction in performance or loss of identity. That is the basis for the medieval paradox I call “mutable stability.”

Part Two

Technologies of Manuscript Knowledge: How We Read Now in the Digital Middle Ages

4

The Work of Reading

What does it mean to read vernacular manuscripts? And why talk of the “work” of reading them? Do the questions imply that we’re meant to read differently today than we did in the past? If so, how did we read medieval texts then, and what might we be doing differently today? While not particularly nuanced, such questions remind us of a basic issue that we tend to overlook: reading follows form. By which I mean that reading practices respond to the conditions of the activity, including that of the medium that conveys text to reader. That should hardly surprise us. After all, reading is a cognitive response to complex symbolic representations. These may be solely discursive in nature, or else multimodal, involving pictures, symbols, abstractions, with words thrown in. Moreover, why and what we read at any given moment has a great deal to say about how we read. At its most basic level, reading is perception processed as thought. At a primitive level, it’s what happens when we obey a traffic signal or stop sign, or slow down in response to the brake lights of the car ahead of us. More reflectively, reading complex texts sets in motion mental processes, including memory, that deploy a broad range of acquired information to make sense of a work, synthesize its data, and assimilate it to our horizon of knowledge. Clearly, a traffic signal or stop sign will not greatly expand our knowledge base, any more than wrestling with Kant’s Critique of Reason will teach us to read

98 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

road signs. My point is simply that reading is an intensely personal activity that takes place within the ambit of the reader’s convictions about the way the world is—or should be. It is contingent, subjective, and potentially subversive to the extent that the cognitive processing necessary to determine meaning challenges, confirms, or suggests the irrelevance of the reader’s beliefs. Those beliefs, like reading itself, are embedded in the historical moment, the “present tense” of reading. And since that present tense occurs within a social figuration, we have yet another element of contingency. Finally, when reading involves professional goals, then disciplinary orthodoxy may influence the equation still further. And that brings me to the question of the digital Middle Ages and their impact on our reading of the literature of our period. At the moment, we have two completely different kinds of texts, each the result of the historical, social, and disciplinary imperatives mentioned above. On the one hand, we have the traditional critical edition in its various permutations ranging from the venerable maroon volumes of the Société des Anciens Textes Français, to the somber grey Classiques français du Moyen Âge from Champion, or the elegant leather-bound volumes of the Pléiade, to the more colorful Lettres Gothiques editions Michel Zink energetically supervises. I suspect that when we think of medieval French literature, it’s probably these editions that come to mind. But for the last decade, we’ve had a very different modality for reading medieval literary texts, and one that could not be more different from those just mentioned. This mode offers high-resolution digital images of manuscripts delivered directly from digital repositories to our computers at any time of the day or night. These sites offer full functionality for searching, panning, zooming, and, now, the ability to compare manuscripts from different sites in the same browser window, at least in the case of repositories that have interoperable functionality. Major repositories include the Johns Hopkins’s Digital Library of Medieval Manuscripts, Stanford’s Parker-Library-on-the-Web, Switzerland’s ecodices, and Europeana Regia, a site aggregating medieval manuscripts from major European state libraries. By now, most colleagues are familiar with such sites and have probably used them on occasion. Still, it may be that they had the same experience as I did when first working with manuscripts online. Initially, I viewed them—and more importantly read them—the same way that I consulted manuscripts at the Bibliothèque nationale, the British Library, the Morgan Library, and so on. They were ancillary to my engagement with the literary text as represented by the critical edition. A codex, whether material or electronic, allowed me to view the text and context of interpolations—that is poetic sequences editors deemed to have been added by a scribe and thus inadmissible to

The Work of Reading | 99 the critical text. Manuscripts also furthered my interest in the interaction between text and image, particularly in the case of the Roman de la Rose, one of the first vernacular works to have been consistently and programmatically illustrated. While fascinating as authentic medieval artifacts, and useful sources of contextual information, manuscripts still seemed to me to be documents helpful to my literary research, but not its principal object. That made sense so long as few manuscripts of a given work were available online. Initially on the Rose site at Hopkins, for example, we had managed to digitize only five or six codices. At that point, to be sure, one could easily discern a difference between reading the medieval artifact online as opposed to the printed edition. But old habits die hard and I continued to view digitized manuscript as a textual source. It was only in the last few years, when we began to digitize at scale that a new picture of the literary work in the Middle Ages began to emerge. Starting with a dozen or so exempla of what was putatively the “same” work, we then added scores of them, finally winding up with almost one hundred fifty manuscripts of the Rose produced over a period of 230 years, from c. 1290 to 1520. Collectively, these versions offer a diverse, almost chaotic picture of the mode of existence of vernacular literature in the Middle Ages. They also explain why the critical edition undertakes to reduce the forest to the tree by providing an accurate representation of the text and language of a work according to principles of textual criticism.1 From this perspective, text and language are the work, and everything else must be stripped away. Of course, that’s an editorial choice, and it was one that master scribes in the Middle Ages also made on occasion. We possess a number of manuscripts of the Roman de la Rose, for example, that don’t incorporate the program of illuminations for which the work has become famous. We need to recognize, however, that when we read a critical edition, neither the language nor the text can be found as such in any medieval manuscript. That’s the point, of course, since the edition seeks to offer an accurate, corrected version of the work transposed into a modern printed book. Figure 4.1 offers a schematic illustration of the way critical editions attempt to reduce the “chaos” of multiple versions to a single, critical text. It also shows the excision of non-textual elements in the manuscript required for a purely textual representation of the work. However indispensable it may be, though, reading an edition is akin to a play-script without the performance, or a blueprint without the building. And that is exactly what the edition is designed to do: to offer the reader a blueprint of the literary work divested of the performative elements provided by the manuscript matrix. It is a textual construct based on selective extrapolation from real

100 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

Figure 4.1. Ernest Langlois’s critical edition of the Roman de la Rose par Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, publié d’après les manuscrits (5 vols. Paris: Firmin Didot and Honoré Champion, 1914–1924) surrounded by a sample of Rose manuscripts ranging from the early fourteenth to the early sixteenth centuries.

data, which is then remediated as a clearly articulated schema. In short, the critical edition offers a view of an ideal tree unobstructed by a surrounding forest. Digital repositories of medieval codices, however, play just the opposite role. It’s their business to create a forest by aggregating “trees”—or in this case manuscripts—in one space (the repository and Website). In other words, the digital repository increases the data variables that reading protocols have to take into account, whereas the critical text reduces them. These divergent goals call for different reading strategies. That’s not a problem for critical texts; they’ve been around long enough to have developed robust protocols. Digital repositories, however, are new, and still evolving. We can’t predict what developments will emerge even in the near term. But we’ve come far enough to know that continually expanding data—which is what takes place in a repository—poses correspondingly complex problems for deciphering and conceptualizing the material in the first instance, and then of reading it in productive ways.

The Work of Reading | 101 We have an excellent test case for expanding data aggregation in the almost one hundred fifty versions of the Rose hosted by the Digital Library of Medieval Manuscripts at the Sheridan Libraries of Johns Hopkins University. This amount of information about a single work represents a sea change for medievalists. We have not faced this kind of “data mass” before. While it may not be “big data” in the sense of the terabytes of celestial images produced every minute by the Hubble Space Telescope for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, it’s bigger data than anything we’ve had to confront previously.2 Moreover, it’s data that changes the way we think about vernacular literature, beginning with such radical ideas as: “how do n versions of a work aggregated in one place, and available to everyone for consultation at any time, affect our understanding of the nature of literary texts in the Middle Ages, not to mention authorship?” To put the question another way, what or where or how do we locate the work when so many individual and unique versions claim with perfect justification to represent it? Is it all of them? In other words, if we assume that a manuscript version of a literary work represents the latter integrally, but if each manuscript of the work differs from the others, then how can we read these versions as the “same” work? The Middle Ages thought about such questions and proposed sophisticated answers. To begin with, “sameness” for the medieval mind had very different connotations from our modern sense of the term. As we noted in Chapter 3, similitude in the Middle Ages involved conceptions of perception and imagination different from our own. While we are accustomed to standards of “exactness” for things we perceive as identical, they weren’t concerned with the faithfulness of copies. That is only to be expected of a society that believed humans, following Genesis 1:26, were made in God’s image—et ait faciamus hominem ad imaginem et similitudinem nostram—while at the same time being fully conscious that the divine image incorporated as many likenesses as there were humans. “Likeness,” as a result, became an extensible concept, all the more so when theologians explained that Genesis 1:26 should be understood as referencing spiritual or metaphysical rather than physical resemblance. For moderns skeptical about the theological basis for “extensible likeness,” one has only to contemplate the dearth of mechanical processes of exact reproduction in the medieval period. We are so used to the technology of reproduction that it’s a stretch for us to imagine a world without such modern innovations. Furthermore, if one examines medieval theories of vision, reasons for skepticism as to the existence of a notion of “exact copy,” at least as we understand it, become clear.3 This does not mean that people of the period were incapable of copying something exactly by hand should the need arise. They were, and they did. It

102 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

simply means that “exact copy” was not a default position for literary reproduction … especially not in the case of vernacular literature.4 Augustine offers a trenchant example of medieval reasoning as to the resemblance of a work to its versions when, at Confessions, VI, 3, 4, he distinguishes between “image” and “likeness” by way of responding to the implications of the statements from Genesis 1:26, quoted above. Whereas Ambrose assumes the terms to be synonymous, Augustine differentiates them by casting image as the “model” and likeness as its dynamic agent. It’s worth repeating here, Robert Markus’s observation quoted above (Chapter 3): The concept of image includes the idea of likeness, for nothing can be said to be an image of something else unless it is in some way like it. Something may, however, be like something else without being its image—as two eggs are like each other, but are not one the image of the other; hence the idea of likeness does not include that of image. The special feature which distinguishes an image-likeness from any other likeness is that an image is somehow dependent on an original which it expresses … Examples of likeness which are also images are the likeness of a child to its parents, or of a painting or mirror-image to its original. In all these cases, the image is in some way ‘dependent’ on the original, which it also resembles.5

Obviously, in writing this passage, Augustine was not thinking about versions of vernacular literary works and their manuscript tradition a millennium in the future. But later Fathers did extend his logic to include art and literature. As Umberto Eco has shown in The Aesthetic of Thomas Aquinas, theologians realized the value of narrowing the gap between the spiritual and material worlds by finding ways to equate the two. Reading literature that portrayed the struggle for human perfection—think Chrétien de Troyes, the Estoire du graal, or Guillaume de Lorris—provided a vehicle for readers to discover how to narrow the gap between spirit and matter in their own lives. This understanding took the form of aesthetic appreciation demonstrating that art had social as well as religious utility.6 When we project these insights back onto the reservoir of versions of the Roman de la Rose, they suggest a way to bring order to the mass of its manuscripts. Reading, transmission, and representation were tightly interwoven. As we saw in Chapter 3, transmission took place over time, in response to readers’ growing demands for copies. Representational styles for those manuscripts also evolved in response to changing tastes. Inevitably, then, as we saw in the last chapter, it’s the dialectic of transmission and representation, particularly longitudinal transmission, which generates differentiation between versions.

The Work of Reading | 103 Here and in the following two chapters, I want to develop the conversation in terms of what I call differential—or dynamic—reading. This means simply that if transmission is the occasion for conveying versioning differences, it’s not their generative principle. For that, one has to look at the interactions of the agents who actually engage with the version as it appears on a given set of parchment folios. Aside from the material base itself, that is the parchment leaf representing the “manuscript matrix,”7 the generative agents are the scribes, artists, rubricators, and decorators who produce the artifact, as well as the readers who realize it. Reading a parchment folio, especially one with paintings (“illuminations,” enluminures, the terms speak their purpose), was a multi-media experience. It required continual navigating between parallel sign systems in the same space. That’s what I mean in the next chapter when referring to the layout of a parchment page as a kind of “visual choreography,” deftly distributing paintings, text, rubrics, decoration in movements the reader must follow to experience the fullest sense of the work as the manuscript version presents it. With the possible exception of marginal decoration, the different expressive registers of a manuscript folio combine to supplement and thereby enrich the textual narrative (which is only one of its sign systems). What makes the individual versions potentially so interesting—because uniquely differentiated—is the cumulative weight of imaginative reproduction we find in manuscripts of a work like the Roman de la Rose, continually reproduced in unique copies from the third quarter of the thirteenth to the first quarter of the sixteenth century. We can appreciate what this long tradition of longitudinal transmission means, when we realize that it produced hundreds of versions of the Rose of which some three hundred fifty reside in rare book repositories around the world today. That is an abstract statistic, telling us at best that the Rose was the most popular vernacular work of the period, while reminding us just how arduous, costly, and ultimately impossible a task it would be to try to actually consult all of these manuscripts. But today, we can do precisely that for nearly two hundred of these versions now available online. These digital versions are unique in their own way by having been aggregated into a collection that offers us for the first time the ability to see precisely what were the fruits of close to three hundred years of longitudinal transmission. In other words, the digital library offers a working laboratory that allows us to study multiple manuscripts to recover processes of reading and representation that shaped evolving styles of page layout, painting, rubrication, decoration, and writing. Characterized by digital immediacy, where time and space are compressed in ways difficult to imagine even a few years ago, the digital laboratory can help us to

104 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

decipher quintessential practices of medieval manuscript transmission. Two protocols of reading provide the tools for understanding those practices. These protocols are strategies for analyzing data aggregated in repositories in ways that help us better understand the way reading and representation collaborate to produce so many unique versions. I call these two reading strategies, “dynamic reading” and “synoptic reading” of medieval manuscripts. Dynamic reading explores internal strategies of change and perfectibility identified with the Aristotelean term “energeia,” that Thomas Aquinas adopted and repurposed. As “dynamic reading” is the topic of the next chapter, let me briefly outline the second protocol, “synoptic reading.” If dynamic reading focuses on comparing strategies of differentiation and revision across multiple manuscripts, synoptic reading explores generative factors linking versions of a work to its context. As the name implies—syn “together,” and opsis “view”—synoptic reading leverages computational functionality to locate a given set of related works within an articulated spatial and historical context. The latter are possible because the digital repository allows us to arrange codices relationally to one another—both synchronously and longitudinally—to approximate known contexts of production and consumption from the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. By relocating these sites of production into the cultural matrix whence they emerged, we will be able to read a variety of literary works synoptically: not simply in relation to one another, but also with and through components of their cultural context. Reading literary works in this way not only highlights their manuscript format, but also situates them alongside other works produced at the same time, place, and sometimes by the same workshop. Not content with simply comparing texts, synoptic reading incorporates an anthropological and historical perspective to read their social matrix with and through them. Geographic space—as Geraldine Heng, Franco Moretti, and others have shown—significantly influences cultural production.8 Nowhere can this be demonstrated more dramatically than in the cultural vortex of fourteenthcentury Paris, as I have shown elsewhere.9 By way of example, suffice it to say here that the creation of the first royal library by Charles V in the 1360s, coupled with his unprecedented project to translate major works of classical philosophy, literature, and theology offers an ideal scenario for exploring synoptic reading. As we’ll see in Chapter 6, it’s also ideal because the library and its books were part of Charles V’s campaign to inculcate a politics of wisdom in the court society of the time. And we know from Christine de Pizan’s writings that this strategy succeeded in producing literature committed to addressing contemporary social and political problems. Synoptic reading, then, not only demonstrates the originality of a given manuscript, it also reveals the culture that influenced it.

The Work of Reading | 105 But synoptic reading does not simply involve reading texts through their contexts. It underscores one of the major differences between traditional and digital modes of reading: collaboration. Reading at scale, reading multi-modally, and reading the cultural moment all require diverse expertise. They call for scholars and technology experts who share a passion for the work … and for the challenge of new frontiers of knowledge. I am tempted to conclude this prolegomenon to the following two chapters by saying that, if I had to give a one-word answer to the question we began with, namely “How do we read today in the digital Middle Ages?” that word would be “communally.” While true enough, the answer is more complicated as we’ll see in the next two chapters.

5

Variance as Dynamic Reading

Variance is the main characteristic of a vernacular work; A concrete difference at the vey basis of this object.1

Chapter 1 revealed how manuscript technology used the potential of illustrations—dynamic imaging—to vary portrayals of narrative scenes in the different versions of a given work. In the case of early versions produced near the time the work would have been written, the manuscript design and illustrations represent a social figuration more or less contemporaneous with the poet’s. With the passing of decades and centuries, however, the situation changes dramatically. New layout and illustrations reflect cultural and social norms contemporaneous with the making of the manuscript, rather than those of the original author or poet. In other words, dynamic imaging is one of the means by which medieval vernacular works continued to appeal to readers, as we saw in Chapter 1, by continually updating themselves. This meant, of course, that the “re-presented” work would necessarily confront tastes and sensitivities that might differ markedly from those of its original context. For example, in 1402, well over a century after Jean de Meun completed the Roman de la Rose, Christine de Pizan could denounce his poem as immoral and misogynistic with as much vehemence as if one of her contemporaries had written

108 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

it. Indeed, during the height of the debate about the Rose, which went on for more than three years, all the participants treated the poem as a major contemporary work. And rightly so, since they were indeed using recent versions.2 Of course, what made the debate so contentious in part was the changed mores between the relatively liberal philosophical atmosphere in Paris in the 1260s and ’70s as opposed to the first decade of the fifteenth century. In those years, Christine de Pizan, her patron, Isabeau of Bavaria (Queen Consort of King Charles VI of France), Jean Gerson (Chanceller of the University of Paris), and other influential courtiers actively promoted ethical standards for all aspects of state governance and social conduct. In so doing, they took as their model of an ethical ruler King Charles V (1364–1380), whose virtues Christine chronicled in her idealized biography, Livre des fais et bonnes moeurs du sage roi Charles V (The Book of the Deeds and Right Conduct of Good King Charles V, 1404).3 Now, while dynamic imaging plays a visible role in determining the presentist orientation of medieval manuscript production, it is far from the whole story. The textual equivalence of dynamic imaging is called “variance.” If variance characterizes the textuality of manuscripts, digitized resources show how it affects our perception of those texts. That’s hardly surprising since the growing number of digitized codices available for comparative study highlights creative mutability as one of their dominant factors. In this sense, then, digital technology has given the concept new prominence. The European Society for Textual Scholarship, for example, recently made “variance” the theme of its annual meeting.4 While a conference on this topic may seem unexceptional today, not so very long ago, it would have been thought meager fare. Variants were simply passages found in manuscripts of a literary work rejected by the editor of its critical edition. Perceived as isolated, de-textualized tokens, variants were relegated to the bottom of the page of the scholarly edition where they bore silent witness to a shadowy world of exiled textuality. What could one possibly say about them aside from an occasional footnote?5 As medievalists over a certain age will recall, the status of the variant changed dramatically in 1989 when Bernard Cerquiglini published a book destined to alter the discipline of medieval literary studies. Variance has become so ingrained in our field that it’s difficult to imagine the furor and cries of outrage that greeted the publication of Éloge de la variante: Histoire critique de la philologie at the time. A slim monograph, Éloge de la variante argued that variable repetition—which Cerquiglini called the “aesthetic of return”—played a major role in Old French literary language.6 This trait had not figured in medieval accounts of Old French literature for the simple reason that critical editions, keen to show the medieval

Variance as Dynamic Reading | 109 literary language as a worthy forerunner of classical French had relegated “intrinsic variance”—perceived as “a surplus of language”—“to the margins,” which is to say to oblivion, or else to the schematic, quasi indecipherable scholarly apparatus. Gaston Paris was suspicious of variants. Bédier loved them to the point of editing them exclusively. But Bédierism provides no picture of the intrinsic variance that is medieval writing, only snapshots, which are, of course, preferable to illusory reconstruction. Like the latter, however, they leave this surplus of language and meaning in the place allotted to it by textuary thinking—in the margins.7

Vernacular literary texts, Cerquiglini notes, existed in multiple manuscripts, each differing from the others because “in an aesthetics of return, where pleasure lay in variance, writing made minute shifts [in the narrative], so that acts of reading and listening to these works lent themselves to the vicissitudes of recognition and surprise.”8 In basing the aesthetic appeal of medieval vernacular literature on the play of variation across multiple manuscripts, Bernard Cerquiglini set his view against that of text editors seeking to reduce the wild thicket of manuscript versions to a single text thought to be a close approximation of “the original.” In short, Cerquiglini indicted traditional philology for favoring a univocal rather than a polyvocal work, a closed rather than an open text, a unified one, rather than a plurivalent many. He proclaimed his own view in the final pages of the book in an assertion that soon became a manifesto: Medieval writing does not produce variants; it is variance. The endless rewriting to which medieval textuality is subjected, the joyful appropriation of which it is the object, invites us to make a daring hypothesis: the variant is never intermittent.9

Overlooked in the polemics inspired by this dictum was the real focus of the book. Bernard Cerquiglini is a linguist. His many books invariably bring original insights and incisive analysis to bear on linguistic features that advance our understanding of the amazingly proteiform, supple, and nuanced instrument we call French. So when, in Éloge de la variante, Cerquiglini speaks of the variant and variance, he’s talking about stylistic traits of literary language, rather than about aspects of medieval manuscripts per se. Manuscripts are implicated in his work only because, having been marginalized in editions, intrinsic variance could only be perceived in manuscript versions of a work. Ironically, given the outrage with which many textual scholars greeted Éloge de la variante, Cerquiglini was not arguing against critical editions, per se, but only against the traditional politics of text editing that sought to elide the role of variance.

110 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

But in as much as Cerquiglini was attacking the textual orientation of philology as then practiced, he was also urging greater access to authentically medieval writing. His concept of variance, as it happened, opened a new perspective onto the dynamic life of medieval works. We could now see that like Poe’s purloined letter, the elusive Urtext turned out not have been lost or secreted in some obscure recess of history, but could be seen all around us in the multiplicity of versions of a work copied in different times and places. More exciting still, these versions all had a story to tell: stories of how different patrons, scribes, and readers perceived and imagined the narrative at different moments and in different places. That was the key to the many examples of continuations in medieval literature, such as, to take but one example, the miroër aus Amoreus of Guillaume de Lorris’s Roman de la Rose morphing into Jean de Meun’s more complex and critically demanding miroër perilleus of the second half of the work. For what Cerquiglini called the “exuberant appropriation” (joyeuse appropriation) of the work by its versions generated specular images reflecting one another as well as performances of what we had been wont to call “the original work.” Even though, as a linguist, Cerquiglini focused on literary language, he nevertheless showed that the only venue where one could truly experience variance was in extant manuscripts of the period. So if scholars wanted to explore it, then they’d need to pay attention to the manuscripts of a work. And that’s exactly what happened a year later when, in The New Philology issue of Speculum (January 1990), we called for a return to manuscripts as the focus of study. This call was a logical sequel to Éloge de la Variante, in one sense, but had more capacious goals in seeking to extend the concept of variance beyond literary language to include the representational dynamic of the manuscript matrix as a whole. In my introduction to The New Philology issue of Speculum, I defined the manuscript matrix as first: … a place of radical contingencies: of chronology, of anachronism, of conflicting subjectivities, or representation. The multiple forms of presentation on the manuscript page can often provoke rupture between perception and consciousness, so that what we actually perceive may differ markedly from what poet, artist, or artisan intended to express or from what the medieval audience expected to find. In other words, the manuscript space contains gaps through which the unconscious may be glimpsed.

And secondly: … the manuscript matrix consists of gaps or interstices, in the form of interventions in the text made up of interpolations of visual and verbal insertions which may be conceived, in Jacques Lacan’s terms, as ‘pulsations of the unconscious’ by which the ‘subject

Variance as Dynamic Reading | 111 reveals and conceals itself.’ If the effects of language in ordinary speech divide the subject, then the doubling of perceptual fields in the manuscript matrix into verbal and visual forms produces conditions favoring an even greater split in the subject represented by the speaking voice(s). It is that division that has been insufficiently explored by medievalists working with illuminated manuscripts …10

A moment’s reflection will suffice to show what’s involved in placing language within this larger field. Literary language cannot exist independent of context: it constitutes a narrative, which in turn forms a text. The text then requires material support of one kind or another in order to represent language and narrative. The mode of the material support may be ephemeral, as in the case of oral recitation, or the more enduring mode of writing. To continue the regression, writing, too, needs material support; usually paper or animal skin of one kind or another, but many other substances from wood to stone have been utilized. All of this may seem obvious, but it’s particularly germane to the concept of variance, since a major difference between the role of variance in the medieval and modern periods lies in its mode of reproduction. Bernard Cerquiglini recognizes this fact when he observes: “Because variance … was the basis of the medieval literary aesthetic, this aesthetic is the perfect antithesis of modern aesthetics of the text.”11 Printing limited—but did not overcome—textual variation. But to the extent that printing facilitated widescale dissemination of a fixed text, it created an aesthetic of variance very different from the open text made possible by medieval manuscript copies produced by scribes and artists perceived as creative collaborators of poets. Variance, we saw, offered a chance to think about vernacular medieval works by reconceiving the mechanics of understanding exactly how this joyeuse appropriation worked, and what motivated it. At the same time, in the analog world where we had to examine manuscript books one-at-a-time, often in repositories geographically remote from one another, we lacked a tool for comparative study of multiple manuscript versions. We had no way, in short, to juxtapose in one place multiple codices for comparative analysis where one might undertake—among other approaches—regression analysis of their variables.12 If, in the early 1990s, New Philology envisaged a program for the comparative and longitudinal study of manuscript versions of literary works, it had no ready means of realizing it. If ever a movement were designed for digital humanities, this was it. Happily, method and medium met in 1995 and took on progressively more effective dimensions over the ensuing years, with the launch of the Digital Library of Medieval Manuscripts at the Sheridan Libraries of Johns Hopkins University. Today, we have the desired tools for comparative study of codices at our fingertips. We need

112 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

only access the digital library with its interoperable functionality that allows us to compare images from multiple manuscripts on the same screen simultaneously. Now that we’ve gained access to a large database of manuscript versions, we can return to the question of the motivation for the joyeuse appropriation that spurred variance in the incessant rewritings of literary works in the first place. One of the greatest divergences between medieval and modern experiences of variance, we’ve found, lies in the domain of textuality. Jacqueline CerquigliniToulet pinpoints the issue by asking the simple, but trenchant question: “What is a text and how are we to understand it in the context of medieval manuscript culture? … More radically,” she continues, “we’re right to ask ourselves: ‘Where do we find the text in a manuscript,?’ … How does it assume distinctive, material shape, and how does it realize its literary identity?”13 If such questions seem disorienting, it’s because they underline how much print editions of medieval works have shaped our expectations. We’ve grown accustomed to find the “text” of a medieval work before our eyes whenever we open an edition. The editor works hard to establish a text on the basis of painstaking study of the manuscripts in order to create “an authoritative version.” But as Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet observes, the very concept of a definitive text is an illusion propagated by its own methodology.14 “The medieval text,” she observes, “is never closed, whether we are editing—where one must address the question of variants—or seeking to decipher and understand the threads of its composition in praesentia, where there is direct quotation, or in absentia, where we are presented with the play of echoes and intertextuality.”15 The question becomes even more complicated when we realize how fluid textual borders are in manuscripts. “Where are the boundaries? The incipit and explicit rubrics may be lacking, and we know that we must depend, internally, on a whole strategy of literary markers … to identify the borders of a text.”16 She means that the manuscript folio has a very different ecology from the page of a printed edition. Page layout in the latter is fixed, with well-demarcated separation between printed text, chapter and section headings, images and their captions (where they exist). In contrast, textual space on a folio is not exclusive, but shared with other systems of representation. Indeed, given the fact that everything depicted in a manuscript has been done by hand, it doesn’t make sense to maintain traditional distinctions between text and image. The freedom to interpolate extra-textual elements—such as fanciful decorative motifs, emblematic column separators, captions or rubrics to orient the reader—encourages complex interactions between modes of signification. When we note that each of these elements references the others visually, we may find it helpful to think of these intricately imbricated modes in terms of “visual choreography.”

Variance as Dynamic Reading | 113 Look, for example, at Figure 5.1, an author portrait of Christine de Pizan in the manuscript of her collected works whose design and execution she supervised as a gift to Queen Isabeau.17 Situated just above the title and opening lines of Christine’s Cent Ballades, the miniature opens onto a study in an elegant Paris mansion. Within, we see the poet at work, presumably writing the poems inscribed here. Just as the painting links poet and poems to the Parisian milieu of the court, so the decorative elements of the folio enfold all of the elements on the page in a luxuriantly exfoliated vine motif with no discernible beginning or ending. The manuscript folio presents itself, in short, as a complex object whose myriad elements are visually choreographed. The intricate figures do not simply integrate word and image, but rather perform the word as image. In sum, we have to think of the medieval manuscript page as a graphic space navigated by visual cues.

Figure 5.1. Author Portrait showing Christine de Pizan writing the Cent ballades. London: British Library, MS Harley 4431, fol. 4r (Paris, 1410–12).

114 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

It is a space, in other words, that demands incessant cognitive activity on the part of the reader. Cognitive perception that serves not only to “think the text” (“penser le texte”), as Cerquiglini-Toulet puts it, but more immediately to discern how the disparate representational modes interact to form a meta-construct or “signature” that—from folio-to-folio, from section-to-section—distinguishes that manuscript from others containing the same work. Two factors in the making of a codex assure that only by seeing a page can one begin to grasp the specificity of a work in the context of a particular manuscript. The first is the scribal hand: scribes have distinctive traits, akin to a “signature” that can be recognized from one codex to another. If one can identify scribal hands—or better yet put a name to the hand—it’s possible to learn a great deal about the historical and intellectual context surrounding the making of the manuscript. Secondly, the painted images—whether miniatures, historiated initials, decorative motifs, or bas-de-page drawings—all contain crucial information, both esthetic and historical. Obviously, to make sense of these instances of text and image operating in the same representational space, the reader/viewer must continually compare the two systems. It’s a matter of simultaneously perceiving two modes each offering a different presentation of similar material. Given that both text and image further the ongoing narrative, the sense each contributes plays an important role in our experience of the work. Part of that experience, however, lies in recognizing not one but two modes, as it were, each figuring a different index of the meaning in every scene. Each claims our attention as we compare, equate, and parse their separate interpretations. In the end, we recognize how text and image infuse the manuscript page with a “parallax effect,” where each mode offers a perception of the narrative from a different angle. Since the parallax effect differs from one manuscript to another, the phenomenon helps to explain the wide variation in programs of manuscript illustration of a given work, especially from one period to another. The same scene from the Roman de la Rose portrayed in 1320 will look quite different a generation later. In fifteenth or early sixteenth century versions, the parallax effect becomes even more pronounced. All of which serves to remind us that mimesis in the Middle Ages was not bound by conventions of strict resemblance. This thought brings us to a second characteristic of the manuscript page: one that concerns not phenomenology, but rhetoric. To understand the astonishing virtuosity and variety we find in manuscript versions of the “same” work—such as the Roman de la Rose, for example, for which we have some 250 extant manuscripts produced between the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century—we need to identify imminent factors responsible for generating

Variance as Dynamic Reading | 115 multiple versions of a given work throughout the period. Here again, digital manuscript study offers reasons to move beyond conventional explanations. It is not by chance that versions of a given work vary. To begin with, literary prestige derived in part from a work’s ability to renew itself from generation to generation by a dynamic process of “differential repetition.” As explained in Chapter 3, differential repetition is a natural consequence of transmitting unique copies of a work over time. The master scribe responsible for planning a version followed the main episodes of the work, while incorporating variations such as narrative additions or excisions, providing rubrics to guide or enlighten the reader, or interpolating historical glosses or mythological anecdotes intended as allegories for a scene. Illuminators, of course, had even more freedom to innovate and so change the appearance of the work from one version to another. But the impulse to differentiate versions cannot be ascribed solely to such outside forces. What might be termed the generative power of the manuscript context itself plays a role. As an organic substance, prepared from animal hides, parchment and the representational modes it commands are akin to those pluriotent cells with an active disposition and intrinsic power to develop in different ways. If the “text is never closed” it’s because the manuscript space it resides in is predisposed for pluripotential development. We can see this capacity for multiplicity in the continued production of versions, and in their varied programs of illumination as well as the (re-)interpretations of characters and episodes.18 The moving force for the pluripotential capacity of manuscripts was called energeia (ἐνέργεια) in medieval rhetorical treatises, that is, a property that transforms whatever it transmits thanks to “its capacity for development in multiple directions.”19 For Aristotle, and consequently for medieval thinkers, energeia played a vital role in life. As he explains in Book IX, chapter 8 of Metaphysics: “For the functioning (έργον) is the end, and the actuality (ένέργεια) the functioning (έργον); and that is why the name ‘actuality’ is employed with respect to the functioning and points towards the fulfillment (έντελέχεια)”20 (Met. IX.8 1050a21–23).21 For Aristotle, who invented the term, energeia designates the pluripotential capacity inherent in an object or being. It is this capacity that enables beings and things to bring about purposeful change, thereby imparting to the terms the connotations of “force in action,” “energy,” or “action to achieve a purpose [τελος].” In Aristotle’s view, the incessant exercise of the capacity for action and the action’s purpose define the identity of the being or object. Believing that it was insufficient merely to possess the capacity for action, he coined energeia to convey both the idea of having and using the capacity to act, where use trumps possession.

116 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

Consequently in The Eudemian Ethics he casts the exercise of energeia as the chief purpose for the existence of the object. He begins Book 2.1 of The Eudemian Ethics with an emphatic formulation of this principle. All good things … are either external or internal to the soul, and, among the goods thus distinguished, those in the soul are preferable. For wisdom [φρóνησις] and virtue and pleasure are internal to the soul, and it is universally agreed that some or all of these constitute the end [τελος] of life. Internal to the soul there are states [έξις] and powers [δúναμεις] on the one hand, and activities [ένέργεια] and processes/movements [κíνησις] on the other. [And] … virtue is the best condition [έξις]22 … or power of whatever has … work [έργον]23 to do. (1218b31–42)24

The passage illustrates energeia’s role as catalyst. By galvanizing such ethical components of the soul as intellect and virtue, the transformations set in motion are directed toward actualizing the authentic end or telos of the entity in question. It’s significant that Aristotle invokes the active rather than the contemplative sense of phronêsis, “wisdom,” in this passage, by way of underscoring energeia’s key role in motivating the object’s movement towards perfection.25 The whole passage thus sketches the movement toward self-revelation and becoming summed up in Aristotle’s neologism, “entelechy,” “to become fully real.” The transformations that energeia sets in motion are always directed towards a precise goal. The end in question is both specular and mimetic, but not in the strict sense of reproducing an external model. While the goal is to perfect the eidos or self-image of the being or work, the process of self-transformation must take its cues from within. Specularity and mimesis model potential versions of the eidos, which ergon and energeia, work and actualization will construct. The dialectic of inward gaze and actualization set in motion by energeia releases the capacity for pluripotent transformation that Aristotle designates as the life and purpose of all things. But whereas we might think of striving for perfection as linear and directed, Aristotle sees it as continuous and open-ended (Phy. 201b31–33; cf. Met. XI.9 1066a20–22). Another way of picturing energeia’s constant striving to perfect the eidos or self-image of the object would be to see its motion as an asymptotic curve arcing toward, but never reaching the unrealized end. And that is, mutatis mutandis, Aristotle’s view in The Eudemian Ethics where the life of objects and beings is defined by the continual work of self-variation. Here’s how he puts it: … Because a cloak has a use and has work to do, there is such a thing as the goodness or virtue of a cloak, that is to say, the best state/habitus [έξις] for a cloak to be in. So too with a boat, a house, and other things. The case is the same for the soul, for it too has

Variance as Dynamic Reading | 117 work to do. Let us assume that the better the state, the better the work it does, and that as one state is related to another, so too is the working of the one related to the working of the other. Again, each thing’s working is its end. From these assumptions it is clear, then, that the working [έργον] is better than the state [έξις], since the end [τελος], as an end, is the best thing, for it was assumed that the end was the best and ultimate thing that is the purpose of everything else. It is evident, then, that the working [έργον] is something better than the state or condition. (1218b38–1219a13)26

Aristotle takes great care here to emphasize that the use of the object—its function in the world—trumps its state or habitus, which is simply the object at rest. He prefers the object in motion, the object continually defining and redefining itself. In other words, he conceives of self-as-text, the work-as-text as states of ongoing genesis, ever open to the pluripotent circulation we find in the different versions of medieval manuscripts. One final observation before we suggest how these insights can help us to read and understand pluripotent circulations in a medieval manuscript tradition like that of the Roman de la Rose. Reflecting on the workings of energeia in the passages we’ve been discussing, we might think intuitively that energeia releases the potential power or dunamis [δύναμις] inherent in an object. On that account, dunamis as a virtual, unactualized form would represent a prior state to energeia, and accordingly the passage from potential to actuality would follow a temporal sequence. In other words, the seed would naturally precede the plant, and the infant the adult. But that’s not how Aristotle sees it. For him, something must first exist before it can bring about change. So actuality/energeia first makes manifest the thing, which then reveals and releases its power dunamis. In other words, energeia inherent in material form and substance initiates the motion and change that reveals an object’s underlying power. As he says in Metaphysics IX.8: But it is also clear from this too that actuality is prior in this way to potentiality also, namely in respect to coming to be and time. But indeed actuality is prior in substance too, first because things posterior in coming to be are prior in form and in substance (for example, adult to boy and man to seed; for the one already has the form, the other does not), and because everything that comes to be proceeds to an origin, and the coming to be is for the sake of the end), and the actuality is the end, and the potentiality is acquired for the sake of this (1050a1–a9).

By reversing the order of potential and actuality, Aristotle also removes the chronological imperative from the equation. Energeiai operate in a homogeneous context, temporally speaking. “Seeing, thinking, understanding, living well, and

118 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

flourishing are examples of energeiai because each is an end where the end resides within it” (Metaphysics IX.6 1048b18–34).27 Furthermore, as Bradshaw points out, “The essential feature of energeiai turns out to be not solely that they are temporally homogeneous. It is that they have a form (είδος) given by some internal teleological structure that does not require time for its completion.”28 In what way do these observations help us to understand how Aristotle’s concept of pluripotential capacity maps onto the question of multiple versions of medieval literary works? To begin with, energeia’s capacity for development in multiple directions means that the internal teleological structure of a work like the Rose—its eidos or form, which is already composite, composed of different episodes and by different authors—allows for the energeiai to realize their capacity for proteiform construction in each new version. This becomes clearer when we remember that the energeiai—components of energeia—are activities like seeing, thinking, and understanding. In other words, they are precisely the conceptual and perceptual powers requisite for creating and reading/perceiving parchment folios. This becomes even more apparent when we recall that the energeiai may also be understood as the three material aspects of form mentioned by Aristotle—vision, thinking, and construction—which are particularly important for such generative aspects of the manuscript format as illumination, narrative-as-typology and exemplar, and language. As an agent of eidos and energeia, the manuscript matrix itself serves as a template for actualizing evolving perceptions and concepts of given works. In other words, manuscripts are, by their very nature as eidos, ergon, and energeia predisposed towards actualizing the works they convey not as invariant, but as versions in an ever-evolving process of representation. Against those who would see manuscript copies as regressions from an authoritative original to ever-fainter avatars of that primal moment, we must recall Aristotle’s notion of form as “atemporal actuality” (see above). That’s a pretty radical notion given the chronological primacy traditionally ascribed to the earliest versions of a work by textual critics (or at least those engaged in making critical editions). In Aristotle’s account of energeia, eidos, ergon, and entelechia, all versions of a work are equally valid efforts at realizing the form, irrespective of their chronology, because the form is always available for actualization. Of course, this does not mean that individual versions are produced atemporally. On the contrary, as actualized representations of the eidos, they are embedded in an historical moment and place. The eidos itself, however, transits time without intrinsic change, thanks to its entelechy and teleological impulse (“The proper work of a thing is its end,” Eudemian Ethics II.1 1219a8). The process

Variance as Dynamic Reading | 119 of actualization simply reveals more (or less, in the case of an inept version) of its complex form. As this process is both ongoing and dynamic, every version will differ to greater or less extent. Some versions will omit passages, others add new material; some will have painted miniatures, others will eschew illumination. Some will have extensive rubrication and glosses, others tend to forego such guides. Furthermore, just as the eidos is atemporal, it is agnostic as to medium. Parchment manuscripts, printed books, critical editions, and, yes, digital avatars all constitute authentic versions. Indeed, energeia or actualization encourages mediatic diversity, a fact accounting for the wide variety of formats medieval works have experienced. So just as there is no one, authoritative version, no format has a greater claim to appropriateness than any other so far as the work of actualization is concerned. Of course, as products of the medieval era, parchment manuscripts are authentic artifacts of a mediatic technology representative of the age that produced the works they contain. That is a contingent authenticity, however, whose value lies in the realms of medieval history, history of art, esthetics, literary history, and so on. While the foregoing remarks help us to understand the ontology or mode of existence of medieval works in the manuscript age, it’s now time to offer concrete examples of the phenomenon. Thanks to the unprecedented manuscript offerings made possible by digital repositories such as the Digital Library of Medieval Manuscripts at the Sheridan Libraries of Johns Hopkins University (www.manuscriptlib.org), we now have access to a greater range of versions of individual works than ever before. A significant but often overlooked manifestation of energeia’s pluripotent capacity plays out in the images of illuminated manuscripts. As we saw above, pluripotent actualization allows the manuscript matrix to accommodate Aristotle’s triad of material forms—vision, thinking, and construction. Manuscript paintings implicate all three aspects in as much as they are visual, provoke reflection (thinking) on the work, and show a different kind of fabrication from textual inscription. They provoke fluctuating perceptual modes, alternating between seeing and reading—rubrics being part of the picture setting—while stimulating the viewer to correlate the painting with the narrative. Dispositio (page layout) stimulates alternating perceptual modes by astutely juxtaposing miniatures, rubrics, and text on the folio. Another resource effectively used to differentiate codices arises from the nature of the codex itself. Master scribes can take advantage of bi-folio (two-page) layouts where facing pages create a distinctive organization of perceptual modes. A fourteenth-century Parisian manuscript of the Roman de la Rose offers an example of a distinctive bi-folio sequence at a moment in the narrative when Guillaume de Lorris peoples the Garden of Déduit (Delight/Joy)

120 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

with exotic personifications—Richesse, Largesse, Jeunesse (Youth)—intended to dazzle the reader with the image of an alternative world of luxury and sensuality. This is the setting where the Lover will shortly espy the “Rose” whose pursuit henceforth obsesses him. Courtly love, in Guillaume’s view, unfolds in a context of luxury and leisure worthy of the nascent Parisian court culture. The bi-folio in question occurs on fols. 7v and 8r of MS Bibliothèque Sainte Geneviève 1126 (figs. 5.2 & 5.3).29 Fol. 7v (Fig. 5.2) contains two miniatures of couples facing each other engaged in animated conversation. Rubrics indicate that they are respectively Rischesce pourtraite et son ami (“Portrayal of Richesse and her friend/lover”) and Largesce pourtraite et son ami (“Portrayal of Largesse and her friend/lover”). Balancing the two miniatures on the bottom two columns of f. 7v, the facing folio 8r (Fig. 5.3), shows a couple energetically embracing near the top of the first column, an arrangement that illuminates three consecutive columns of the bi-folio with colorful paintings.

Figure 5.2.  Le Roman de la Rose. Youth personified as young couple embracing. Paris: Bibliothèque Sainte Geneviève MS 1126, fol. 7v (Paris, 1325–1375).

Variance as Dynamic Reading | 121

Figure 5.3.  Le Roman de la Rose. Youth personified as young couple embracing. Paris: Bibliothèque Sainte Geneviève MS 1126, fol. 8r (Paris, 1325–1375).

The rubric over this third miniature reads simply Jenneice pourtraite (“Portrayal of Youth”). Given the mention of the ami (“male friend”) in the pictures of Richesse and Largesse on 7v (Fig. 5.2), the failure to mention the amie (“female friend”) whom Jeunesse so ardently embraces is striking. On the other hand, it does fit with the poet’s description of Jeunesse as naïve and ingenuous, oblivious to all but his pleasure: Après se tint, mien esciant, Jennece au vis cler et luisant, Qui n’avoit pas encore passés, Si com je cuit .xv. ans d’asses. Nicette fu, si ne pensoit

122 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

Nul mal ne nul enging qui soit, Mais molt fu envoisié et gaie, Car jeune chose ne s’esmaie, Fors de jouer, bien le saves.30 (After this, to the best of my knowledge, was standing Jeunesse with his clear and shining face, who was not yet, as I believe, much more than fifteen years old. He was naïve, harbored no malice or deceit of any kind, but was joyous and light-hearted, for young things don’t trouble themselves about anything but pleasure.)

What’s interesting about the presentation of Jeunesse on this bifolio is the juxtaposition of the exuberant embrace of the young couple, with the animated, but restrained physical interaction of Richesse and Largesse and their amis on the facing page (Fig. 5.2). The two couples gesticulate towards one another and touch, but decorously. Their restraint makes a stark contrast with the younger couple, a contrast rendered more marked by the narrative description (Fig. 5.3): Ses amis fu de li privés, En tel point qu’il la baisoit Toutes les fois que li plaisoit, Voiant tous ceuls de la karole; Car qui tenist d’eus .ii. parole, Il n’en fussent ja vergondeuls; Ains les veissies ambedeuz Baisier come.ii. coulombiax.31 (His friend/lover was so intimate with him, that he kissed her whenever he wished in full view of the dancers; for whoever said anything about them, they were not in the least embarrassed; rather you would see the two of them kissing like two turtledoves.)

A quick search of a number of manuscripts contemporaneous with Ste. Geneviève 1126—or even later ones—fails to turn up a layout similar to this, or even other pictures of Jeunesse embracing his friend so conspicuously. The effect of the progression of miniatures across the bifolio links the opulence and largesse of court culture with the pursuit of love and sensual gratification. The behavior of Jeunesse, coming just prior to the protagonist’s own coup de foudre at the Fountain of Narcissus, serves as a template for unbridled desire. As the God of Love will soon explain to the smitten Lover, however, he will not be allowed to emulate the licentious conduct of Jeunesse. So rather than forming a continuum with the facing images of Richesse and Largesse, the portrayal of Jeunesse strikes a discordant note. It ruptures the collective congruence and social harmony symbolized by the karole, or contradance. It’s the first time physical love has entered the scene, and it sets the stage for trouble to come.

Variance as Dynamic Reading | 123 We must think, then, of Jeunesse as the Lover’s id, an image of his desire, and thus, for Guillaume de Lorris, a socially disruptive force to be corrected by the God of Love’s teaching. As always with the ever-revolving Roman de la Rose, one cannot ignore the viewpoint of Guillaume’s continuator and critic, Jean de Meun. From his perspective, the portrait of Jeunesse’s ungoverned sensuality reveals the true nature of human desire underlying the etiquette of courtly conduct. Jean’s point, made repeatedly and with ingenuity in his continuation, is simply that Guillaume’s oft-repeated claim that his poem contains everything there is to know about love is far from the transparent statement it appears. The heroine is anonymous, faceless, not allowed her own voice, and the famous doctrine of love, like the heroine, is not revealed, but enclosed (Fig. 5.4).32 Et se nus ne nulle demande Comment je veul que cil romans Soit appellés, que je commans, Ce est li romans de la Rose Ou l’art d’amours et toute enclose.33

Figure 5.4.  Le Roman de la Rose. Introduction by Guillaume de Lorris (detail). Paris: Bibliothèque Sainte Geneviève MS 1126, fol. 1v-c (Paris, 1325–1375).

But if the Rose exhibits complexities, contradictions, and conflicts, it is as much a result of incessant versioning, of the dynamics of the manuscript matrix as of authorial invention. We find an intriguing example of this phenomenon on fol. 7v, the first page of the Ste. Geneviève bifolio (Fig. 5.2), devoted largely to a detailed

124 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

description of precious objects—both of monetary and medicinal properties— meant to convey the fabulous weath of Richesse, whose miniature appears at the bottom of column 1. The description continues at the top of column 2: Tel clarté de la pierre issoit Que Richesse en resplendissoit durement le vis et la face Et entour li toute la place. Richesse tint par la main .I. valet de grant biauté plain.34 (A dazzling light shone from the stone brilliantly irradiating Richesse, her brow, her face, and all her surroundings. Richesse was holding by the hand a pageboy of great beauty.)

Immediately following the couplet describing Richesse and her ami, a rubric gives the lover’s name: Verités est l’ami Richesce (Truth is the name of Richesse’s lover). Judging from other manuscripts, this rubric appears unique (at least, to date, I haven’t found it elsewhere). Coming as it does in the midst of the lines introducing the ami of Richesse, the rubric looks redundant since it seems to say more or less the same thing as the following line: “Qui fu ces amis veritiex” (“Who was her true friend/lover”). Far from redundant, the doubling of rubric and poetic text offers an example of the way scribes can combine perceptual modes to great effect. Verités est l’ami Richesse Qui fu ces amis veritiex.35

By their red color and status as visual marker outside (above) the narrative, rubrics have a dual status as image, critical commentary, or gloss. It’s rare to find rubrics interacting syntactically with the poetry so as to supplement its effect. But that’s what this folio does. The rubric pairs with the line immediately following to construct a parallel reading of the passage, which is both witty and critical. Witty, in that the rubric twins with the following line to make a statement independent of the passage that Qui fu ces amis veritiex is meant to complete.36 But it also acts critically as a reminder that “veritiex” is one of two readings found in manuscripts of the Rose. The other reading, “Verités,” is precisely what the rubric supplies. In short, manuscripts read either, as in Sainte Geneviève 1126, MS Dijon 525, and MS Douce 195, “Qui fu son ami veriteux” (“Who was her true friend/lover”), or, less commonly, as in the rubric of Sainte Geneviève 1126, or Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek MS. cod. gall. 17, “C’est son ami Veritez” (“It is her friend/lover Truth”). But this manuscript is the only one to weave the variant into the narrative presentation in the form of a gloss.

Variance as Dynamic Reading | 125 As Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet has written, “text implies gloss. It is perceived as an authority.”37 This is certainly true in the Roman de la Rose—one of the most “visual” texts in the medieval corpus—where poetic narrative encourages visualization, and the many illuminations function as visual commentary. The proximity of miniatures to the passages they’re meant to illustrate remind us yet again that two systems of thought and perception work side-by-side, though without coinciding. While we’re about it, we might ponder the fact that it’s the nature of the codex as an artisanal unicum that makes possible a multi-representational format: poetic text, painting, rubric, and decoration. When we consider how each makes a cognitive imprint on the folio, we recognize that, metaphorically at least, the parchment leaf is itself an image or reflection of the mind of the reader/viewer. For it is the reading and viewing process that imprints the folio image on the reader’s imagination for processing. The viewer grasps that the image represents an interpretation of the poetic text, and also recognizes the image as itself an interpretation by an artist working long after the creation of the original poem. But then again the poetic text that appears in the manuscript, and thus the codex itself, are all posterior to the thirteenth century, and thus attest the workings of energeia not simply to transmit the work, but to renew and rethink its nature. A miniature from a Rose manuscript in the Municipal Library in Lyon (Fig. 5.5) suggests yet another way in which pictures helps us think about the work. In this case, the image offers a literal reading of a passage where Guillaume de Lorris portrays the god of Love shooting arrows through the Lover’s eye to lodge in his heart. This courtly conceit is meant to explain how seeing a potential love object can enflame a lover’s heart with love. The literal register of the image has the effect of casting the metaphoric language of the poet into high relief. Here’s the text of the passage glossed by the image: Li dieu d’amors qui l’arc tendu Avoit toute jour atendu A moi porsivre et espier, Si iere aresté les un fier; Et quant il out aperceü Que j’avoie ainsint esleü Ce bouton qui plus me plaisoit Que nus des autres ne faisoit, Il a tantost pris une floiche Quant la corde fu mise en coiche Il entesa jusqu’à oreille L’arc qui estoit fort a merveille, Et trait Amor par tel devise

126 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

Que parmi l’eil m’a ou cuer mise La saiete par grant roideur.38 (The god of Love, who had waited all day with drawn bow tracking and spying on me, stopped beside a fig tree. And when he saw that I had spied the rose bud that most pleased me—more than any of the others had done—he immediately took an arrow, notched it on the bowstring, drew it all the way to his ear—this bow of wondrous strength—and then Love shot with such cunning that it passed through my eye to lodge in my heart, this strong, stiff arrow.)

Figure 5.5.  Le Roman de la Rose. God of Love shoots lover through the eye to reach his heart (to provoke love for the Rose). Lyon: Bibliothèque municipal, MS 763, fol. 12r (Paris, 14th c.).

Guillaume de Lorris accurately describes a hunting scene replete with authentic details sure to resonate with an aristocratic audience of the period. His readers would have been perfectly familiar with the tropes comparing love to game hunting, a commonplace of lyric poetry since the twelfth century. But when the narrative designates the lover, instead of the woman as the game to be hunted, it enters new waters. Or rather, it switches poetic codes from love poetry to myth. The Lover suddenly assumes the role of Actaeon from Book 3 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. This story of the hapless hunter, Actaeon, transformed from hunter to hunted, from human to stag, then harried by his own hounds. And all because he had accidently stumbled upon the wooded cave with its divine spring in the valley

Variance as Dynamic Reading | 127 of Gargaphie, sacred to Diana, goddess of the hunt, when the goddess and her nymphs were bathing. In Ovid, the myth of the hunter/lover accumulates layers of ambiguity, irony, and mystery as it unfolds.39 Ovid leaves no doubt, however, that vision—particularly the erotic gaze—is Actaeon’s undoing.40 Guillaume de Lorris inflects his own narrative with similar resonances of erotic voyeurism, though the metamorphosis that results is psychological, rather than morphological. This shift follows logically from the difference in retribution in the two narratives. In Ovid’s story, Diana asperges Actaeon’s eyes and forehead to initiate his metamorphosis into a stag. The pathos of his condition lies in the duality of his post-transformation being: animal without and a conscious human within: mens tantum pristina mansit (“his mind remains unchanged”). Ovid makes us see and feel Actaeon’s divided self by the image of the human within failed by the stag without. … fugit Autonoeius heros et se tam celerem cursu miratur in ipso. ut vero vultus et cornua vidit in unda, ‘me miserum!’ dicturus erat: vox nulla secuta est! ingemuit: vox illa fuit, lacrimaeque per ora non sua fluxerunt; mens tantum pristina mansit. Quid faciat? repetatne domum et regalia tecta An lateat silvis? pudor hoc, timor inpedit illud.41 (III: 198–205) (The brave son of Autonoe took to flight, and marveled that he sped so swiftly on.— he saw his horns reflected in a stream and would have said, “Ah, wretched me!” but now he had no voice, and he could only groan: large tears ran trickling down his face, transformed in every feature.—Yet, as clear remained his understanding, and he wondered what he should attempt to do: should he return to his ancestral palace, or plunge deep in vast vacuities of forest wilds? Fear made him hesitate to trust the woods, and shame deterred him from his homeward way.)42

Ovid’s verse juggles seemingly realistic description with surreal images, beginning with his evocation of Actaeon split into two incompatible beings: a human consciousness—mens pristina—in a stag’s body. In one stroke the decorum and social norms of the hunt implode, shattering the illusion of an ordered world where humans dominate nature. We’re left in no doubt that it’s the erotic energy of

128 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

vision—of Actaeon’s gaze as he violates the boundary between man and mystery (i.e., Diana’s sacred space)—that shatters the illusion of normative reality. Taking his cue from Ovid on the disruptive power of erotic vision, Guillaume de Lorris imagines an internal transformation of the Lover more devastating than Actaeon’s, because longer lasting. Whereas the latter’s bewilderment lasts only until his hounds devour him, the torment of Guillaume’s lover will last for the duration of the work. More importantly, if Actaeon’s mind remains pristina, or unchanged, it’s exactly the opposite for Guillaume’s Lover. The toxic arrows that Amor looses infect the Lover’s entire cognitive system: eyes, soul, and mind. Guillaume’s description—followed by the miniature in this manuscript—is a straightforward picture of Love drawing his bow to full flex, releasing the arrow, then recounting how it penetrates the Lover’s eye. It’s when the arrows begin to fly that the story morphs from factual to surreal. The arrows, we’re told, are meant to penetrate to the heart while passing through the eye … without leaving a wound or affecting the lover’s sight, so necessary for love. For the poet, steeped in the conventions and rhetoric of love poetry, it’s not difficult to switch codes. Poetry specializes in traversing frontiers from the visible to the invisible, especially when the “real” world of the poem is already an illusion. Ovid’s tale of Acteon is a case in point. For the painter, however, it’s not easy to find a means of portraying the path from the material world to ineffable interiority. As we see in the detail of the miniature from Lyons 763 (Fig. 5.6), the painter would have had no difficulty representing the details of the courtly hunting scene in Guillaume’s description. But that’s not how he chose to portray the scene. Whereas the poet began with a realistic hunting scene only to wind up with imagery the reader finds unsettling and that terrifies the Lover, the painter not only ignores the hunting reference, but also rejects any reference to nature. As though conscious of the fact that Guillaume de Lorris sets his narrative in the natural world of a hortus conclusus in order to camouflage the transgressive actions that occur there, the painter strips away the natural setting and sets the action in a neutral space that allows him to depict not the dissimulating frame of the narrative but its essence. We find then a scene of pure aggression taking place in an eerily unreal space. The god of Love’s bow must have a capacity for rapid fire since he’s shown with drawn bow, one arrow ready to release, while two more wing their way through the air homing in on the Lover’s eye and heart respectively. It’s when we see those arrows frozen in mid-air with the third ready to launch that we recognize how adroitly the painter captures the Lover’s cruel fate, his hands thrown up in consternation at this fusillade of trouble. The image recalls

Variance as Dynamic Reading | 129

Figure 5.6. Le Roman de la Rose. God of Love shoots lover through the eye to reach his heart (to provoke love for the Rose). Lyon: Bibliothèque municipal, MS 763, fol. 12r, detail (Paris, 14th c).

perfectly the lines where Ovid portrays Actaeon’s horror in mid-transformation as horns begin to sprout from his forehead and his feet turn to cloven hooves.43 Guillaume’s Lover never again knows an untroubled moment after this scene; so the painter got it just right. But where did he get “it” from? Whence came the inspired fusion of Ovid and Guillaume? From the work itself in the first instance, or rather from the network of references to other works deployed in the narrative, and then evoked and redeployed in the process of creating new versions. That’s how energeia works and this is an excellent example of energeia as midwife to an inspired punctum or moment of visual insight. I doubt if even the painter would have been able to say how it happened. When a codex encompasses more than one work, it’s known as a miscellany. The Bibliothèque municipal in Dijon houses such a work (Fig. 5.7) that begins with an interesting version of the Roman de la Rose, followed by a number of satiric or moral poems whose subject matter constitutes a series of commentaries

130 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

on the Rose.44 A miscellany, especially one as thematically linked as this, offers an excellent example of energeiai at work. Even a cursory inspection reveals that B. M. Dijon 525 presents the double challenge of compound creation: first, how does the principle of energeia attract and organize affinity works into the same space? And secondly, what is the role of energeia in preserving the codex’s ability to produce meaning in the face of serious defacement? One look at the vandalism inflicted on this manuscript all but suffices to discourage closer study. After all, the systematic removal of images makes comparison of text and image of the sort we’ve undertaken here almost impossible. And, as Figure 5.8 demonstrates, it’s not just the incipit that’s despoiled. And yet, there’s something uncanny about the gaping holes in these pages that speaks to us. As though to illustrate energeia’s pluripotent circulation at work, the mutilated folios help us to understand, and appreciate better, the role played by pictures in reading and understanding manuscripts.

Figure 5.7.  Le Roman de la Rose, Incipit with initial miniature painting excised as well as mutilation from excision of miniature on verso. Dijon: Bibliothèque municipal MS 525, fol. 4r (Paris, 1355–1362). Mathias du Rivau, scribe.

Variance as Dynamic Reading | 131

Figure 5.8. Le Roman de la Rose, Folio from Guillaume de Lorris’s description of courtly vices painted on exterior walls of the Jardin de Déduit (Garden of Pleasure), showing excised miniatures. Dijon: Bibliothèque municipal MS 525, fol. 5r–5v (Paris, 1355–1362).

For here where pictures once were, a void now gapes … or does it speak? But to say what? To begin with, these neatly excised spaces force us to ask why they bother us so much. But we know the answer. On the one hand they offend our moral sense, but more profoundly, they irritate us by blocking our ability to read; it’s not just that we can’t read the stolen miniatures, it’s also that the absent paintings can’t help our reading of the text. This is precisely the section of the Rose where we expect to find miniatures illustrating the ekphrastic figures of courtly vices—Haÿne (“Hatred”), Felonnie (“Malice”), Vilanie (“Baseness”), Covoitise (“Covetousness”), Avarice (“Greed”), Envie (“Jealousy”), Tristece (“Sorrow”), Vieillece (“Old Age”), Papelardie (“Hypocrisy”), Povreté (“Poverty”)—that Guillaume

132 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

portrays so graphically. These passages challenge painters to rival the poet—or, rather, assert poetry’s superiority over painting when it comes to portraying visual images: the classic definition of ekphrasis. It can hardly be chance that inspired Guillaume de Lorris to introduce his dream allegory with an extended demonstration of a rhetorical trope that highlights the text/image ambivalence of energeia so pointedly. By introducing the Lover and the narrative with a poetic tour-de-force covering six pages (3 folios recto-verso), or 337 lines (vv. 129–466) in Langlois’s critical edition, Guillaume serves notice that vision—sight and insight—will strongly inflect his poetry. This is not a matter of speculation; he tells us as much in introducing the section: Quant j’oÿ .i. pou avant alé, Si vi un vergier grant et lé Enclos d’un haut mur bataillé Pourrait dehors et entaillé A maintes riches empraintures. Les ÿmages et les paintures Du mur volentiers remirai. Si vous conterai et dirai De ces images la semblance Si com moi vient en remembrance.45 (When I had proceeded a short way, I saw an large, wide wooded garden, surrounded by a high, crenellated wall covered with rich murals. I eagerly contemplated these images and wall paintings, so I can describe them for you, recounting their appearance exactly as I remember them.)

By way of reinforcing the point, Guillaume concludes the virtuoso rhetorical display with the following observation: Les ymages bien avisai, Car, si comme je devisai, furent a or et a azur De toutes parz paintes ou mur.46 (I considered these images carefully, for, as I have described, they were painted in gold and azure on the wall in minute detail.)

The rhetorical equivalent of these colors, or et azur (“gold and azure”), is, of course, hypotyposis (graphic description), which is a key aspect of ekphrasis, since it’s the way one “paints with words.” Both are forms of narrative activity, a key aspect of

Variance as Dynamic Reading | 133 energeia. It is the latter that charges the images—or more exactly their description— with the force that makes them such a powerful first lesson for the lover. Now if we return to our mutilated manuscript, B. M. Dijon 525 (Figs. 5.7 and 5.8), we immediately discover that it’s not just the painted portraits that have vanished, but with them part of the ekphrastic narrative as well. Even as the empty spaces appeal to our imagination, they also remind us of the corresponding “hole” they leave in our reading of the poetic passages. It’s as though the wound in the flesh of the parchment disrupts our rapport with the poem. Even though the poetic text in this part is relatively stable from one manuscript to another—as we see in Figures 5.9 and 5.10—the paintings accompanying the text vary widely from manuscript-to-manuscript, and especially from one period to another. From one generation to another, then, the ekphrastic portraits of courtly vices serve as visible guides to the pluripotent circulation of the Roman de la Rose and alert us to look closely at the text to discover less obvious instances of energeia’s passion for changing language as well as images. Look again, for example, at folio 5r–5v of B. M. Dijon MS. 525 (Fig. 5.8). Counterintuitive as it may seem, the mutilated folio represents a negative version of energeia. If we look at the pages that have been “blinded” as it were—for the illumination is a kind of eye or window on the folio—we sense the absence of tension occasioned by the dual registers of representation, text and image normally experienced in this part of the work. That tension springs from the competition between the ekphrastic portraits of the written text and the painters’ lively images. Let’s take another look at the Düsseldorf Rose (Fig. 5.9), and the Philadelphia Museum of Art Rose (Fig. 5.11). Even a cursory comparison of the poetic text in these two versions reveals that the paintings have little more than the names of the characters in common with the poetic narrative. In the first place, Guillaume describes the portraits of the anti-courtly vices which he says are painted on the exterior wall of the Garden of Delight by way of illustrating the kinds of behaviors unwelcome in the garden: Poverty, Jealousy, Melancholy, Old Age, Hypocrisy, and so on. These characters are described as holding emblems of their courtly “vice,” or else they simply embody it in their person, like Old Age, Poverty, and Sorrow. But when we examine the painted images in these two manuscripts, we find a very different imagination at work. The walls of the Garden of Delight on which they are supposed to be portrayed have disappeared: the paintings animate the personifications who now perform their eponymous roles. Having come to life, as it were, they prefigure the Pygmalion myth recounted by Jean de Meun in the second part of the Rose, an episode illuminators rarely fail to depict. From one manuscript

134 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

Figure 5.9.  Le Roman de la Rose paintings of courtly vices: Felonnie (“Malice”), Convoitise (“Covetousness”), Avarice (“Greed”). Düsseldorf: Bibliothek der Kunstakademie, MS A.B. 142, fol. 11v (Paris 14th c.).

Figure 5.10.  Portrait of two of nine courtly “vices” painted on the exterior wall of the Jardin de Déduit: Haine [Hatred] and Convoitise [Cupidity].  Le Roman de la Rose, Munich: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, MS Cod. Gall. 17, fol. 2r. Paris, 1407.

to another, energeia’s triad of properties—vision, thought, production—encourage illuminators to figure the courtly vices in widely different ways. In B. M. Dijon 525 (Fig. 5.7), however, this dialectic between poet and painter disappears, having literally been cut out of the parchment. And yet, Figure 5.8 still reveals traces of it in the rubrics: « Avarice », « Tristese », « Vieillesse ». Thanks to these labels, we at least know which portraits the vandals excised and where they were to be found in the manuscript. But these labels don’t get us far in reconstructing the images. That’s particularly true in the case of the bi-colored « Avarice ». The form is rare. I haven’t seen it in other manuscripts of the Rose. Might it be the case that the painting of this personification would have been as unusual as its label? If we don’t have any means of answering the question ourselves, the manuscript actually does offer an answer of sorts. In what way? Well, this codex happens to be a miscellany containing other works each with some link to the Rose, placed first in the codex as its principal work. The manuscript contains 223 folios: the first 112 contain the text of the Roman de la Rose, and the last 111 contain

Variance as Dynamic Reading | 135

Figure 5.11.  Portrait of courtly “vice” painted on the exterior wall of the Jardin de Déduit: Tristesse (“Sorrow”). Workshop of Maître François. Le Roman de la Rose. Philadelphia: Museum of Art, The Philip S. Collins Collection, gift of Mrs. Philip S. Collins in memory of her husband,1945–65–3, fol. 3v. Paris, 1440–1480.

diverse works whose themes touch in one way or another on themes treated in the Rose. In other words, the works collected in B. M. Dijon 525 form a group whose contents in one way or another are a response to the Roman de la Rose, the first work in the miscellany.47 In this they follow the lead of the Rose itself, since Jean de Meun spliced his lengthy 18,000-line continuation onto Guillaume’s 4,000+line original. But readings of the Rose offered by the disparate texts in B. M. Dijon 525 are anything but neutral. They fall squarely in the realm of a moral philosophy opposed to the Rose. Their debate is so strong that it constitutes a kind of “Querelle de la Rose” avant la lettre. These works illustrate how reading the Rose in the fourteenth century inspired responses written expressly to engage a dialogue with it. Pierre-Yve Badel’s classic study, Le Roman de la Rose au XIVe siècle: Etude de la reception de l’oeuvre (1980) describes the phenomenon in detail. But B. M. Dijon 525 is particularly dynamic in illustrating how a single codex can structure a dialectical response to the Rose.

136 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

B. M. Dijon 525’s dialogue with the Rose is not limited to a few texts. On the contrary, responses of all kinds—such as L’Espistre des femmes, L’Evangile des femmes, Un motet des femmes, etc.—follow one upon the other. It’s not insignificant that the piece immediately following the Rose is L’Espistre des femmes which initiates a series of works categorized generically in the table of contents as apres est prosa mulierum (“Here follow some pieces about women”).48 After this section comes two works of Jean de Meun—Centilogium [= centiloquium] magistri Johannis de Maduno and Le Testament de Jean de Meun qui fist le Romans de la Rose—as well as some other little-known works celebrating moral virtues. Then, the reader comes upon the work that will help us to hazard a guess as to why folio 5r of B. M. Dijon 525 contains the unusual bi-colored rubric “Avarice” under the excised portrait of that vice. The work in question is Gervais de Bus’s Le Roman de Fauvel (1310–1314 C. E.), introduced by an impressive miniature (Fig. 5.12). We can only speculate as to why Fauvel’s paintings survived the vandalism, which continues to fol. 153, only six folios before the splendid Fauvel miniature. If one had to hazard a guess,

Figure 5.12.  Le roman de Fauvel. Dijon: Bibliothèque municipal MS 525, fol. 158bis Mathias du Rivau, scribe. Paris, 1355–1362.

Variance as Dynamic Reading | 137 it might have something to do with the modes of moral philosophy and satire that characterize the post-Rose part of the miscellany. In this the codex definitely aligns with the penchant for moral philosophy found at the beginning of the next century in works by Christine de Pizan and Jean Gerson inter alia. Obviously, Mathias de Rivau and the artists responsible for MS Dijon 525 could not have envisaged the depredations it would subsequently suffer. Yet in choosing to juxtapose Fauvel and the Rose, the makers harnessed the politics of the gaze to assure that the antinomian qualities of each work would not escape perceptive readers. Fauvel, for example, mercilessly lampoons the underlying hypocrisy of the ambiguous gaze, which conceals the true object of perception, whereas the Rose from the outset actively encourages, even boasts of the ambiguous gaze, of which Guillaume’s portrait of Envie is a classic example, as the many ingenious artistic renderings make abundantly clear (Figs. 5.13 and 5.14, for example). Guillaume de Lorris is complicit in that respect, but Jean de Meun makes it a centerpiece of his play with illusion and reality in characters like Faux Semblant, Genius, Nature, Reason, and others (not excluding the Lover himself ). In any case, we can see how effectively both parts of the Rose, though for different reasons, use the parallax principle to align perception with energeia’s triad of seeing, thinking, making. As we know, parallax depends either on the viewpoint from which a person looks at an object, or else from the vantage points of several people looking at the same object. Parallax, in short, involves viewpoint, viewer, object viewed, and a viewer’s awareness of all three variables. Although both the Dijon Rose and Fauvel implement the parallax effect in their politics of perception, they do so differently, precisely because they have different moral vantage points. We can track these differences first in terms of the role played by the courtly “vices” in each work, and secondly by their status. While the Rose, as we saw, excludes the courtly “vices” from the garden, it then accords them a high-profile role both as subjects of Guillaume’s tour-de-force ekphrastic portraits—the first extended lyric passages in the work—and as staples of iconographic programs in every illuminated manuscript of the poem. Until its mutilation—perhaps as an act of censorship—MS. Dijon 525’s version of the Roman de la Rose was no exception to the text/image parallax principle. The Fauvel of MS. Dijon 525, on the other hand, a scorching satire of the behavior of noble sycophants, shifts the courtly “vices” from the margin to the center of the work (Fig. 5.15). So much so that the main character, Fauvel—a sort of icon of courtly power—is a composite of the negative character traits personified in Jean de Meun’s part of the Rose. In an amazing act of imaginative

138 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

Figure 5.13. Courtly “vice,” Envie (“Envy”), looking askance at young lovers. Le Roman de la Rose, Paris: Bibliothèque Sainte Geneviève, MS 1126, fol. 3r. Paris, 1325–1375.

recreation, Gervais de Bus repackages Jean’s material into a sweeping (and devastating) satire. The transposition of the vices from the margin of Guillaume de Lorris’s Rose to the center of Fauvel’s scenario results from a probing critique of Guillaume’s scenario, a critique first undertaken by Jean de Meun. Both Jean de Meun’s continuation of the Rose and Gervais de Bus’s Fauvel point to the impossibility of excluding such emotions as “envy,” “jealousy,” “avarice,” etc., from any narrative of human affective interactions, especially one that claims to “encompass the art of love,” as we saw earlier in this chapter. Whereas Jean de Meun peoples his part of the poem with a variety of characters motivated by the vices Guillaume sought to exclude, Gervais de Bus bundled them into one portmanteau allegorical character. His creation, the horse Fauvel, is

Variance as Dynamic Reading | 139

Figure 5.14. Courtly “vice,” Envie (“Envy”), looking askance at young lovers. Le Roman de la Rose, New York: The Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M185, fol. 3r, detail. Paris, 1340–1350.

Figure 5.15.  Fauvel, the horse and courtly idol, being curried and flattered by sycophantic courtiers. Le roman de Fauvel. Dijon: Bibliothèque municipal MS 525, fol. 158bis, detail. Mathias du Rivau, scribe. Paris, 1355–1362.

140 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

a monster in the precise etymological sense of “illustrating that which is contrary to nature.” In the French Middle Ages, the horse (cheval) was the metonym for that quintessential courtly figure, the knight (chevalier). This horse hides his true nature behind the façade of the courtly dyad, chevalier/cheval, making a perfect symmetry between word and image. In this case, the image is that of courtiers currying favor with Fauvel that masks their lust for power and sexual conquest. At the same time, the grotesque image of the “cheval,” designated by the enigmatic eponym, “Fauvel,” creates perceptual dissonance: the cheval is only an accidental instrument of chivalry, not the thing itself. Yet, text and image show courtiers doing homage to the stallion by literally currying favor by brushing his hide with their currycombs. Clearly the courtiers blindly serving Fauvel do not have the same vantage point as the reader. From our perspective, there’s no ambiguity as to their louche behavior. But we don’t come by that clarity of vision accidentally. In a virtuoso deployment of enargeia’s seeing, thinking, and making, the narrative introduces shifting perspectives, different vantage points that encourage readers to see through the illusions blinding the courtiers. To understand these shifts in seeing, we must return to the Dijon Rose, and especially to that enigmatic bi-colored rubric on folio 5r: “Avarice” (Fig. 5.8). And while we’re thinking about this image/word, we might recall that a parallax perspective can also take the form of the oblique gaze: that is to say loucher, “to look askance or gaze obliquely,” which is the iconographic symbol of Envy, as we saw above in Figures 5.13 and 5.14. Returning to the Fauvel narrative on folio 159r (Fig. 5.16), we find that avarice—figuring as both text and rubric (or word-as-image, which is what rubrics really are)—plays a central role in the Dijon Fauvel, particularly during Fauvel’s unmasking. We’ve already noted that Dijon 525 accords a special status to Avarice not found elsewhere (in MS. BnF fr. 146, for example). It is unusual for a miscellany to single out an attribute—even if it is a canonical sin—from one work in the manuscript for emphasis in other texts in the collection. But that’s just what Dijon 525 does by highlighting “Avarice” in the Rose and then later in Fauvel. By color-coding the word on folio 5r, and then incorporating it into the marginal sketch on fol. 159r, this manuscript uses the term to signal the link between the Rose and Fauvel. That the former was an important subtext for Fauvel is well known to scholars. Dijon 525, however, shows that poets in the fourteenth century not only recognized the link, but more importantly, intended audiences to experience the dynamic between them. Such at least was the case for Mathias Rivau, who planned and executed Dijon 525.

Variance as Dynamic Reading | 141

Figure 5.16. Acrostic revealing/explaining the acronym, “FAUVEL.” Le roman de Fauvel. Dijon: Bibliothèque municipal MS 525, fol. 159r, detail. Mathias du Rivau, scribe. Paris, 1355–1362.

Parallax perspective is crucial in Dijon 525’s Fauvel, as it is in the Rose. In Fauvel, however, the parallex perspective owes less to Envy’s oblique gaze than to a biaxial perspective that unfolds horizontally and vertically on the manuscript page. Figure 5.16 shows a marginal sketch illustrating the vertical and horizontal axes of the acronym, F-A-U-V-E-L. Pointers link key aspects of the marginal illustration to relevant verses in the text. The image actualizes the shifting perceptual modes between seeing and reading we discussed earlier. Reading horizontally, we follow the illusion that blinds the courtiers who vie for their turn to curry Fauvel’s flanks. The vertical mode reveals the name of F-A-U-V-E-L as an acrostic. By encompassing these two axes simultaneously—the horizontal axis that conceals the words behind the acronym, FAUVEL, and the vertical axis that reveals the meaning of those letters—the reader is able to decipher the satire. Thanks to this bimodal perspective, the reader enters the domain of the Logos, and thus of Gnosis, spiritual knowledge. When so practiced, the parallax perspective unmasks the lure

142 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

of the word-image, FAUVEL, which strives to dissemble the true face of courtly hypocrisy and illusion. These are only a few examples of how we can exploit the multiplicity of manuscripts available today in digital repositories to practice what I call “dynamic reading.” With a wealth of data to command, we can now see how the incessant versioning of a literary work like the Rose helps us to study the flow of pluripotent circulation, and thus to witness energeia at work. That form of “perpetual motion” in our manuscripts is what I mean by “dynamic reading.” But there’s another kind of reading arising from the collusion of narrative and codex. As written documents, manuscripts encourage compilation, or what we might call “composition by analogy.” In this mode, poets (or scribes) could incorporate into their narrative anecdotes drawn from a vast trove of literary, historical, or philosophical exempla perceived as apposite to the work’s intention. Poets may or may not identify the sources of these anecdotes, though for didactic reasons, they often do. Artists then follow to paint miniatures depicting the historical or philosophical material adopted by the authors. As a result, both text and paintings in compilation manuscripts vie to portray the incorporated fragments. The result of such compositions-by-compilation is to put in play yet another angle of perspective—this one evoking a far past and an exotic origin, e.g., ancient Greece, Rome, Palestine, or some other locale of the Mediterranean littoral. Composition-by-compilation thus calls into play an even more complex parallax effect that requires yet another kind of reading. For if one wishes to understand works so shaped, it’s important to read them as much for the hidden texts as for the overall narrative. To bring them into fruitful conjunction requires “synoptic reading,” as we’ll see in the next chapter.

6

Synoptic Reading Medieval Manuscripts as Text Networks

“… a fourth dimension allows a three-dimensional form to be rotated onto its mirror image.” —Möbius (1827)

On a deep winter’s day in 1372, an unprecedented event took place in Paris at the court of King Charles V. For the first time in French history, the king filled the office of Chancellor of France by election. The chancellorship was the second most important administrative post of the kingdom, an office so crucial that French kings traditionally entrusted it only to aristocrats. But in this case, Charles summoned his council—some two hundred churchmen, aristocrats, bourgeois, and others—to his residence at the Hôtel Saint-Pol for deliberation and vote.1 Charles’s decision to fill the office by election was so unusual that the writer of the Grandes chroniques de France, who recorded it, seems not to have known what to make of it (Fig. 6.1).2 While qualifying it as notable eleccion, “a noteworthy election,” he disposed of it in a single sentence, embedded in an account of the resignation of the previous Chancellor, Cardinal Jean de Dormans, Bishop of Beauvais, and brother of the newly elected chancellor. Item, le samedi.xxie. jour de fevrier.mccclxxi. desus dit monseigneur Jean de Dormans, Cardinal nomé de Biauvais, pour ce que il avoit esté evesque de Biauvais, lors chancellier de France, rendy au Roy les seaulx de France, et laissa l’office de chancellerie. Et par notable

144 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

elecion fist le Roy chancellier monseigneur Guillaume de Dormans chevalier, frere germain du dit cardinal de Biauvais. Et ainsi fut le dit cardinal de Biauvais chancellier depuis que il avoit esté cardinal par l’espasse de trois ans et.iiii. mois. Car il avoit esté fait cardinal le.xxiie. jour de septembre.mccclxviii. et avoit [fol. 462r–a] tousjours esté chancellier depuis.3 Item, Saturday, the 21st day of February, 1371 [old style], the aforementioned Monseignor Jean de Dormans, Cardinal-elect of Beauvais, having been Bishop of Beauvais, then Chancellor of France, returned the seals of France to the king, and quitted the Chancellery. And by a noteworthy election the King caused to be made chancellor M. Guillaume de Dormons, the brother of the aforesaid Cardinal of Beauvais. And the Cardinal of Beauvais had been chancellor since becoming cardinal for three years and four months. For he had been made a cardinal on the 22nd day of September 1368 and had been chancellor during this time as well.

Figure 6.1.  Description of the resignation of Cardinal Jean de Dormans as Chancellor of France, and the election of his successor, Guillaume de Dormans. Grandes chroniques de France, Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr 2813, fol. 461v–d (detail). Paris, 1375–1380.

Synoptic Reading | 145 However puzzling the election of Guillaume de Dormons as chancellor might have been in 1372, it was a different matter a year later, when Guillaume suddenly died. This time, Charles made an even more startling departure from precedent. Not only did he again convene his council on November 20, 1373, for the purpose of electing a successor, but for the first time his choice fell on a commoner (bourgeois), Pierre d’Orgement. Of the 130 electors who attended Parlement, 105 voted in favor of confirming Pierre’s appointment, while twenty-five voted against. The latter may reflect disapprobation on the part of some nobles towards this unconventional nomination, a sentiment apparently strong enough for Charles to postpone announcing the vote immediately. Although convinced of Pierre’s superior qualifications (there were eligible aristocrats), Charles felt constrained to wait for the Christmas court, a month later, where he conferred a knighthood on Pierre, only then officially presenting his new chancellor. In the words of the nineteenth-century historian, Siméon Luce, this dual infringement of consecrated procedure “was a novelty that must have struck contemporaries vividly.”4 That was certainly the case for Nicolas de Villemer, clerk of the parlement (greffier), who prepared the official record of the proceedings. Noteworthy in his account are the precise details of the proceedings which involved each member of the council coming individually before the king to swear to elect the most competent person he could name (whether prelate or lay person); then the recording by the clerk of those so nominated; and finally, the vote whose outcome, Nicolas notes, was known only after tallying the ballots (an indication that the election was authentic). Dimanche 20. Novembre, le Roy nostre Sire tint son grand & general conseil au Louvre, de prelats, de princes de son lignage, barons & autres nobles, des seigneurs de parlement, des requestes de son hostel, des comptes & autres conseilliers, jusqu’au nombre de sixvingt & dix personnes, ou environ, pour eslire un Chancelier de France, pource que la chancellerie vaquoit, & en general touchant, dist le Roy nostre Sire devant tous ceuz qui là estoient, tant du conseil, comme autres, que pour ceste cause avoit-il fait assembler sondit conseil, & puis fit tout aller dehors, & aprés par voie de scrutine, fit chacun de ceuz de son conseil venir à luy & par serment jurer aux Saints Evangiles de Dieu (que tous toucherent, prelaz & autres,) de luy nommer & conseiller selon leurs avis, & eslire la plus suffisante personne qu’ils sçauroient nommer, fust d’Eglise, ou autre, pour estre Chancelier de France, & furent les noms & les despositions de tous escrits par moy N[icolas] de Villemer, a ce ordonné par le Roy, & en sa presence, ou estoit avec Maistre Pierre Blanchet son secretaire tant seulement, & tout oüy & escrit, fu trouvé que Maistre Pierre d’Orgemont, paravant premier President de Parlement, nés de Laigny sur Marne, par le trop plus grand nombre des esliseus, fut nomé & esleu Chancelier de France ; c’est à sçavoir, par cent & cinq desdits esliseus : Et ce dist et publia à tous le Roy nostre Sire,

146 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

& crea son Chancelier de France, ledit Maistre Pierre d’Orgemont ; lequel se excusa molt humblement, & supplia au Roy qu’il vousist tenir pour excusé, & y pourvoir d’aultre, car il doutait molt, qu’il ne fust pas souffisant à cé. Et le Roy l’y respondit, que il estoit tout content, & enformé de sa souffisance ; & lors ly livra les Sceaux de France … Il est vray qu’en ce mesmes scrutine, fust esleu un premier President en Parlement ; mais ce ne fust pas lors publié, & pour cause, declarée le Lundy unziesme jour de Janvier ensuivant.5 Sunday 20 November the King, our Sire, held his grand and general council at the Louvre, with prelates, princes of the blood, barons and other nobles, lords of Parlement, gentlemen of his household, counts and other councilors, a total of some 130 people, for the purpose of electing a Chancellor of France, since the office was empty. And the King, before all those who were there, council members and others, said that this was the reason that he had assembled his council. And then he had them all go outside, and afterwards for the purpose of balloting,6 he had each member of his council come to him and by an oath on the Holy Scriptures of God (that everyone, prelates and others, put his hand on) and swear to counsel and nominate according to their opinion, and elect the most competent person that they knew, be he Churchman or other, as Chancellor of France. Then, the names and the depositions of all were written down by me, Nicolas de Villemer, as commanded by the King, and in his presence, along with that of Master Pierre Blanchet, his secretary. And when all had been heard and recorded, it was discovered that Master Pierre d’Oregemont, heretofore the first President of Parlement, born in Laigny-sur-Marne, was elected and appointed Chancellor of France by the greatest number of electors; that is to say, by one hundred five of the aforementioned electors. And the King, our Sire, announced this and created as his Chancellor of France, the aforesaid Master Pierre d’Orgemont. But the latter excused himself most humbly, and begged the King that he might consider him as excused and provide another [for the post], for he had grave reservations as to his competence for [the office]. And the King responded that he was quite content, and informed of his competence, and then he delivered over to him the Seals of France … It is true that in this same balloting a first President of Parlement was elected; but this was not published at the time, and for good reason, [but only] announced the eleventh day of January.

Certain terms and themes—e.g., eslire, par voie de scrutine, suffisante personne— stand out in this description. They are not fortuitous, but belong to a recognizable discourse of political theory derived from Aristotle’s Politics and Ethics adapted by Charles V and his advisors, particularly the philosopher Nicole Oresme. For Charles, Aristotle offered an ethical, but pragmatic model of governance based on analogy with the natural world coupled with the belief that the goal (τέλος) of the state is to assure both its autonomy and a good life for its citizens.7 These concepts had the further advantage for Charles of propounding a model of secular governance, at once compatible with Christian doctrine and predicated on a large, heterogeneous population. As Aristotle says in Politics II: “And not only does a city consist of a multitude of human beings, it consists of human beings differing in

Synoptic Reading | 147 kind. A collection of persons all alike does not constitute a state.”8 More cogently still, for Charles, the ideal community must have a center, a city as a focus for beneficial governance: “… for the state is essentially a form of community, and it must have a common locality; a single city occupies a single site, and the single city belongs to its citizens in common.”9 Aristotle’s description fits the city of Paris in 1370 quite accurately. With a diverse population of some 300,000 inhabitants drawn from all over Europe, it was the largest city in the world west of Beijing. This meant that ruling France involved first and foremost governing three separate, increasingly complex and heterogeneous sectors of the city. First, the merchant and artisan class who carried on the growing trade in and production of goods, particularly luxury items— including illuminated manuscripts—for which Paris became renowned in the fourteenth century. Secondly, Paris had an extensive ecclesiastical domain, which included abbeys, monasteries and convents, the university and its dependencies, a vast number of churches and related institutions, as well as college foundations (such as the College de Navarre of which Nicole Oresme was grand master from 1356 to 1364). And then came the ever-expanding royal court consisting of princes of the blood and aristocrats whose sumptuous hôtels particuliers began to occupy more-andmore space on the right bank as Jean II, followed by his son, Charles V, required nobles to reside at court in proximity to the king’s residences, the Louvre and Hôtel de Saint-Pol. And then, of course, myriad functionaries and goverment officials—among whom the nobles de robe were conspicuous—were attached to the court.10 There is no doubt that the growth of Paris and the corresponding expansion of the royal court in the fourteenth century were intimately linked. Charles’s decision to involve the royal council in electing high administrative officials attests his concern to organize his administration according to rational and inclusive principles. The election of Guillaume de Dormans as Chancellor of France in 1372, and the even more radical election of a commoner, Pierre d’Orgement as Chancellor in 1373 must be viewed in this context. These events also illustrate Charles’s concern to institute reforms based on authoritative political theory.11 There’s no mystery as to the theory in question. Both elections are consonant with Aristotle’s definition of the state (πόλις) as “a composite thing, in the same sense as any other of the things that are wholes but consist of many parts … for the state is a collection of citizens … and a citizen (πολίτης) is defined by nothing else so much as by the right to participate in judicial functions and in office.”12 More importantly for Charles’s purpose, Aristotle insists on the qualities of goodness,

148 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

virtue and wisdom that should ideally define both citizen and ruler. Just as virtue (αρετή) and wisdom (φρόνησις) define the good ruler, avers Aristotle, so the citizen who takes part in politics must manifest the same qualities.13 There is much truth in saying that it is impossible to become a good ruler without having been a subject. And although the goodness of a ruler and that of a subject are different, the good citizen must have the knowledge and the ability both to be ruled and to rule, and the merit of the good citizen consists in having a knowledge of the government of free men on both sides.14

Aristotle here sets up the rationale for the good citizens to demonstrate their political aptitude by participating in governance as office holders. The capacity to excel in deliberative or judicial office does not simply help govern the state efficiently; he also sets an example of wisdom and virtue, without which a state cannot realize its goal of bringing the good life to its citizens: “any state that is truly so called and is not a state merely in name must pay attention to virtue/excellence (αρετή).”15 Most cogently for the policies King Charles was implementing at the French court in the 1370s, Aristotle argues that the quality of arete (αρετή, connoting both virtue and excellence) that distinguishes the good citizen is not a passive virtue, but a dynamic one that manifests itself in diligently fulfilling the duties of office, thereby manifesting for all to see his civic virtue (πολιτική αρετή), which is roughly what Charles V means in specifying that the Chancellor of France must be a suffisante personne. And a state is the partnership of clans and villages in full and independent life, which in our view constitutes a happy and noble life; the political fellowship must therefore be deemed to exist for the sake of noble actions; not merely for living in common. Hence those who contribute most to such fellowship have a larger part in the state than those who are their equals or superiors in freedom and birth, but not their equals in civic virtue (πολιτική αρετή), or than those who surpass them in wealth but are surpassed by them in virtue (αρετή).16

This passage could easily serve as an explanation of the election of the commoner, Pierre d’Orgement, to the office of Chancellor of France.17 But beyond meritocracy as the criterion for political office, Aristotle argues the necessity of some form of participation in civic life for each citizen. Only when citizens acquire a moral sense of responsibility to the community can the state realize its goal of the good life. When discussing the concept of the value of a diverse citizenry within the state in Politics II, Aristotle reasons that individuals develop a sense of identification with the society by serving in whatever capacity fits their ability. “As the best

Synoptic Reading | 149 state consists of different classes, its unity is secured by each citizen giving service to society and receiving in return benefits in proportion to his services …”18 Collective activities, such as participating in the election of officials, figure prominently among the services envisaged for the morally informed citizenry. The rationale for accepting citizens as electors—even though the election of officials “is a task for experts”19—is purely pragmatic. Aristotle reasons that while the multitude might not individually have sufficient virtue (αρετή) and practical wisdom (φρόνησις) to rule, they can be counted on for collective wisdom. Although each individual separately will be a worse judge than the experts, the whole of them assembled together will be better or at least as good judges, and also about some things the man who made them would not be the only nor the best judge in the case of professionals whose products also come within the knowledge of layman: to judge a house, for instance, does not belong only to the man who built it, but in fact the man who uses the house (that is the householder) will be an even better judge …20

By now it must be apparent that, if initially the elections of 1372–1373 suggested a shift of authority from the king to his council, the political theory that motivates his strategy argues just the reverse. Key details of and terms used in Nicholas de Villemer’s account indicate, as we’ll see, that Charles’s decision to involve his council in important political decisions conform to the king’s determination to introduce political reform during his reign. Far from weakening the king’s power, enfranchising his grand council by adapting rational principles of Aristotelian political theory provided a pragmatic, secular basis for royal authority to buttress the more ethereal theological ones. More specifically, the chancellor elections of 1372–73 conform to theories of good governance set forth by Aristotle, particularly in his Politics, Nichomachean Ethics, and Economics. Charles knew these works and understood their importance for his purposes, through translations he commissioned from the fourteenth-century philosopher, Nicole Oresme. But Oresme did not simply translate Aristotle; he intercalated extensive critical commentary between segments of Aristotle’s text that served not only as a guide to the philosopher’s thought, but also to adapt his theory to Charles’s aspirations for the French monarchy. Quant est de politiques, c’est la science par quoÿ l’en scet roÿaumes & citez et quelconques communitez commencier ordener et parfaire & en bon estat maintenir et garder. Et les reformer quant mestier est. Et avecques ce elle vault & aide a faire composer & establir laÿs humaines justes & proffitables et a les entendre & interpreter ou gloser. Et aussi a les corriger & interpreter ou gloser. Et aussi a les corrigier ou muer et a savoir quant temps en est et pourquoÿ & comment.

150 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

Et pour ce si comme il apparra aprés par Aristote cette science appartient par especial & principalement as princes & a leurs conseilliers.21 As for the treatise on politics, it is the science [i.e. practical knowledge theory] by which one may learn to organize and perfect kingdoms and cities, and to preserve and maintain them in good order. And to reform them when necessary. But besides these things, [political science] is valuable for and helpful in making just and useful laws, in addition to aiding in understanding, interpreting, or glossing them, as well as revising, amending, or changing them, while also helping one to know when it’s time to do so, and to explain the reasons for such action. And as Aristotle shows us, this science belongs especially and principally to princes and their counselors.

This passage illustrates why Oresme’s glosses are an indispensable witness to the reception of Aristotle’s thought in the fourteenth century. But, even more significantly, they allow us to trace the influence of his political theory on the reforms Charles V envisaged in respect to the institutions and practitioners of state governance. Fascinating as these topics may be, however, I want to pursue a less obvious consequence of the partnership between Nicole Oresme and Charles V in the nearly decade long project of the translation and commentary of Aristotle’s Politiques, Éthiques, and Yconomiques. I’m referring to the seismic shift in intellectual life, literary practices, and even to the French language initiated by this project. While the radical change instituted by Charles’s knowledge technology—or perhaps politics of knowledge might be nearer the mark—encompasses much more than translations, they are the heart of the project for at least two reasons. First of all, they legitimize it by imbuing his innovations with that most medieval of imprimaturs, auctoritas, authority, perceived as a mantle of classical and theological decorum. Secondly, in their guise as contemporary vernacular avatars of venerated texts, they associate the king’s project with a network of texts (textnet) consisting not simply of wisdom literature whose roots burrow deep into antiquity, but also with the active practices of text production, citation, emulation, and language renewal cultivated by extensive interaction between the textual nodes of that network. The glosses Oresme intercalates with his translations of Aristotle illustrate his own interaction with this network of wisdom literature. He had recourse to an exceedingly wide range of classical and theological works on which to base the commentaries. There is nothing new about the practice of citation per se, of course. The innovation here lies in the extent, range, and acuity of his citations. In his Livre de Politiques d’Aristote, for example, Oresme cites some 150 separate

Synoptic Reading | 151 writers and texts, ranging from ancient Greek and Latin works to relatively contemporary treatises in Latin, Old French, and Arabic.22 His source for these quotations, a royal library founded by Charles V (of which more below), is itself a major feature of the king’s politics of knowledge. Another crucial aspect of the initiative was its effect on the French language. Oresme enriched the vernacular with a trove of philosophical and technical terms hitherto only available in Latin.23 More significantly, he did so by actually using lexical innovation to “do” philosophy. While his translations are accurate within the medieval sense of the term, he does not hesitate to “think along” with Aristotle, so that his translations adapt Aristotle’s texts to the vernacular culture and context of the 1370s. Similarly, when he glosses translated passages, he recasts the philosopher’s points in terms of tenets consonant with Charles’s knowledge politics. Typically, Oresme’s glosses adapt Aristotelian “principles,” however loosely construed, to fourteenth-century political and social issues of some urgency during a period when the causes and consequences of the Hundred Years’ War exerted serious stress on traditional definitions of monarchy both in France and in England. Burdens of taxation strained the hierarchies on which medieval social cohesion depended to the breaking point—and beyond, in the case of the recurrent Jacqueries in France or the Peasants’ Revolt (Wat Tyler rebellion) of 1381 in England. So the majority of Oresme’s interventions in Book III of his translation of Les Politiques, concern concepts of royal power (sovereignty), desirable royal attributes, nobility, what constitutes a citizen, and what the state (cité).24 This follows logically from his précis of Book III on fol. 72r of Avranches MS. 223, or on fol. 77r of Brussels, KBR MS. 11201–202 (Fig. 6.2): “Cj commence le tiers livre de Politiques ou quel il porsuit son entencion et met la distinccion et le nombre de policies et determine en especial de Royaume. Et contient.xxvij. chap[itres].”25 (Here begins the third book of Politics, in which he pursues his purpose and gives the definition and number of [systems of ] government, and in particular of the kingdom. And it contains twenty-seven chapters.) Of particular interest for Charles’s program is the first chapter with its definitions of citizen, state and the relationship of the one to the other. In speaking of citoien “citizen” and cité “state,” Oresme maintains the Greek pairing of πολις (polis, city state)/πολίτης (politès, citizen). He also echoes these terms in his use of policies, from Greek πολιτεία (politeia, cf. Latin politia, form of government, citizenship, administration).26 While names may not be destiny here, they are revealing. We do not ordinarily associate terms like “citizen” or “citizenship,” with medieval vernacular discourse. But when Oresme uses citoien to identify members of the cité or policie

152 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

Figure 6.2.  Incipit for Book 3, Aristote, Le Livre de Politiques, translated into French for Charles V by Nicole Oresme. Brussels: KBR, MS 11201–202, fol. 77r. Paris, 1376.

Synoptic Reading | 153 (πολιτεία), he evokes a very different relationship between the individual and the state than that divinely ordained hierarchical model, the medieval monarchy. There, the king, haloed with authority derived from God and buttressed (at least theoretically) by the church, rules a populace of subjects, hierarchically distributed in descending levels of privilege (and freedom). The relationship between king and subjects is tiered and conceptually, if not practically, absolute. According to political theology, the king is two beings in one: as a man, human with a natural and corruptible body; but as a divinely anointed monarch, he symbolizes the immortal body politic. Or, to evoke Kanotorzicz, as king, he’s haloed with a sacred and spiritual resonance: an aura, if not of divinity, then of divine agency.27 But when we find citoien linked to cité in Oresme’s French text, we face a very different kind of social contract from that of political theology. In place of the hierarchy of individual to auratic authority figure, citizenship (πολιτεία, politia) links the individual to a group identity, that of the polis or cité: “A citizen, Aristotle notes, is “a partner in a community.”28 As Oresme sees it, this model still contains hierarchies, but it does envisage broad citizen participation in political and community activities according to the individual’s ability. This is possible because the principles of cohesion for the polis/cité are not imposed by divine order, but inhere in the sociality of the community as moral imperatives. “Any state that is truly so called and is not a state merely in name must pay attention to virtue (αρετή).29 Oresme appends a gloss to the third book that merits close attention as testimony to the way he reads Aristotle’s concept of the citizen as potential political agent with the capacity and inherent right to participate in state governance. Any citizen, he argues, has the right to aspire to and participate in a variety of public offices, including those at the highest level of governance. The key word here is “citizen,” but it would be grossly wide of the mark to accord the term its modern connotation of universal enfranchisement succinctly voiced in the Declaration of Independence (1776 C. E.): “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal …” Oresme parses Aristotle in ways unusual, if not revolutionary, for the fourteenth century, while still maintaining its hierarchical structure. Unusually for the period, however, socio-political hierarchy is only partially predicated on privilege. If, as he says, “lineage, birth, situation, power, or means” determine who may aspire to citizenship, they do not suffice in themselves to assure that status. On Oresme’s view—and this sets his political philosophy apart from that of his time—citizenship is a right, rather than a privilege. Those with the requisite titles must earn the status of citizen by active participation—participation de fait is the term he uses—in some useful form of governance. In other words, for Oresme the term citoien denotes a form of socio-political agency. Citizens are

154 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

those who assure that the cité fulfills Aristotle’s definition of the polis: a political structure that benefits the populace as a whole. Logically, a beneficent state requires virtuous agents. That is why Aristotle, followed by Oresme, insists that virtue (αρετή) define the citizen. Since nothing is more nebulous than abstract virtue, Aristotle introduces citizen-agency, with its goal of transforming abstract potential to concrete achievement, by way of translating virtue to action. At the same time, citizen-agency qua potential for action allows it to accommodate a broad range of human capacities unified by the same goal. Here’s how Aristotle explains citizen-agency: “Although the most exact definition of [each citizen’s] excellence will be special to each, yet there will also be a common definition of excellence that will apply alike to all of them … although citizens are dissimilar from one another, their business is the security of their community, and this community is the constitution, so that the goodness of a citizen must necessarily be relative to the constitution of the state.”30  Turning now to the way Oresme tunes this material to accord with Charles V’s reform, we see how brilliantly he glosses Aristotle’s theory of the citizen agent as a secular counterpart to political theology. [73d] G[lose]: Ce est à dire que celuy quy est citoien quy peut ester juge sens ou/[74a] oveques autres ou quy peut ester prince sens ou oveques autre ou autres ou quy peut avoir voies en election de princes et de juges ou en conseil publiques car chascun tel participe aucunement en prince ou en jugement. Item, par princey Aristote entent souvent, ce semble, non pas seulement la souveraine dominacion mes generalement quelconque poste publique ou auctorité ou office publique honnorable qui resgarde toute la communité ou aucun membre de elle. Et donques citoyen est celui quy participe de fait en aucune de telles choses ou quy est habile a ce, consideré son lignage ou nativité, son estat, sa puissance, ses possessions, etc. Et la cause est car la cité est cité et a son estre par ordenance selon justice distributive, quy appartient mesmement as princes; et selon justice commutative; quy appartient as juges, ou selon expedient, qui appartient as conseillers. Et donques celui quy peut participer en ces operacions est citoyen en partie de cité et non autre. Et aucuns appellent telz citoiens bourgeois, car il pevent estre maires ou esquevins ou conseuls ou avoir aucunez honnorabletés autrement nommees.31 Gloss: That is to say that a citizen is someone who can be a judge himself or with others, or who can be a ruler himself or with others, or who has ways of participating in elections of rulers or judges or of taking part in public councils; for all such individuals can be rulers or judges. Item, by principality [princey] Aristotle often means not simply sovereign dominion [i.e. monarchy], but more broadly some public post or trust or honorable public office involving the whole community or some part thereof. A citizen is thus someone who actually participates in one or another of these kinds of public service, or has the capability

Synoptic Reading | 155 to do so, by virtue of lineage or birth, of estate, of power, or means, etc. And the reason for this is that the cité is the cité by virtue of its being ordered according to distributive justice, which is the province of princes; and according to commutative justice, which is the province of judges, or according to [political] expediency, which is the province of counselors. And so anyone who can participate in these activities is a citizen belonging to the city and nothing else. Now some people call such citizens ‘bourgeois,’ because they can be mayors, or aldermen, or counselors or aspire to other honorable offices.

With Oresme’s adaptation of citizen agency to Caroline policy we return to our starting point: the two elections for Chancellor of France in 1372–1373. Remember that the innovation took two forms: first, Charles V’s recourse to elections by the royal council to fill the post; and, secondly, for the 1373 election, Charles’s nomination of a bourgeois candidate, Pierre d’Orgement. On both counts— recourse to election by the extended royal council, and the choice of a citizen candidate—these two events show Charles implementing propositions found in Oresme’s translation and interpretation of Aristotle’s Politics. At work here is nothing less than a new paradigm for governance: political theology yielding to (secular) political theory. In place of royal power located in the auratic authority of the haloed monarch, political events derive legitimacy from knowledge-based models. But where do the models come from and why are they so persuasive? While a partial answer to the first question lies in Oresme’s adaptations of Aristotle’s political, economic, and moral philosophy to French vernacular culture in the 1370s, the larger answer must be found in what, earlier in this chapter, I referred to as “a seismic shift in intellectual life, literary practices, and even to the French language.” As the discussion of the link between Oresme’s Aristotle and Charles V’s political practice has demonstrated, the knowledge politics at the root of the movement derives from a new status accorded to books. That status is both institutional—nurtured by the royal library Charles founded (as we shall see)—and practical, a result of a new technology of reading and composing books. The royal library meant that books acquired a kind of second order status of power brokers, as media transmitting information deemed crucial for policy and conduct at court. If the king’s books enjoyed a status previously reserved for the Bible and liturgical works, it was because they were, like the books of the Bible, composite compendia of knowledge drawn from myriad sources covering the full sweep of human history as then envisaged. Major translations of the 1370s, like Oresme’s of Aristotle or Raoul de Presles’s of Augustine Cité de Dieu, present the original work synoptically as a series of segments interrupted by glosses, interpretations, quotations from and references to sacred and secular works from the deep past to

156 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

the near present. We might picture this synoptic compilation as a textnet where segments of the work being translated form nodes to which the translator attaches a constellation of “satellite nodes,” consisting of texts deemed helpful for contemporary readers to better situate and understand the significance of the original work. The textnet situates the original in a continually evolving web of relational links and influences. Since the relational groupings track the translator’s perceptions, the textnet serves the additional purpose of providing us with a dynamic view of how the works held in the net were intended to advance Charles’s knowledge policy as an indispensable aid to proper governance. Oresme is clear on this point. Without invoking the concept of a network of texts, he adduces historical examples of effective governance based upon myriad works of political theory spread over many countries and historical periods down to (implicitly) his own translations and commentaries of Aristotle. Mais aucun pourroit dire que ceste science n’est pas si necessaire. Car ou temps passé pluseurs roÿs et princes ont esté tres bien gouvernans [1c] qui onques n’estudierent politiques, ne leurs conseilliers semblablement. Je respon a ce et dÿ premierement que communelement les grans et bonnes polities & seigneuries qui, ou temps de jadis durerent longuement furent maintenues & gardées par gens qui avoient estudié livres de telle science comme furent les Grecs & pluseurs autres des quelx Aristote fait mencion. Et aussi les Romains avoient les scriptures des Grecs en ceste science comme de Aristote, de Platon, & des autres. Et aucuns des Romains latins, comme Tulles, Apuléeus, Plutarchus, & autres, en composerent livres intitulez De la chose publique.32 But some might say that [political] science is not really necessary. For in times past some kings and princes made excellent rulers who had never studied [political science], nor had their advisors. I answer this charge by saying first of all that, in the past, the most enduring policies and reigns were maintained and preserved by people who had studied works of [political] science such as the Greeks and some others mentioned by Aristotle. Similarly, the Romans had Greek treatises of this science such as Aristotle’s, Plato’s, and others. And some Latin Romans, such as Cicero, Apuleius, Plutarch and others, wrote treatises entitled, The Republic.33

While Oresme’s Prohème frequently repeats the word science and related knowledge terms (e.g. sage, sagesse, savoir), this passage tells us what he understands by the term. On his view, Science connotes knowledge-in-action and knowledgeas-end, which is to say, knowledge as activity (energeia) and as goal-directed activity (entelechia/telos).34 But besides connoting mode, activity, and purpose, science comes with a particular history and culture, a network of books, in fact. Not only do books formulate, convey, and transmit ceste science, they also generate protocols for readers to understand and implement its precepts. This is perhaps why

Synoptic Reading | 157 Oresme doesn’t talk about reading, but rather studying (estudier) books (livres), in the plural. Science, in other words, posits as a corollary to citizen agency the idea of a reader, not simply empowered by knowledge, but who attains that knowledge by assimilating information from a variety of sources. Or perhaps we should say that the knowledge-empowered reader, in Oresme’s eyes, is a precondition for citizen agency. Be that as it may, we begin to see that for Oresme and his contemporaries knowledge exists in a complex matrix where past and present meet in a new synthesis made possible by immediate access to a multiplicity of books on a scale heretofore unavailable. In this matrix, readers and authors view books as a complex system of citational cross-referencing—a textnet, as it were. Reading is less a linear activity, in which the reader follows a single narrative, than a synoptic process where references to other texts participate fully in the evolving narrative so as to require the reader to recognize and assimilate bits of narrative originating in different locations, much like reading simultaneously from several different works. The reader becomes accustomed to construing this narrative mosaic as a textnet, or web of allusions that the author must organize coherently. While the primary purpose of the textnet is to organize references that further the understanding of the content and seminal influence of one work, it also makes the case for the need to synthesize knowledge via wide-ranging access to books viewed as knowledge repositories. This, in turn, entails a corresponding change in reading protocol by demonstrating that to read an important work thoroughly means reading it as the principal node in a web of relational texts; or, in short, reading all the nodes on the textnet. Synoptic composition, not surprisingly, promotes synoptic reading practices. But synoptic reading refers not only to the act itself, but also entails a novel conception of the material. If the textnet offers proof of the need to access multiple books to synthesize knowledge, it also communicates the power of books as repositories and generators of knowledge. In short, the textnet symbolizes the production, consumption, and management of content as information technology. It is this recognition of the book as—to risk anachronism—information technology that gives it a new prestige, enhanced by its freshly acquired institutional space in the royal palace. And speaking of which, we should now turn to Charles’s motives in founding the Royal library after his coronation in 1364. Thanks to digital repositories we can undertake historical research of this nature not previously feasible in the absence of comparative access to manuscripts and cross-platform interoperative

158 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

search protocols. The library lends itself perfectly to such inquiry, which will allow us to trace its impact on emergent court culture under Charles V (r. 1364–1380) and his son, Charles VI (r. 1380–1422). Charles chose for his repository three rooms, one above the other, in the northwest tower of the old palace of the Louvre (Fig. 6.3). Connected by a spiral staircase and lined with shelves containing some 1,200 manuscripts, these rooms had the advantage of lying just below his personal quarters. However unprepossessing by modern standards, the royal library represented the largest private collection in the realm and it changed the cultural life of Paris, and ultimately of Europe.35 Why was it so significant? After all, there were other libraries in Paris, and throughout France, for that matter. But the royal library was unusual in that Charles made it an instrument of governance. He did so by choosing books that, from a medieval perspective, could influence statecraft and cultural life because they represented the best minds of Classical and Patristic philosophy and theology, from Aristotle and Cicero to Augustine and Aquinas (Fig. 6.4). So far Charles followed conventional wisdom. What he did with the choice, however, could not have been more original.

Figure 6.3.  Palais du Louvre c. 1412–1416, Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry, Chantilly: Musée Condé MS 65, fol. 10v. Paris, 1412–1416. Charles V established his library on three higher floors in one of the slim, round corner towers, just below his own private apartment.

Synoptic Reading | 159

Figure 6.4. Aristotle’s Physics, translated into French by Nicole Oresme for Charles V as Du ciel et du monde. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fol. 1082, fol. 3r. Paris, 1370–1380.

First, the king commissioned some thirty translations into French of the greatest philosophers in the known world, both ancient and modern (Figs. 6.4 and 6.5, for example). For the first time, these works occupied the epicenter of royal power, were read in the language of the court, and were glossed to show their relevance to contemporary French life. Secondly, he installed these books in his own residence, where court poets and counselors alike could and did read them. In fine, he envisaged the royal library as a resource for integrating moral, practical, and religious philosophy to court society on the one hand, and to state policy on the other.

160 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

Figure 6.5.  Guillaume de Peyraut, Le livre de l’enseignement des roys et des princes…, Henri de Trévou, scribe; the Master of Charles VI, artist. Top left: king and queen seated receiving bishops; top right: king and queen seated with small princes next to king and small princesses beside queen; bottom left: king rendering justice; bottom right: king in battle. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr 1728, fol. 1r. Paris, 1375–80.

Just as he did not hesitate to implement what he learned from his reading, neither did Charles conceal his motives. He justified his books as beneficial to the state; enlisted the best minds of his time, as we’ve seen, and paid them handsomely from his own funds. In 1371, for example, he asked Raoul de Presles to undertake a French translation of Saint Augustine’s De civitate Dei (City of God), saying it was “for the good of the public, of the kingdom, and of all Christendom.”36 Similarly, in 1374, he authorized a payment of 200 gold francs to Nicole Oresme “as salary and for his efforts in translating two books [of Aristotle] which are very necessary to us, namely his Politics and Economics.”37

Synoptic Reading | 161 But perhaps the most revealing instance of Charles’s self-identification with books come from the lines he penned on the last page of a codex copied for him in 1372: En ce livre moral sont conteeneus pluseurs notables et bons livres, et est à nous Charles, le Ve de notre nom, roy de France, et le fimes escrire et parfere l’an mil CCC LXXII.     —CHARLES38 This book of moral topics, containing various noteworthy and uplifting books, belongs to us, Charles, the fifth king of France with our name, and we had it copied and completed in the year CCC LXXII.     —CHARLES

What has the library to do with such acts? Surely Charles could accumulate books for his own pleasure and edification, which, as Christine de Pizan assures us, are unfeigned.39 But, as much as he loved books for their own sake, he saw them as necessary for more than his own personal edification. We’ve seen how he followed Aristotle’s concept of citizen-agency in the chancellorship elections of 1372 and 1373. Such examples show his desire to implement secular political theory as a model for governing France according to rational principles. As Nicole Oresme and his scribe, Raoulet d’Orléans, sum up the purport of Aristotle’s Politics in the rubric to Book One in Brussels KBR MS. 11201–202, fol. 1r (Fig. 6.6): Cj commence le livre de Politiques, ou quel Aristote traicte et determine des manieres de ordener et de gouverner les citez et les grans communitez et contient.viii. livres particuliers. Ou premier livre, il met son entencion et determine des premieres parties de communicacion politique ou de cité. Et contient.xviii. chapitres. (Here begins the book of Politics where Aristotle treats of and determines ways to rule and govern cities and large communities, and it contains eight individual books. In the first book he outlines his understanding [of the subject] and sets forth the first parts of political discourse, or concerning the city. And it contains eighteen chapters.)

By making works such as Aristotle’s Politics and Economics available, the library became a symbolic and practical instrument by which the king could inculcate a

162 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

Figure 6.6.  Incipit for Book 2 of Aristotle’s Politics from Nicole Oresme’s translation and commentary. Medallions represent: top left, Socrates dictating to Plato; top right, Hippodamus [Ypodamus] of Miletus; lower left, Phaleas [Helleas] of Chalcedon. Brussels: KBR, MS. 11201–202, fol. 36r. Paris, 1376.

Synoptic Reading | 163 politics of knowledge among his counselors and courtiers. Together, the library and Charles’s campaign for French translations of religious and philosophical works were meant to create a court culture based, as we’ve seen, on sound political and economic principles and civic virtue (άρετή, arete). Nicole Oresme articulates Charles’s policy for him in the exordium to his translation. Tres redoubté Seigneur, selon ce que dit la Saincte Escripture, Cor regis in manu Domini et quocunque voluerit inclinabit illud, le cuer du roy est en la main de Nostre Seigneur; Il le enclinera la ou Il vouldra.40 Et donques beneïst soit Dieu, car Il a le vostre noble cuer encliné a faire mettre en language françoÿs la science de politiques de laquelle dit Hue de Saint Victor: politiqua est que rei publice curam sustinens cunctorum saluti sue prudencie sollercia et justicie quoque libera et fortitudinis stabilitate ac temperancie paciencia medetur.41 Ut ipsa [politica] dicat de semet, Per me reges regnant et legum conditores justa decernunt.42 Politique est celle qui soustient la cure de la chose politique et qui par l’industrie de sa prudence et par la balance ou poies de sa justice et par la confiance et fermeté de sa fortitude et par la pacience de son attrempance, donne medicine au salut de tous en tant qu’elle pout dire de soy meisme: Par moÿ les roÿs regnent, et ceulz qui funt les laÿs decernent et determinant par moÿ quelles choses sunt justes.43 Most awesome Majesty: according to Holy Scripture … “the heart of a king is in the hands of Our Lord; He turns it where it pleases Him.” And praise be to God that he has bent your noble heart to the task of having translated into the French language the science of politics of which Hugh of Saint Victor says … “Politics is what underlies concern for public welfare and which, by its recourse to prudence and by the equipoise of its sense of justice, and by its confidant and firm fortitude, and by its patient character, administers comfort for the security of all, so that it can justly say: ‘Thanks to me, kings rule, and those who make my laws discern and determine what things are just’.”

In accordance with treatises of social and papal reform such as Marsilius of Padua’s Defensor Pacis (Advocate for Peace)—translated into French by Jean de Jandun— Oresme, and Charles view social justice and moral rectitude as guiding themes of Aristotle’s political science.44 Unabashedly radical in its arguments for broadening participation in governance beyond the monarch and his circle, Defensor Pacis was one of the most unorthodox works of political science and anticlericalism written in the Middle Ages. When Pope John XXII condemned the treatise in 1327, both Marsilius and Jean de Jandun were forced to flee Paris. So it’s all the more intriguing that fifty years later, this incendiary tract exercised such a hold on Nicole Oresme and, through him, Charles V. As figure 6.7 shows, Oresme did not hesitate to quote Defensor Pacis in his glosses, as we see in the following example, a commentary extolling the virtue of broad social participation in making and revising laws.

164 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

Figure 6.7. Aristotle, Livre de Politiques. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr 9106, fol. 91v. Paris, c. 1397–1398. [91c] Glose. En un livre entitled Defensor pacis, ceste raison est alleguée a monstrer que [loÿs] humaines positives doivent estre faites, promulguées, corrigiées, ou muées de l’auctorité et consentement de toute la communité ou de la plus vaillant partie. Car ausi comme en une edificaccion sont requises.ij. manieres de gens, une est celui ou ceulz qui font la maison, et l’autre sont les habitans qui scevent quelle [91d] maison leur est bonne. Presque en telle maniere les sages scevent composer et faire les loÿs et estatuz. Et toute la multitude des sages et d’autres communs scevent quelles loÿs sont profitables pour touz …45 Gloss. In a book entitled, Defensor pacis (Advocate for Peace), this reason is given to show that constructive human laws should be made, promulgated, revised, or changed by authority and consent of the entire community, or at least its more worthy part. For as an edifice requires two kinds of people, the one being those who build the house, and the other, the inhabitants who best know the kind of a house that suits them. So almost in the same way wise men know how to conceive and make laws and statutes. And together, wise men and commoners know best what laws are effective for everyone …

The sentiments expressed by Oresme, while a logical corollary of citizen-agency, go beyond that concept to propose something akin to at least a partial citizen

Synoptic Reading | 165 enfranchisement. Limited, as opposed to universal, since the franchise is envisaged as extending only to citizens equipped by education, experience, and means for public service. That means, in other words, no lower on the social scale than the bourgeoisie. Still, the passage proves the intention of King Charles and Oresme to argue for, and implement, socio-political reform predicated on enlarged citizen participation in key aspects of governance. Unlike the code of courtly love of the twelfth century, or the dolce stil nuovo of the late thirteenth century, Charles’s moral code was meant to arise from a broad foundation of political theory, both ancient and modern. And for that, a library was necessary for three reasons. First, a library preserves collections of exemplary works organized on specific principles of selection. Second, it attests the importance of the knowledge based on those principles, and offers examples that can be emulated and woven into new work. Third, a library provides access to its collections and serves as a social resource, that is to say, an informal meeting place for users to exchange ideas based on their reading in the collection. Finally, we should note that the creation of Charles’s library—organized according to topically-oriented acquisition principles—offers a rare insight into the formation of an influential text network with far-reaching consequences for Parisian literary culture of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century. In the absence of his library, Charles’s acquisitions would simply satisfy the passions of a collector. On the other hand, as part of an acquisition policy for the library, Charles’s commissions attest to a carefully formulated politics of wisdom embracing a liberal (for the era) political theory accompanied by a moral philosophy of citizen-agency. And as additions to the library the French translations became cultural capital, that is to say concrete examples of information technology enshrined, as it were, in the royal palace, freely available to the courtiers whose behavior he was seeking to modify. It was not simply the library as repository that made the difference, however, but Charles’s bold decision to constitute it officially as a state office headed by a royal librarian appointed by and reporting to the king himself. Charles’s choice for this new post tells us much about what he had in mind, and it also serves as a case study illustrating the nature of virtue or arete (άρετή) as a prime characteristic of the citizen-subject. It was not simply that the king wanted someone close to him and who shared his values, and for whom books mattered as much as they did to him, but he also sought a trusted aide, accustomed to carrying out delicate missions. He found such a man in his immediate entourage: a valet de chambre named Gilles Malet. Charles and Gilles shared close

166 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

affinities, particularly their love of books, passion for learning, and the wisdom and moral character conferred by these pursuits. We have this from no less an authority than Christine de Pizan—herself an avid patron of Charles’s library—who describes both men, Charles and his librarian, in terms that leave no doubt as to the intimate rapport between people and the books they read (Fig. 6.8).

Figure 6.8.  Christine de Pizan, Le Livre des fais et bonnes meurs du Sage Roy Charles V, Book 3, ch. 21: Charles V recounts the virtues of his librarian, Gilles Malet. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr 10153, f. 74v. Paris, 1404.

Le roy Charles avait un sien varlets de chambre, lequel, pour cause que en lui savoit plusieurs vertus, moult amoit; celluy, par especial, sur tous autres, souverainemet lisoit et bien ponctoit, et entendans homs estoit; comme il pert; car encore est vif chevalier, maistre d’ostel sage et honnorez, comme il fust par ledit roy moult enrichis. Comme une fois à celluy, Gile Mallet avoit nom, avenist tel inconvenient que un sien petit fils, courant atout un petit coutel pointu, cheust dessus et se tuast; laquelle chose,

Synoptic Reading | 167 n’est mie doubte, fu grant douleur et perplexité au père; néantmoins, cellui propre jour, fu devant le roy, lisant longue piece par autel semblant et chiere, ne plus ne moins que acoustumé avoit, dont le sage roy, qui la vertu de toutes choses estoit considerant, comme il sceust le cas, moult l’en prisa et telz paroles dist de luy en son absence: “Si cest homme n’avoit ferme vertu et plus grant que nature ne l’influe communement es hommes, la pitié paternelle ne lui souffriroit couvrir son caz soubz telle constance.”46 King Charles had a Gentleman of the Bedchamber to whom he was particularly attached thanks to the many virtues the king perceived in him. In particular, this man read and wrote superbly, and possessed uncommon understanding, as will become apparent. He’s still alive in fact, a knight and Maître d’hôtel, wise and much honored, since he was greatly enriched by the king. It so happened, once, that this man—Gilles Malet by name—suffered a tragedy when one of his little sons was killed when he fell on a sharp knife he was holding while running very fast. There can be no doubt but that this blow caused great sorrow and perplexity to the father. Notwithstanding, on the same day he was at his usual post by the king’s side, reading to him for a long while with his accustomed demeanor. At which the wise king—who appreciated virtue in all matters—made the following observation once he learned of his aide’s loss and the latter had left: “If this man did not have stronger moral qualities than Nature grants to most men, paternal grief would not have suffered him to conceal his misfortune with such self-control.”

Through his reaction to tragedy, Gilles figures as the screen on which Christine projects the moral principles underlying Charles V’s knowledge politics. The latter are clearly meant to be transformative, with the king and Gilles serving as models for moral conduct achieved through reading. In this Aristotelian schema—a model Christine would have acquired from frequenting Charles’s library—books represent the potentiality or power (dunamis) of/for change, while Charles and Gilles embody the actualization of potential in human behavior (energeia and entelechy).47 For Aristotle, the purpose of the passage from dunamis, “potential” (“capacity,” “power”) to energeia, the actualizing-of-potential-by-a-person, lay in allowing him to explain how individuals could enact their capacity for arete (ἀρετή) or virtue. Since arete connotes “striving to achieve one’s potential,”48 it conveys perfectly the intention of the politics of knowledge espoused by Charles V as portrayed by Christine. We can understand now why she places so much emphasis on philosophers in the second part of this chapter and on terms related to arete (ἀρετή) in describing Gilles. If we don’t perceive the philosophical principles exhibited by Gilles and glossed by Charles, we miss the whole point of the chapter. To make sure we

168 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

don’t, Christine takes care to embed references to arete throughout the anecdote. The plusieurs vertus—“various moral qualities”—Gilles possesses divide into two categories: practical competence and moral self-mastery. His ability to read and write superbly (souverainement bien) highlights his literacy, while his moral virtues include: perspicacity (entendens homs estoit), endurance (patience, in the rubric), fortitude (ferme vertu), and self-possession (constance). Ending Charles’s gloss with the word, constance, Christine uses it as a pivot—A ce propoz de constance “Speaking of fortitude”—for a segue to an analogous story about the reaction of the Greek philosopher, Anaxagoras, to the death of his sons as told by Valerius Maximus. Before telling the story, however, Christine specifies its historical context in the era of Greek philosophers, some of whom she names while citing instances of virtuous behavior: A ce propos de constance, raconte Valeres que ou temps que furent ces philozophes, c’est assavoir Demoetus, qui se fist crever les yeulx affin que il en eust meilleur entendement; Eraclitus, qui est appellé tenebreux, Anaxagoras, et Herciles, auteur de dragedés; de Naxagoras est escript que, comme il disputast ès escoles, un messagé lui vint dire que ses filz estoient mors; mais oncques ne s’en mua, ne laissa la disputaison; apres dist au messagé: “Tu ne m’as apporté nulle nouvieleté, car je scavoye bien qu’ilz estoient mortelz.”Saint Augustin dit que cellui Naxagoras fu condempnez a Athenes, por ce que il disoit que le soleil n’estoit autre chose que ainsi que une pierre ardent: et ceulz d’Athenes aouroient le soleil comme Dieu.49 Speaking of fortitude, Valerius Maximus tells us that in the days of the ancient philosophers, that is to say in the time of Democritus, who gouged out his eyes in order to acquire more perfect understanding; of Heraclitus, known as the obscure philosopher; of Anaxagoras and Eschylus, who wrote tragedies, it was written of Anaxagoras that once, when he was engaged in philosophical debate in the schools, a messenger came to him bearing news of the death of his sons. Betraying not the least sign of emotion, Anaxagoras continued the debate. Later, he said to the messenger, “You brought me nothing new, for I knew very well that my sons were mortel.” Saint Augustine tells us that this same Anaxagoras was indicted in Athens because he said that the sun was nothing more than a fiery rock, whereas the Athenians worshipped it as a god.

Now that we’ve seen the whole of chapter 21 of Book III [(3 x 7) of 3] of the Livre des faits et bonnes meurs du sage roy Charles V, we recognize three unequal parts, each recounting an exemplary anecdote—two secular and one Christian—from three different periods ranging from fourteenth-century Paris, to Ancient Athens, with a return to the Christian Roman empire of the fourth century. The temporal and geographic arrangement of the anecdotes evokes

Synoptic Reading | 169 the medieval concept of translatio imperii et studii central to Valois politics in fourteenth-century Paris. But in place of translatio imperii’s usual trajectory running from East to West and from antiquity to the present, Christine inverts the formula. It’s a boldly effective stroke. Reversing translatio’s accustomed structure allows Christine to transform an independent historical force into a Parisian genius loci situated at the court of Charles V. With this stroke, Christine breathes new life into a shop-worn concept. But how to account for such seeming disregard for temporal and geographic logic? By looking, I suggest, at the same books Christine was reading in Charles’s library, particularly at the glosses by contemporary translators such as Raoul de Presles. In his French translation of Augustine’s City of God, commissioned by Charles V, for example, Raoul tells us that Paris was founded not only before France itself, but already in the time of Jeroboam, King of Israel and Amaziah, King of Judah. Since Jeroboam succeeded King Solomon in 930 B. C. E., Raoul situates the founding of Paris shortly after Solomon built the First Temple in Jerusalem.50 With such claims enshrined in no less an authoritative text than Augustine’s City of God, Christine would have had every incentive to impart a spiritual dimension to Valois claims for the exceptional history of Paris. She does so by invoking the concept of “figura” and figural interpretation—a commonplace of biblical exegesis—as Auerbach explains so memorably. Just as Christ was said to be the figural realization of Old Testament prophecy, Christine cast Paris as the new center of learning prefigured by antiquity. Charles V’s policies, in her view, assure that networks of knowledge—philosophy, history, theology, literature, natural science, economics, physics, etc.—lead out of and back to the Louvre and its library. The mystical concept of progression and return preached by Plotinus and Pseudo-Dionysius has become a horizontal trajectory traced in vernacular texts. Returning to the question of the chapter’s tripartite structure, the anecdotes not only represent different sources, but the sources’ relation to Christine’s work have their own story to tell. Christine composes the first part based on an oral anecdote told about Gilles Malet, Charles’s librarian, who was still very much alive in 1404, as she takes care to tell us by way of authentication. The second anecdote comes from Book V, chapter 10, of Memorable Deeds and Sayings (Valeri Maximi Factorum et dictorum memorabilium libri novi), a popular book of exempla much cited by orators and preachers, by the first-century Roman historian

170 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

Valerius Maximus. The third story may be found in Book 18, chapter 41, of Augustine’s De civitate Dei. Ostensibly germane because Augustine tells another anecdote about Anaxagoras, the context of De civitate dei 18 makes this short finale to the chapter into one of its keys. Book 18 of The City of God traces the parallel histories of the terrestrial and celestial cities from Abraham’s time forward. Augustine’s narrative stresses the concordance of prophecies of the coming of Christ both from Old Testament prophets and from pagan oracles. In the best figural tradition, Augustine records worldly events whose prophetic character become apparent only after Christ’s birth reveals their true meaning. Appropriately enough for Christine’s bookish context, Augustine inserts his anecdote on Anaxagoras in chapter 41, which begins by acknowledging the centrality of virtue/arete in philosophy. Here’s how he begins the chapter: But let us … return to the philosophers from whom we digressed … They seem to have labored in their studies for no other end than to find out how to live in a way proper for laying hold of blessedness (ad beatitudinem capessendam). Why, then, have the disciples dissented from their masters, and the fellow disciples from one another, except because as men they have sought after these things by human sense and human reasoning?51

We may take it as given that, for Augustine, philosophy guided only by human reasoning could never achieve true virtue. What interests him (and, undoubtedly, Christine as well) are the prophetic pagans who, like Dante’s Virgil, glimpse the truth even if born too soon to know Christ. Augustine describes these visionaries as: …[those] whose love of truth severed them from their teachers or fellow disciples, that they might strive for what they thought was the truth, whether it was so or not. But … how can humans reach forth to attain blessedness, if divine authority does not lead it? Let our authors, among whom the canon of the sacred books is fixed and bounded, be far from disagreeing in any respect. It is not without good reason that … so many and great people, both learned and unlearned, in countries and cities, have believed that God spoke to them or by them—I mean the canonical writers—when they wrote these books.52

Now as we saw from Augustine’s anecdote quoted by Christine—from Book 18, chapter 41—Anaxagoras is singled out—as he was earlier in Book Two when Augustine first discusses Greek philosophy—for his independence of intellect and

Synoptic Reading | 171 fortitude in the face of adversity. But if the Greek philosopher is the obvious focus, a subtler evocation of the Augustinian context casts Gilles Malet and Charles V as among the exemplary figures of this history whose steadfast purpose—ferme vertu—raises them above their compatriots, to win for them a place in the ranks of the strivers for virtue Augustine evokes so passionately. Returning to Christine’s chapter, it’s obvious that the three anecdotes share a thematic link as examples of stoic self-mastery and perception of the material world. It’s only on reflection, that a more subtle, even hidden connection comes to mind; a human, rather than a purely thematic link. In fine, Christine posits a metaphoric equation between Charles V, Gilles Malet, Valerius Maximus, and Saint Augustine whose key is the library and its books. Charles articulates the philosophical purpose for the library; Gilles Malet is the keeper of the books; and Valerius Maximus and Saint Augustine represent the transformed face of knowledge newly rendered into French and replete with glosses and paintings worthy of Parisian court culture. In fact they represent an innovation in book culture whose pages bear witness not only to the cult of books and knowledge symbolized by Charles V’s library, but to the realization of Augustine’s hope that wisdom books ought to be rare and esteemed “yet not so few that their harmony should not be amazing.”53 Augustine here evokes the way a text network—however disparate in origins and topics may be the individual works—nevertheless manages to coalesce around common beliefs or ideologies. Christine, in her turn, demonstrates how such networks can be deployed in various configurations as raw material for yet new creations. By reconfiguring allusions to the web of prior texts, the new work signals its allegiance to the value system or ideology that makes possible what Augustine calls “amazing harmony” (miranda consensio). While Christine makes deft use of her text network throughout Le livre des fais et bonnes meurs du sage roy Charles V, in this chapter—which we might call “the library episode”—she actually shows how textnets are created and function. Without mentioning the source of her anecdotes, the books in which they are to be found are among those commissioned by Charles and described by Gilles in his catalogue. The first is the translation of Valerius Maximus that Simon de Hesdin completed at the behest of Charles V in 1375 (Fig. 6.9). Copied by one of Charles’s official scribes, Henri de Trevou, it figures as numbers A242 and B245 in Gilles Malet’s catalogue of the royal library with the following description: “Valerius Maximus, couvert de soye vermeille a queue, tres bien escript et ystorié” (“Valerius Maximus, bound in red silk, very well written and illustrated”).54

172 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

Figure 6.9.  Valerius Maximus, Facta et Dicta memorabilia, translated by Simon de Hesdin for Charles V. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr 9749, fol. 1r. Paris, 1375.

As we see in Figure 6.9, the frontispiece depicts three scenes on the upper and lower register of the half-page miniature. Once one recognizes what these scenes represent, they may be taken as perfect illustrations of the way textnets operate as explained above. The upper left shows Valerius Maximus writing his Latin work, while on the upper right, we see Simon de Hesdin creating his French version. The combined image in the lower register portrays the presentation of the book by the kneeling translator—on the right—to the king on the left. Layout and color coding link the two moments, separated by nearly 1400 years, when each work became a node on the network of texts now housed in Charles’s library. Charles V and Valerius shown in rooms superposed one over the other—like the books in the king’s tower library—both wear the blue robes symbolic of the French royal court. Simon wears a red robe while writing. Since he appears similarly garbed in the presentation scene immediately below, the reader recognizes that it is the French version the king receives. At the same time, we also recognize that the book stretched towards Charles by Simon actually represents both of the works depicted in the panels of the upper register. It’s the artist’s way of reminding us that Simon’s translation represents

Synoptic Reading | 173 something very different from Valerius’s original, while at the same time having undeniable resemblance to it. One might think of Simon’s version as something like a fourth dimension in Möbius’s evocative image “of a three-dimensional form rotated onto its mirror image.”55 The second codex used by Christine in this chapter is Raoul de Presle’s translation of Saint Augustine’s De civitate Dei (The City of God) (Figs. 6.10–6.11). Charles V commissioned it in 1375, and it was completed in 1377. Raoulet d’Orléans, another of Charles’s favorite scribes, copied the text, while two artists, also well-known contributors to Charles’s projects, painted the exquisite miniatures and program of decoration. The frontispiece (fig. 6.10) speaks directly to the context of Book 18 evoked by Christine’s Anaxagoras anecdote. In Book 18 Augustine reviews the earthly regimes that preceded the coming of Christ in order to show why they were unable to achieve the level of virtue requisite for the city of God.

Figure 6.10.  Saint Augustin, De Civitate Dei (The City of God), translated by Raoul de Presles for Charles V. Frontispiece representing the heavenly city (top register), the earthly city (middle register) with a depiction of Hell-mouth in the lower register. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr 22912, fol. 2v. Paris, 1375–77.

174 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

Figure 6.11.  Saint Augustin, De Civitate Dei (The City of God), translated by Raoul de Presles for Charles V. Incipit page showing presentation miniature: Raoul de Presles (kneeling), sponsored by St. Augustine (standing behind Raoul) present the French translation to the enthroned Charles V. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr 22912, fol. 3r. Paris, 1375–77.

In three registers, the frontispiece juxtaposes images of the heavenly and earthly cities, while adding a third realm, Inferno, a medieval contribution to Augustine’s binary schema. The upper register shows the Redemption, by which Christians were rewarded for espousing the virtuous life embodied by Charles V. Significantly, the Fathers of the Church ranged around the central figures of Jesus, the Virgin, and Saint John, attest the centrality of the king’s knowledge politics for Christianity. The central register features pagan, Christian, and Jewish religious systems, precisely the three kinds of regime Augustine addresses throughout De civitate dei and reviews in Book 18. Augustine’s version of Anaxagoras would not be found on the left side of the middle register of Figure 6.10, where the pagans worship their idols, since, like Virgil, a “virtuous pagan” he refused to pay homage to false gods. The vivid Inferno in the lower register illustrates the power of textnets to infuse canonical

Synoptic Reading | 175 works with miranda consensio, Augustine’s “amazing harmony,” which we recognize as a Christian version of Aristotle’s arete (ἀρετή). Yet he would not recognize this spirited hell-mouth, which arises from a rich tradition of early medieval meditations on hell, as portrayed in sculptures, church paintings, manuscript illuminations, and most memorably in Dante’s Inferno, which was just making its way to Paris in the fourteenth century. The frontispiece could—and does—stand alone as a resumé of the main argument of The City of God. But that’s not how the architect of this codex planned it, nor is it how Christine saw it when reading the book in Charles’s library. It forms a bi-folio (Figs. 6.10–6.11) with the first text page of the work whose grand scheme the frontispiece depicts so beautifully. But there is an even more poignant and powerful juxtaposition of images. I mean the subtle mirroring of the full-folio painting of the universe on the left by the presentation miniature on the right. Saint Augustine, Raoul de Presles, and Charles V form a triumvirate of sacerdotal agents in the right-hand folio (Fig. 6.11). They symbolize the continuity of Augustine’s vision—set forth afresh in Paris, the new city of God—thanks to the prescience of King Charles, acting for the great theologian. This tableau in miniature contrasts with the full-page painting of God’s created universe that faces and explicates it. The three tiers of that painting compress the whole of Augustine’s message: Christians at the center of the middle band—between Muslim and Jew— must strive to embody the principles Augustine sets forth, and above all to implement in their lives the moral philosophy Charles V exemplifies so that they may attain the celestial sphere in the upper band, and avoid the ever so graphic gueule d’enfer below. It is perhaps this image above all others that Christine took as guiding emblem for her interpretation of Charles V and the importance of his library. By way of bringing this chapter full cycle back to the pragmatic consequences of the king’s politics of knowledge with which we began, let’s look briefly at a translation project involving, not a classical, but a medieval authority, John of Salisbury’s Polycraticus, a treatise on ethics and government written in the third quarter of the twelfth century. In 1372, Charles V commissioned Denis Foulechat to translate John’s work from Latin to French. Figure 6.12 (of which more below) shows the incipit or first page of the king’s own copy of Foulechat’s translation. As a courtier engaged in English and pontifical politics, John’s writings spring directly from his extensive experience as diplomat and as advisor to Pope Hadrian IV (r. 1154–59) and to the Archbishops of Canterbury Theobald and then Thomas à Becket. They also reveal him to be an early adopter of Aristotle, while also reflecting his broad reading in ancient and early medieval secular and theological philosophy and political theory. By straddling the theoretical and the

176 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

practical spheres of political life, John’s profile served the model Charles V sought both to emulate and to inculcate in his own courtiers. To understand why the Polycraticus—aside from its immense influence in the Middle Ages—would have been a candidate for Charles V’s translation project, it is important to understand John’s role as one of the first medieval thinkers to adapt the Aristotelian corpus to a secular Christian political environment.56 As Kevin Guilfoy notes: “John’s Metalogicon is the first attempt in the West to provide an outline for incorporating the whole [of Aristotle’s] Organon into a liberal arts curriculum. … John spent much of the book criticizing those masters who resisted the adoption of the new works of Aristotle and still taught the old logic.”57 Since that battle was far from over in the fourteenth century, John’s status as an acknowledged authority offered encouragement to the circle of thinkers around Charles V, and notably Nicole Oresme, as they sought to extend Aristotle’s influence by offering even greater access to his thought. To understand the role John’s Polycrticus was meant to play in Charles’s translation project, look again at the incipit (opening page) of this manuscript (Fig.  6.12). The upper half of the incipit contains a large miniature showing Charles V, crowned, draped in a blue robe with gold fleur-de-lys, and seated on a capacious throne. A book-wheel stands beside him containing a number of codices shelved in its recesses. On the lectern surmounting the book-wheel lies a Bible on whose pages lines from Ecclesiasticus 14:22 are clearly legible: “Beatus vir qui in sapientia sua morietur et qui in iustitia sua [meditabitur et in sensu cogitabit circumspectionem Dei”] or “Blessed is the man who shall continue in Wisdom, and who shall meditate in his justice, and in his mind shall think of the all seeing eye of God.” Lest one mistake the significance of these details, Charles’s head and eyes incline toward the biblical verses to which the index finger of his right hand also points. Figure 6.13 offers a schematic analysis of the tight link between the iconography of the miniature painting to the folio as a whole. Studying it, we realize that the setting does not simply show us the Royal library Charles created in the Louvre just below his own private quarters, but provides an example of how he intends this innovation to be used. The verse from Ecclesiasticus in the center of the miniature introduces the concept that binds the image to the textual registers on the lower half of the folio. Visually, the ornate capital initials—“C” and “B”— form a dominant visual cue. Decorated in lapis lazuli and gold—the colors of Charles’s robe and the background of the painting above them—the letters serve several functions. Practically, they introduce the first word, Ci in the long rubric in the left-hand column, and likewise the Beatus at the beginning of the prologue

Synoptic Reading | 177

Figure 6.12.  John of Salisbury, Polycratique, translated for Charles V by Denis Foulechat. Incipit of the copy presented to the king. Miniature shows King Charles reading the incipit of the manuscript identified by the psalm quotation. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr 24287, fol. 2r. Paris, 1372.

at the top of the right-hand column. But they also implement a symbolic function by transferring themes from the painting to the textual register, which is, of course, the point of grouping them prominently just below Charles’s portrait and the biblical text. As we read Ci and Beatus homo deployed across the top of the text registers, we note that the outsized “C” evokes the name of the king immediately above, just as the Beatus homo on the right evokes the Beatus vir on the open bifolio of the Bible just above the rubric. As we see in Figure 6.13, these signifying elements form a visual triangle, whose left side runs from the top of Charles’s crown

178 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

Figure 6.13.  Schematic analysis of links between painting, rubric, and introductory text on incipit (first page) of John of Salisbury, Polycraticus, translated for Charles V by Denis Foulechat, Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr 24287, fol. 2r. Paris, 1372.

diagonally down to the bottom of the capital “C.” To the right, the king’s inclined head and eyes obliquely trained on the open Bible initiate a diagonal slanting downward to the outside of the outsized decorated initial “B” of Beatus homo. Just as importantly, the base of the triangle runs rests on the two text registers of the incipit page, incorporating them within the verbal-visual system of signification so demarcated. Upon reflection, it’s evident that we are looking at a series of apparent category violations: verbal elements functioning as image, visual elements serving as text. These features include the biblical verse represented as an image; the decorated initials “C” and “B” serving both as letter and graphic design; and Charles’s portrait, which we identify as a name, to cite but these elements. Taken together these features transform the folio into a reciprocal plane of bi-modal signification continually cycling between sermo, “speech,” and image. This is not unintentional. On the contrary, Denis Foulechat strives—just as Oresme does in his translations—to make the French version of John’s Polycraticus a notable authority

Synoptic Reading | 179 for Charles V’s policies. It’s no coincidence, then, that Denis also underscores the Aristotelian filiation from John’s political theory to Charles’s programs. His effort was not misplaced. John of Salisbury studied Aristotle’s philosophy assiduously in the twelfth century, acquiring an understanding brilliantly conveyed by his major treatises, Metalogicon and Polycraticus. Indeed, as the Greek titles of John’s works suggests, he was proud to signal his affinity with “the Philosopher,” as Aristotle was called in medieval treatises. Central to his thinking was the realist notion that universals were things as well as words (sermo), and that as things, they could be depicted. This means, as Aristotle shows in discussing the agent intellect in Book III, chapter five of De anima—for which Aquinas contributed a gloss important for medieval understanding of the subject58—visual representation was as important as the written text in conveying meaning in illuminated manuscripts. Moreover, the representational modes (verbal text or visual image) of perceived objects are independent of the meanings conveyed in the internal processes of cognition. In other words, while we recognize verbal text and visual image as distinct representational modes on the manuscript page, we perceive each set of signs as projecting differential meanings synthesized and interpreted by our understanding. In the case of Bnf fr. 24287, fol. 2r (Fig. 6.12), for example, image and text constitute complementary ways of conveying the moral responsibility of the king to instruct court officials with principles of political science, sage statesmanship, and the virtues of citizen-agency. His preferred mode of instruction was vernacular texts and images, and thus the illuminated book or, as we would say, manuscript as a multi-modal representational matrix. As noted in previous chapters, the illuminated manuscript is dynamic, cultivating redundant representational modes necessarily different in form, but coordinated in content. Meaning on the manuscript page, in this view, requires both text and image. The master scribes who planned these manuscripts were consummate psychologists when it came to driving home important ideas. They recognized that visual representation, having a more immediate perceptual impact on the viewer, could convey in one scene, as it were, complex elements of meaning that the verbal text would then spell out in greater detail. This collaborative approach reveals the illuminated manuscript as a complex multimedia system where perception continually cycles between verbal text and visual image. The cumulative effect of this to and fro perceptual processing generates successive layers of meaning as the viewer revisits each mode in turn after absorbing what the other has said or shown. In short, meaning production—or assimilation—is a process of aggregating continuous visual and verbal cues.

180 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

That is why manuscripts deploy extensive visual networks: from the red rubrics that convey captions, glosses, chapter headings, etc., to decorated or historiated initials, to painted scenes, decorative patterns or even bas-de-page illustrations or glosses. In so doing, the manuscript folio establishes a bi-modal signifying field in which graphic signs form a continuum or reciprocal plane on which words or letters may be treated as images and visual scenes may contain or be made to signify sermo (discourse). Bnf fr. 24287’s incipit miniature (Fig. 6.12) represents Charles as an exemplum of the enlightened political leader that John of Salisbury discusses in Book IV of Polycraticus, the work he introduces. Germane to the lesson conveyed by the painting and prologue of our manuscript are the multiple references to a theme stressed by John, namely, the prince’s duty to educate his officials who will often be called upon to act in his name. According to John, the prince must inculcate in his subordinates the same virtues and moral character to which he himself aspires. “Where there is princely power there must be princely virtue. For this reason, a virtuous prince is not sufficient for good government: judges and governors must be virtuous too. The character and education of officials is ultimately the prince’s responsibility, but the virtue of the prince alone is not sufficient for good government.”59 The mise-en-page of this folio takes pains to invest Charles himself with the requisite virtue. That’s one reason for the two oversize decorated initials “C” and “B,” discussed above. Revisiting them (Fig. 6.13), we see that the oversize initials introducing the phrases, Ci commence …” and Beatus homo, also point to Charles as the audacious architect for propelling French to the level of the “wisdom languages”: Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. A conscious strategy of Charles’s translation policy was to endow the French language with heightened capacity for philosophical discourse. We noted earlier how Oresme’s translations introduced a long list of neologisms of this kind. By the same token, Denis Foulechat takes pains with his translation to showcase French as a wisdom language, a vehicle for thinking and doing moral philosophy. To this end, we should not underestimate the role of Charles’s library in weakening the hegemony of learned languages as the “appropriate” vehicle for representing wisdom literature. When people read Aristotle, Plato, Augustine, John of Salisbury, Cicero, Valerius Maximus, and other sages in French, they naturally think of these authors as “French,” at least associationally. Translations housed in the Royal Library provoked another significant change in the way these authors come to be perceived. Not only are they now “French”—for language is identity—but they’re also contemporary. That’s hardly surprising if the

Synoptic Reading | 181 works not only share the everyday language of the court, but are also presented as contemporary media, illuminated manuscripts, a recent Parisian innovation. Without losing their status as “authorities,” John of Salisbury, Aristotle et al. appear in the guise of contemporary French philosophers—updated by Denis Foulechat, Nicole Oresme, Raoul de Presles, Simon de Hesdin, and Charles’s other translators. Because Aristotle, Augustine, Valerius Maximus, John of Salisbury, Cicero, Ovid, and the other auctors translated and housed in Charles’s library are published in thoroughly up-to-date formats, they look and read like up-to-date philosophers. Moreover, by calling attention to Charles’s practice on the incipit of his translation of Polycraticus, Denis Foulechat imputes to the king the same methods of philosophical demonstration as did John of Salisbury, about whom we are told: In the course of developing and elaborating his ideas, John rarely develops an explicit argument. Instead, he presents litanies of exempla, excerpts from classical and sacred authorities. The use of exempla is the practical embodiment of John’s academic skepticism and probabilism: because he does not wish to appear to pass dogmatic judgment on doubtful questions, he lines up pronouncements of the wise in support. By illustrating that several wise men hold an opinion, John can claim that the rest of us should agree and be led to the same probable conclusions.60

Which is to say that Valois Paris has become the new capital of moral and political philosophy. The translations commissioned by Charles V demonstrate this fact at every turn. They do so by an ingenious practice, which we might call “polyphonic or symphonic citation.” That simply means surrounding the given work being translated with a series of quotations, glosses, and paraphrases based on classical, theological, philosophical, literary or historical works ranging from antiquity to the near contemporaneous. We have already seen an example of this on the incipit of this manuscript, but there’s more to come. As we see in Figure 6.14, Denis Foulechat begins his prologue with a quotation from Proverbs 3.13 that echoes that of Ecclesiasticus 14.22 in the miniature immediately above. The subtle difference in the two quotations lies in the active verbs—invenit, affluit—of the verse from Proverbs as compared with the deponent forms—morietur, meditabitur—of Ecclesiasticus. Although active in meaning, deponent verbs are passive in form, a nuance played upon here. Charles V—the concrete exemplar of the biblical indeterminate “vir” and “homo”—is shown in the painting as typifying the deponent forms, morietur, “he shall continue in,” and meditabitur, “he shall meditate in.” At the beginning of the prologue, however, he is the man who “finds wisdom,” invenit spaiencia,

182 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

where Latin invenio means “to meet with,” “to discover,” and who “makes prudence his own,” affluit prudencia, where Latin affluo has the sense of “movement towards something.”

Figure 6.14.  Juxtaposition of biblical passages cited on the incipit page of John of Salisbury, Polycraticus, translated for Charles V by Denis Foulechat, Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr 24287, fol. 2r. Paris, 1372.

By way of reinforcing the point, Foulechat translates the Vulgate passage as: Ceste parole dit que l’homme est benoit qui treuve sapience et qui afflue largement de prudence (“These words mean: “blessed is the man who discovers wisdom and who makes prudence abundantly his own”). He then introduces another source of the beatus trope, this time turning to a treatise of Saint Ambrose (Fig. 6.15). Le très glorieus docteur, mon seigneur saint Ambrose, en considerant diverses opinions de béatitude et félicité que pluseurs genz ont par le monde et par especial de tele comme ou la puet avoir en [2c] ceste pénible vie mortèle si dit ou livre des Offices par sentence diffinitive ces paroles dico beatam vitam consistere in altitudine sapiencie [i.e. sapientiae], suavitate justicie [i.e. justiciae], virtutis sublimitate; nec sine passione sed victorem passionis esse beatum. [MS. BnF fr. 24287, fol. 2b–2c]

Synoptic Reading | 183 The justly renowned doctor, Monseigneur Saint Ambrose, meditating the many opinions of blessedness and felicity that some people enjoy and especially in this painful, mortal life says in the book [called] De officiis the following words: “I say that the blessed life consists in the height of wisdom, the sweetness of justice, and the sublimity of virtue; and that it is not without passion but as a victor over passion that one is blessed.”

Figure 6.15.  Introduction of Saint Ambrose’s De officiis for which Proverbs 3.13 stands as an epigraph on incipit of John of Salisbury, Polycraticus, translated for Charles V by Denis Foulechat, Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr 24287, fol. 2r. Paris, 1372.

Immediately following this quotation from Saint Ambrose, Foulechat cites Boethius’s De consolatio philolosophiae (On the Consolation of Philosophy), thereby confirming what we’ve already begun to suspect. Namely, that his prologue incorporates serial references to eminent classical and Christian auctoritates, renowned for espousing moral philosophy and instruction in civic duty. In other words, a series of authors whose works, as Oresme noted in the gloss cited earlier in the chapter, all derive in one form or another from Aristotle. John’s treatise, however, undertakes another kind of instruction in civic virtue, a much more focused lesson. In addressing Polycraticus to his son, he establishes the genre of royal pedagogical instruction that becomes known as Mirrors

184 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

for Princes (Principum specula). By way of signaling that Polycraticus adopts a form of moral instruction with a distinguished lineage, Denis Foulechat’s prologue cites John’s precursors, beginning with the first Christian adaptation of the genre: Saint Ambrose’s De officiis (c. 388–390 C. E.). While Ambrose’s treatise is the earliest attempt to construct a doctrine of moral philosophy based on Christian precepts, he modeled his work on the De officiis that Cicero composed for his son to teach him the principles of good governance. While Ambrose, unlike Cicero and John of Salisbury, had only figurative sons—the monks for whose training and education he was responsible—he made it clear that they too required the kind of guidance that Cicero prescribed for his child. All three treatises, the two De Officiis and Polycraticus, urged reading and reflection as core elements of their program. Writing close to a millennium after Ambrose, John could urge a much broader spectrum of reading on his son. But all three authors would have been amazed—and certainly intrigued—by the new technology of synoptic reading had they been vouchsafed the edition of Polycraticus that Denis Foulechat prepared for Charles V.

Part Three

Coda

The Anxiety of Irrelevance Digital Humanities and Contemporary Critical Theory1

Nothing is to be gained for an understanding of human knowledge by running together vocabularies in which we describe the causal antecedents of knowledge with those in which we offer justification of our claims to knowledge. —Richard Rorty, “Dewey’s Metaphysics”

The disciplines of criticism, theory, and literary history appear beleaguered and defensive at the present moment. That is certainly the case in North American universities, though it seems to be true in Europe as well. One senses this from the titles of conferences suggesting doubts about their topic’s legitimacy. In January of 2014, for example, medievalists from European and trans-Atlantic institutions gathered in Paris to debate the topic, “Pourquoi lire le Roman de la Rose Aujourd’hui?” In March, Stanford University hosted a conference for The School of Criticism and Theory—based at Cornell University—on the topic, “Criticism, Theory: Today?” Both the ambivalent noun/adverb “today” and the graphic, “?,” suggest a measure of skepticism as regards the intellectual remit of “criticism” and “theory,” and more broadly, of Humanities itself at the present moment. If that’s the case for mainstream critical studies, and I think it is, the same has always been true for digital humanities. While the latter have taken science

188 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

literacy for granted from the outset, the naturalistic turn in contemporary theory—at least in its current variations—appears, perhaps coincidentally, coterminous with attacks on the humanities that have been gaining force for the past several decades. In both cases, the bias against humanistic research rests on dubious assumptions about the humanities in general and its research protocols in particular. Perhaps a short discussion of the naturalistic turn in critical studies will help to situate my remarks on digital humanities. “The briefest survey of ascendant trends in contemporary theory,” writes Jason Bartulis, reveals “a new generation of prominent scholars” who orient their work around the kind of causal or naturalistic explanations associated with the natural sciences.2 By way of example, he points to assertions like the following by Wai Chee Dimock and Priscilla Wald: “The practical impact of [scientific] knowledge— from reproductive technologies to electronic archives, from bioterrorism to gene theory—makes science illiteracy no longer an option. Scholars in the humanities simply have to come to terms with these forces of change.”3 Such statements, Bartulis continues, mean that “… the current enthrallment to evolutionary aesthetics, neurobiology, cognitive science and animal studies, suggests the somewhat belated arrival, in literary studies and aesthetic theory, of what the midcentury’s leading analytic philosopher, W. V. Quine, called naturalized epistemology. And even if Quine remains relatively unknown among literary critics, the naturalized epistemology of his post-doctoral student, Silvan Tompkins, has found a powerful application in affect theory.”4 The turn to science is not simply a belated effort to bridge what C. P. Snow, in his Rede Lecture at Cambridge University in 1959, famously termed “the two cultures.” If Snow criticized the British education system for over-emphasizing humanities at the expense of science, he was emphatically not claiming that literary criticism and aesthetic theory had no value. That is, however, precisely the bizarre situation facing literary studies today. For as the intellectual historian of science, Ruth Leys, notes, “that what motivates [literary scholars and cultural theorists of the turn to naturalism] is the desire to contest a certain account of how, in their view, political argument and rationality have been thought to operate. These theorists,” she continues, “are gripped by the notion that most philosophers and critics in the past (Kantians, neo-Kantians, Habermasians) have overvalued the role of reason and rationality in politics, ethics, and aesthetics, with the result that they have given too flat or ‘unlayered’ or disembodied an account of the ways in which people actually form their political opinions and [aesthetic] judgments.”5 Bartulis construes Leys’s analysis as demonstrating that “more and more scholars seem to believe that only a properly scientific investigation, that is, one

The Anxiety of Irrelevance | 189 oriented towards the logical space of causes [as opposed to the logical space of reasons], can capture the determinative processes which are ultimately responsible for literary content and forms …”6 This view rejects as insufficient the crossdisciplinary notion that the insights of neuroscience, evolution, physics or biology offer insights that can enrich literary analysis. More radically, it rests on the conviction that “we need causal and subpersonal explanatory schemas to replace what are increasingly cast as outmoded analytics in the study of human behavior.” In short, it “denies explanatory value to a subject’s putative reasons, beliefs, representations, and other acts of self-reflexive consciousness.”7 As Ruth Leys notes, this view endorses the kind of non-cognitive, biological approach favored by the literary theorist, Lee Spinks, or the specialist in human geography, Nigel Thrift. In “Thinking the Post-Human,” for example, Spinks makes the following assertions: first, “political attitudes and statements are partly conditioned by intense automatic bodily reactions that do not simply reproduce the trace of political intention and cannot be wholly recuperated within an ideological regime of truth.” And, second: “the political decision itself is produced by a series of inhuman or pre-subjective forces and intensities.”8 In an article entitled “Intensities of Feeling: Towards a Spatial Politics of Affect,” Nigel Thrift proposes: “… to think about affect in cities and about affective cities, and, above all, about what the political consequences of thinking more explicitly about these topics might be …”9 Such statements betoken a loss of confidence in the explanatory value of critical and aesthetic methods of literary inquiry. At first blush, that’s normal enough, since disenchantment is a recurrent phenomenon in the realm of critical epistemologies. It drives the change for innovation, which paves the way for new sub-disciplines such as digital humanities. In the case of the naturalistic turn, however, something much larger is at stake: the status of the literary and artistic object itself. The methodological transformation leading up to this state begins by the seemingly unobjectionable question: “Why wouldn’t we want to know about the science behind consciousness?” But that leads to “a stronger claim … which is: until we uncover what’s ‘behind consciousness,’ we don’t have credible accounts of the aesthetic objects, experiences, interpretive decisions and ethical responses to those objects that help demarcate literary criticism’s explanatory domain.”10 This claim tips the equilibrium in the direction of a scientific methodology, now purported to furnish credible accounts of the underlying forces of consciousness. In essence, the language of scientific inquiry has crossed over—indeed replaced—the literary methodology originally intended to present the desired

190 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

explanations. It has done so, presumably, because science has the allure of rigor— think of the term “an exact science”—and strong links to the semantic field that closely associates “natural” and “modern,” as in the expression “the modern natural sciences.” Once the discourse of the naturalistic turn takes root, as Bartulis argues, “Critical procedures that don’t synthesize in this manner are regarded as inept. Scholars and disciplines that remain beholden to what we might think of as ‘folk interpretation’ are admonished, in the words of Dimock and Chee, ’to come to terms with the forces of change,’ lest they become obsolete.”11 This goes way beyond simply offering a new perspective from which to view the literary or artistic object. As noted above, the agenda of the naturalistic turn postulates “causal and sub-personal explanatory schemas to replace what are increasingly cast as outmoded analytics in the study of human behavior.” They target, in other words, critical protocols evoking the artistic object and its agencies. This should hardly be a matter for surprise. Scientific discourse was neither conceived nor developed to analyze the complexities of artificial, non-natural constructions like literature or visual art. After all, languages of inquiry implement the epistemologies that generate them. Or, as Bjørn Ramberg notes in discussing Richard Rorty’s concept of scientific language, “… any vocabulary, even that of evolutionary explanation, is a tool for a purpose, and therefore subject to teleological assessment.”12 In short, discourses of analysis have their own specificity and should not be intermingled, as Rorty cautions when deprecating Dewey’s “ambition to transform philosophy into a credibly modern, because natural science.”13 He criticizes the temptation to think that naturalistic protocols can resolve indeterminate and ambivalent aesthetic objects into logical units. That was what Dewey had advocated in The Theory of Inquiry of 1938 when he wrote: [I]nquiry is the controlled or directed transformation of an indeterminate situation into one that is so determinate in its constituent distinctions and relations as to convert the elements of the original situation into a unified whole.14

Dewey’s evocation of a “controlled” process of transformation illuminates the allure of natural science. “The issue of transformation is critical,” writes John Hartmann, “for one of the more radical implications of Dewey’s theory of inquiry lies in the way the object itself is transformed through the process …”15 Part of the transformation arises from identifying and separating what is made from what is found, the subjective from the objective, the apparent from the real and then incorporating the elements to the controlled experiment that effects a resolution through “intelligent mediation.”16

The Anxiety of Irrelevance | 191 For Dewey, then, method—in the sense associated with natural science— guides the inquiry, irrespective of context. This methodology grounds itself in “common sense” to the extent that nothing seems more obvious than the dictates of natural science. But, on Rorty’s view, common sense is “the watchword of those who unself-consciously describe everything important in terms of the final vocabulary to which they and those around them are habituated.”17 If Rorty has a decidedly skeptical view of the possibility of adapting naturalistic schemas to critical inquiry, his reasons lie deep in the Enlightenment when the energies of the men we now think of as ‘philosophers’ were directed toward demarcating their activities from religion. It was only after that battle had been won that the question of separation from the sciences could arise. The eventual demarcation of philosophy from science was made possible by the notion that philosophy’s core was ‘theory of knowledge,’ a theory distinct from the sciences because it was their foundation.18

Episteme follows naturally from history: I have been claiming that the Kantian picture of concepts and intuitions getting together to produce knowledge is needed to give a sense to the idea of ‘theory of knowledge’ as a specifically philosophical discipline, distinct from psychology. This is equivalent to saying that if we do not have the distinction between what is ‘given’ and what is ‘added by the mind,’ or that between the ‘contingent’ (because influenced by what is given) and the ‘necessary’ (because entirely ‘within’ the mind and under its control), then we will not know what would count as a ‘rational reconstruction’ of our knowledge. We will not know what epistemology’s goal or method could be.19

These are all reasons undergirding his belief that that science is “in the business of controlling and predicting things, and thus largely useless for philosophical purposes.”20 Moreover, he finds efforts like those of Quine to equate science and philosophy, or even to replace philosophy with science, unmotivated.21 Instead of engaging methodologically self-conscious arguments based on accurate (or inaccurate) representation of propositions, Rorty proposes as “a crucial premise … that we understand knowledge when we understand the social justification of belief, and thus have no need to view it as accuracy of representation.”22 Instead, he conceives philosophical inquiry as a kind of interrogatory process between the inquiring subject and the object of investigation. That’s the sense, in the passage quoted above, of the idea of rationally reconstructing what we know about a thing, by distinguishing what is “real” or “given” from what our process of thinking about the object contributes to our cognition of the thing. This cognitive activity includes ascertaining what is relative or contingent to its givenness, and “what is necessary (because entirely ‘within’ the mind and under its control).”23

192 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

Rather than “method,” Rorty calls this self-interrogatory reconstruction, “critical intelligence,” which he holds to be “as good a name as any for being experimental, nondogmatic, inventive and imaginative and for ceasing to expect or try for certainty. But,” he continues, “nobody should expect to be taught a methodical way of being inventive and imaginative.”24 Critical intelligence engages the aesthetic object not to control or transform it, but as the object of a rational discursive reconstruction that posits an ironic distance between object and conversation.25 The ironic mode of critical intelligence “recognizes the contingency of [its] particular narrative, the specificity of the norms and standards that govern the selection of possible ends within a situation.”26 In short, Rorty offers a critical protocol aimed at “keeping the conversation going” to shape norms of critical inquiry in accord with, in Hatmann’s words, “the prevalent rationality within a local community of language-users.”27 All of which strikes me as a reasonable way to combine critical inquiry with respect for the integrity of its object. Nor do I see how it can be perceived as failing to come to terms with what Dimock and Wald see as “the forces of change.” Yet, as we now consider digital humanities, we find the naturalistic turn even more deeply rooted, and the “forces of change” evoked to urge quantitative protocols for humanities research in order—in the words of one manifesto—to “save the humanities in an era when traditional humanistic forms of inquiry and discourse find themselves drowned out by the din of commerce, the drumbeat of the 24-hour news cycle, and the rampant tides of economism and vocationalism.”28 Perhaps the boldest statement of epistemic change comes from a work published in 2012 at M.  I.  T. Press. Entitled Digital_Humanities—the underscore linking “digital” and “humanities” is theoretically motivated—the book styles itself a “metalogue,” defined as “a dialogue that assumes the form of that which it discusses.”29 Determinedly unconventional, the book comes with an afterword entitled “Notes on Production,” where “performance”—as in performance art and mediatic representation—inflects the term “production.” The authors’ description of their method as a collaborative, choral “construction … with meta-issues not only in mind, but in flux …” introduces us to a world decidedly split between past and future. The future—which the authors of this book already inhabit—consists of an equal partnership between “humans and data machines [engaged] in cultural practice, social experience, and humanistic research … where the scales and registers of what counts or is valued as human experience and, therefore, the objects of humanistic inquiry will find themselves altered.”30 The past as defined by this vision has a centuries-old, recognizable form—“printed pages with linear prose and a bibliographic apparatus

The Anxiety of Irrelevance | 193 written by an author and published in the form of an article or book.… With few exceptions, the humanities have adopted homogeneous approaches to producing scholarly research.”31 These two academic models exist in tension, “with one wing of the humanities embracing quantitative methods, the other continuing to insist upon its roots in qualitative analysis.”32 Inevitably, in this view, the quantitative wing will espouse the naturalistic turn and integrate contentedly with the social sciences, while the rest will fight “to defend its autonomy and critical stance.”33 A doomed strategy, it seems, since the very tools they fight with—language, rhetoric, argument—have already defected to the digital camp: Design methods inform all aspects of humanistic practice, just as rhetoric once served both as its glue and compositional technique. Contemporary eloquence, power, and persuasion merge traditional verbal and argumentative skills with the practice of multi-media literacy shaped by an understanding of the principles of design.34

We must understand “design,” on this account, as intended to provide epistemic grounding to digital humanities. “Design,” we read, “means shaping knowledge and endowing it with form; … design encompasses structures of argument. … The capacious umbrella of design incorporates a wide variety of practices: project design, the design of database architectures, data visualization, information architecture, interactivity design, and the crafting of narrative and argumentative practices in multiple media.”35 Let’s pause for a moment to note how the promotion of “design” over “rhetoric” fuses two very different modes of representation. Leaving aside the dubious elevation of design to epistemological status, note how—as in many discussions of digital humanities—these claims conflate two different models of thought and knowledge. First, digital humanities seeks to demonstrate how knowledge inquiry should utilize new modes of access to and representations of objects of inquiry. That’s fine so far as the “digital” part of the equation goes. But the “humanities” half is more complicated, depending on the nature of the inquiry. As John McDowell noted twenty years ago in Mind and World, the 1991 John Locke lectures at Cambridge University, “How possible?” questions initiate “investigations of an engineering sort.”36 That is, investigations that seek to describe, explain, control, or predict material things. In this context, design might well prove efficacious. But critical theory doesn’t do “How possible?” engineering investigations. Instead, it asks theoretically motivated “Why possible?” questions. And “why”

194 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

questions, as Bartulis notes, “are normative, that is they ask after the implicit and explicit standards governing, and reasons for, actions, not in deep time, but in a given historical, and even national context …”37 “Why” questions underlie most great literature, philosophy, history, and even theology, and they inform the dialectic between the inquiring mind and the object of investigation that critical intelligence engages when it thinks through and with contingent and ironic—that is to say, aesthetic—objects. Schnapp and his colleagues recognize the “how”/“why” divide as a problem. Their framing of the issue, however, lacks conviction as regards their willingness to adapt their digital agenda to a critical context. In speaking, for example, of how their discussions have privileged “technology’s transformative impact upon scholarship,” the authors speak of a “less visible, but equally important reciprocity,” namely, “The principles of humanist thinking, humanist creativity, and humanist critique [that] have much to offer to computational methods.” In particular, they continue, “digital humanists can imagine means to model the complex conditions of interpretation so that we come to a fundamentally different idea of demonstration of the ways engagement with the cognitive processes of reading, viewing, and navigating make meaning.”38 These few lines illustrate an epistemological imbalance even more pronounced in the paragraph as a whole. Although the passage speaks initially of humanist thinking having “much to offer to computational methods,” it ends by invoking “digital humanists” and their computational tools and terms, e.g., “design,” “encode,” “interface,” “modeling,” “navigating,” etc.39 It’s not that the authors don’t wish to claim the compatibility of “digital” and “humanities.” They do, and even inscribe this goal in their title: Digital_Humanities. The underscore between the two words references the white space between them as a vital yoke … present[ing] the two concepts in a productive tension, without either becoming absorbed into the other. The underscore … is used deliberately as an overdetermined marker of the critical nexus between ‘digital’ and ‘humanities.’ It references the precarious, experimental, and undefined future of the humanities in a world fundamentally transformed by everything digital.40

Obviously, in a “world fundamentally transformed by everything digital,” humanities will look that way too. But that’s not the way the world in fact is, and even if it were, it would be still more beholden to computational thinking than digital humanities already are. Moreover, how would that advance core humanist tasks? We need only look at the definition of computational thinking to realize the radical difference between the conceptual processes that drive humanities research and those modeled by computer science.

The Anxiety of Irrelevance | 195 This term was formulated by a team led by Professor Jeannette M. Wing, Head of the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University. In their view: “Computational thinking refers to the thought processes involved in formulating problems and their solutions so that the solutions are represented in a form that can be effectively carried out by an informationprocessing agent.”41 The term “describes the mental activity of formulating a problem to admit a computational solution. The solution can be carried out by a human or machine, or more generally, by combinations of humans and machines.” By “problem” they mean “not just mathematically well-defined problems whose solutions are completely analyzable, e.g., a proof, an algorithm, or a program, but also real world problems whose solutions might be in the form of large, complex software systems.” From this perspective “computational thinking overlaps with logical thinking and systems thinking. It includes algorithmic thinking and parallel thinking, which in turn engage other kinds of thought processes such as compositional reasoning, pattern matching, procedural thinking, and recursive thinking.”42 Abstraction is the key to such intensive reflection, Wing avers. “The most important and high-level thought process in computational thinking,” she maintains, is the abstraction process.”43 … It is used to let one object stand for many. It is used to capture the essential properties common to a set of objects while hiding irrelevant distinctions among them. For example, an algorithm is an abstraction of a process that takes inputs, executes a sequence of steps, and produces outputs to satisfy a desired goal. An abstract data type defines an abstract set of values and operations for manipulating those values, hiding the actual representation of the values from the user of the abstract data type.44

Simply put, Professor Wing and her colleagues propose analyzing complex problems by a series of bifurcating analyses that identify a major and a secondary constituent at each step. Once identified, the important element will be retained, while the secondary component will be hidden from the data algorithm being constructed. These steps will be repeated as often as necessary in order to transform the original complex problem into a data model. This what Wing means when she says, “Abstraction gives us the power to scale and deal with complexity. Applying abstraction recursively allows us to build larger and larger systems …”45 Computational thinking in Wing’s view therefore involves an ever-narrowing analytic focus. Inevitably this means peeling away all contextual components, which are perceived as extraneous.”46

196 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

In making the same points as Wing, Schnapp and his colleagues readily admit that humanistic research and computational protocols depend on opposing methodologies. “Computation,” they remark, “relies on principles that are, on the surface, at odds with humanistic methods,” and that “In the intersection between these two domains, humanists have given in to demands of a process that requires that they work in accord with its methods (my emphasis).47 They might well have added that, rather than practicing data abstraction, humanities research proceeds by data accretion, that is, by identifying references and allusions that continually link the literature to text networks with broad historical and geographical ramifications. Similarly, the critic’s experience of the literary work resonates with a personal knowledge base to bring ever more pertinent information under scrutiny. The broader the critic’s own knowledge, the more extensive will be the referential basis for contextual observations. In place of a bifurcating analysis that strips out extraneous details, literary study promotes recursive reading aimed at accumulating meaningful data to create a thick description of the literary environment—its implication for the work from whatever interpretive focus the critic has chosen: historical, moral, philosophical, aesthetic, and so on. But recursive reading does not simply examine the place of a work in its contemporary social and political context. It also traces the network of allusions forged from the cultural heritage the literary text engages. At this point the question arises as to just why digital humanities have such a big footprint in universities, given the antithetical roots of computational thinking and critical studies? That’s partly why I wanted to begin this chapter with a discussion of the naturalistic turn, which helps to show just how deeply ingrained in the humanities today runs the haunting fear that traditional literacies and critical methods are passé, and that “salvation” must be sought by adapting methodologies from the natural sciences. Were the epistemologies of the sciences and humanities truly compatible, however, it should be a relatively simple matter to show by reverse engineering that scientists could achieve the same results as the humanists by starting from their end of the disciplinary spectrum, as it were. After all, duplication of experiments and reverse engineering are techniques scientists often use to duplicate or enhance experiments, techniques, and software code.48 I find it intriguing that replicability—one of the most basic tenets of scientific research protocol—does not figure in the literature of the naturalistic turn or of digital humanities. But rather than pursue that line of thought, I prefer to conclude this essay on a more positive note—at least as regards digitized resources—especially since I’ve worked for over two decades to create a Digital Library of Medieval Manuscripts

The Anxiety of Irrelevance | 197 at Johns Hopkins University, and now hope to show how it can foster innovative research of the sort that could not be achieved without a large repository of electronic resources. Even a few years ago, one would not have been able to conceive of a digital library of medieval manuscripts containing images of codices, which, despite being housed in museums and rare book libraries all over the world, are now accessible on our computer screen whenever we choose to look at them. In the current parlance of digital humanities, one might say that medieval codices have entered the world of “big data” (although from a scientific point of view, it’s doubtful that five or even ten thousand manuscripts online would so qualify).49 But for medievalists, long compelled to view manuscripts one at a time in constrained conditions, ready access to hundreds of manuscripts has transformed our discipline. To begin with familiarity with scores of manuscripts has produced a parallax effect not so much by changing the appearance of the data—though it can do that, too—but, more importantly, by shifting the viewing perspective of the observer … of our viewpoint as it happens. Now we urgently need to understand the ways we perceive these resources, and, reciprocally, “how they look at us,” so to speak. Let’s be clear. Digitized resources have irrevocably altered our understanding of the relations of author, text, scribes, illuminators, and public in the Middle Ages. This impact, in turn, heralds a more nuanced understanding on the part of medieval literary scholars of the intricate—and far from transparent—relations between “literary creation and the physical layout of surviving manuscripts.”50 That means simply that while a poet was originally responsible for the work, a scribe—representing a subsequent and differently motivated intentionality— bears responsibility for the form of the work that has come down to us. Furthermore, the number of codices now available for comparative scrutiny allows us to understand the manuscript itself as a space inviting artistic collaboration, as painters, decorators, rubricators, and commentators were invited to add their representational skills to enhance the literary text. We can also see now how the codex became a place for literary contestation, as it were, whenever a scribe included wildly heterogeneous, even philosophically opposed works. In some cases, a manuscript may be made to take the form of a scholastic disputatio, in which an initial work makes statements that the following texts dispute or seek to refute. Then again, the expansive, open-ended “technology” of manuscript folios can also encourage authors to compose works “compiled” from citations and intercalations drawn from the near and far past, from classical as well as vernacular languages. What we’ve come to see, then, is the generative role played by manuscripts vis-à-vis the literary works they contain. In consequence, our understanding of

198 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

what constitutes “text” in the Middle Ages has changed rather dramatically, to become more inclusive, inter-artistic, and polyphonic. Or, rather, we recognize that we cannot understand a medieval text in the same way as a modern one. Medieval works have never enjoyed the autonomy of modern literature. That is to say that the meaning of modern works cannot “be altered by their users, because they are not objects like other objects in the world.” As Lisa Siraganian notes, works that cannot maintain their autonomy, like any object, are “forever available to the perceptual experience (as opposed to interpretations) of readers, spectators, or enterprising poets.”51 That pretty well describes the situation of medieval works in their own period since they were literally subject to “the perceptual experience … of enterprising [scribes]” or artists or commentators each time they were copied, which is to say, published. In the modern period medieval works witnessed an even stricter regime of mediation … and one that stripped poetic works of all but their verbal form. For the last two hundred years or so, medieval literary works have been subject to the mediation of text editors. The public at large could read medieval literature in editions, or in translations based upon them. And, in consequence, they saw only the verbal text, since that’s what text editors considered essential. But the fact remains that the hundreds of copies of illuminated manuscripts now available to us attest a vibrant and dynamic performative life imparted to medieval poems like the Roman de la Rose by the collaboration of scribes, artists, commentators, and decorators … none of whom appear in modern editions. Another thing that manuscripts tell us about what constitutes a medieval work follows from its lack of autonomy. Text editors long defended the necessity of the critical edition as requisite to preserve the integrity of the poem against the vagaries or “errors” of scribes. Faced with evidence that the Middle Ages was not a culture that demanded an inviolate originary text—at least in the case of vernacular literature—we’re justified in concluding: first, that the period not only tolerated but encouraged scribal “participation” in the work being copied; and, secondly, that this was so because manuscripts of literary works were an interartistic matrix in which the literary text was simply one element—though a crucial one—of the whole. Since the artists and rubricators who worked on manuscripts were free to innovate, scribes, too, though to a lesser extent, could intervene in the texts they copied. Inescapably, then, each manuscript representation of a narrative poem, especially a long and complex one like the Roman de la Rose, instantiates the work as not simply the product of a poet-author, but also as figuring the perceptual experience of the scribe(s), the illuminator(s), the rubricators(s), and ultimately of the master scribe who planned it.

The Anxiety of Irrelevance | 199 This puts an entirely new light on the function of the modern critical edition. For what the critical edition has provided all these years is an ideal version of a poetic work that—like God in medieval theology—exists everywhere in its manuscript exemplars, and nowhere as an independent entity. In the spirit of Voltaire’s mot about God, since the work couldn’t be definitely located, scholars had to invent it. For as long as the manuscripts were scattered in rare book repositories all over the world, that was fine. Better to have an ideal work, than nothing. But now that we can see and study a whole series of authentic manuscript versions of the work we need to rethink the relationship between the manuscripts and our definition (and understanding) of “the medieval literary work.” Well, there are lots of other theoretical issues raised by the digitization of medieval codices that we need to explore, such as the concept of what I call “dynamic reading” engendered by multiple versions of a work. But none of these innovative protocols depend on what is so loosely termed “digital humanities.” I would argue, rather, that they illustrate humanistic research aided by digitized resources and tools driven by critical intelligence.

Notes

Introduction 1. A work like the Roman de la Rose, for example, created by two different poets around 1235 and 1280 respectively, exists in some 250 extant manuscripts, produced in France between c. 1290 and c. 1525. While some 150 of these manuscripts are preserved in French libraries, over a hundred more exist in repositories throughout the world: from England, Europe, and the United States to Japan. 2. Stephen G. Nichols, “François Villon.” European Writers: The Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. W. T. H. Jackson. (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1983), pp. 535–570. 3. “Le Testament joue donc sur un double mouvement de cloture et d’ouverture.” François Villon, Œuvres completes, edition établie par Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet avec la collaboration de Laëtitia Tabard (Paris: Gallimard, 2014), p. 754. 4. Ibid., p. 755. 5. Ibid., p. 227. All translations are my own, unless otherwise indicated. 6. In the introduction to his Œuvres completes de François Villon (Paris: Galiot du Pré, 1533), Clément Marot tells us that Villon’s poems were commonly recited in Paris. Listening to old men declaiming his verse was one of the methods Marot used to establish reliable versions: … aveques l’ayde des bons vieillards qui en savent par cueur. See Stephen G. Nichols, “Marot, Villon and the Roman de la Rose.” Part I: Studies in Philology 63 (April, 1966), p. 142.

202 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

7. Item, Latin, “the same.” The term is a legal formula used in wills at the beginning of clauses enumerating bequeaths. The rhythmic repetition of item at the beginning of huitains reminds readers that Le Testament is Villon’s poetic will and each huitain cites a person to whom he (ironically) bequeaths what the poetic stanza evokes. As may be seen in Fig. 0.7, the repetition of “Item” at the beginning of stanzas serves to signal a new huitain, thereby helping the reader navigate the work. 8. “Or l’écriture médiévale ne produit pas de varientes, elle est variance.” Bernard Cerquiglini, Éloge de la variante: Histoire critique de la philologie (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1989), p. 111. For a discussion of this quotation and Éloge de la variante in general, see Chapter 5. 9. Stephen G. Nichols “Introduction: Philology in a Manuscript Culture,” The New Philology, Speculum 65, 1 (January, 1990), p. 1. 10. For a discussion of Bernard Cerquiglini’s key role in the evolution of The New Philology, see Chapter 5. 11. In the early 1990s, The Milton S. Eisenhower Library at Johns Hopkins University developed Project Muse, “a collaboration between libraries and publishers, the first of its kind in scholarly humanities publishing. Grants from the Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities allowed MUSE to go live with JHU Press journals in 1995. In 2000, MUSE expanded by inviting other scholarly presses and journals to benefit from this successful publishing initiative, cementing MUSES’s role as a leading provider of online journals in the humanities and social sciences.” https://muse.jhu.edu/about/history_MUSE.html. 12. “This is the strangeness of irony: we seem to be called to an ideal that transcends our ordinary understanding, but to which we now experience ourselves to be already committed. The experience of irony thus seems to be a peculiar species of uncanniness— in the sense that something that has been familiar returns to me as strange and unfamiliar.” Jonathan Lear, A Case for Irony (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011), p. 15. Lear’s reflections on irony have been influential for me as the above paragraph reveals.

Chapter 1 1. Mark Schrope, “Medicine’s Hidden Roots in an Ancient Manuscript,” The New York Times, June 2, 2015, page D1. Online version: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/02/ science/medicines-hidden-roots-in-an-ancient-manuscript.html?_r=0. 2. “Codex,” plural “codices,” from Latin caudex, a log, tree-trunk; and by extension a wooden tablet for writing and a book. By the early Middle Ages, the codex, or book formed from bound leaves (usually of parchment made from animal hides) had replaced the scroll widely used in antiquity. The codex had the advantage that its leaves (folios) could be written on both sides, and the reader could easily page back

Notes | 203 and forth to consult different sections. Early Christianity, a religion based on sacred texts, favored the codex over the scroll since a number of different texts could be bound together in a volume facilitating rapid and frequent consultation of different parts. “Bible,” from Latin biblia “books,” denoted sacred texts collected in a codex. See Colin H. Roberts and T. C. Skeat, The Birth of the Codex (London: Oxford University Press, 1983) and Eric Gardner Turner, The Typology of the Early Codex (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977). 3. Court rituals of homage (aka “feudal rituals”) set greater weight on personal and material gestures witnessed by significant members of the court, than on written documents. Hence the rite known in Latin as inmixtio manum—inter-mingling of the hands—required the vassal voluntarily to kneel before the suzerain from whom he was to receive a fief (grant of land) and place his hands between those of the lord. In this way, the vassal acknowledged his recognition (and acceptance) of the king’s power to award—and conversely to take back—his land. The fact that living human beings performed the act reminded participants of the crucial fact that fiefs were granted by living lords to living vassals and were only valid during the life of each party. Were the king to die, his successor would have to confirm—or deny—the grant of the fief to the vassal. In the event of the vassal’s predeceasing the monarch, his heirs would have to petition the king to confirm the grant. In each case, the ritual of inmixtio manum would be repeated. The drama in the case of Edward and Philip in 1329 was that Edward held considerably more land in France than did Philip; but he held these lands by titles such as duke or count. Even though King in England, in France Edward, as duke and count of his fiefs, had to acknowledge King Philip as suzerain and thus pay homage to the latter as his vassal. Since Edward felt—as events subsequently showed—that he had a better right to the kingdom of France than did Philip, this act of homage did not sit well with him. 4. First rubric: “Comment le Roÿ d’Angleterre fist hommage au Roÿ de France a Amiens de la duchié d’Aquitaine et de la Conté de Pontieu si comme faire devoit.” 2nd rubric: “Ci apres s’ensuit la teneur de la chartre scellee que le Roÿ d’Angeterre donna laquelle contient la maniere de hommage que le Roÿ d’Angleterre fist a Amiens au Roÿ de France des terres dessus nommees.” MS. BnF fr 2813, fol. 357v. 5. “Comment le Roÿ d’Angleterre se mist en mer pour venir en la cité d’Amiens ou le Roÿ d’Angleterre dessus dit devoit faire hommage au Roÿ de France de la duchié d’Aquitaine et de la Conté de Pontieu comme homme du Roÿ de France.” BnF fr. 2813, fol. 357r. For a discussion of Raoulet d’Orléans’s interpolations in 2813, see Anne D. Hedeman, Art Buletin 66,1(1984), pp. 103–104. 6. See Michelle P. Brown, Understanding Illuminated Manuscripts: A Glossary of Technical Terms (London, U.K. and Malibu, CA: British Library and J. Paul Getty Museum, 1994). 7. Stephen G. Nichols, “Introduction: Philology in a Manuscript Culture,” The New Philology, Speculum, 65,1 (January, 1990), passim.

204 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

8. See Chapter 2, “What Do We Mean by Variance Today?” and Chapter 4, “… The Paradox of Manuscript Transmission.” 9. The New Philology, p. 8. 10. Ibid., pp. 8–9. 11. Around 1135, Hugh of Saint Victor wrote a treatise for his students on how to read and understand Holy Scripture. The treatise offers guidance for reading manuscripts that remains instructive. See Bibliography. 12. Paris grew from a relatively small city in the early twelfth century to the largest city in the world, after Beijing, by the mid-fourteenth century, with a population of some 300,000 inhabitants (five times the size of London). See my article, “Paris” in Europe: A Literary History, 1348–1418, ed. David Wallace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), Vol. 1, pp. 11–42. 13. Lai XXXIX, lines 305–312, François Villon, Poésies complètes, ed. Claude Thiry, “Lettres Gothiques” (Paris: Le Livre de Poche, 1991), p. 85 (my translation). 14. On the “manuscript intentionality” and design of M819, see my article, “‘Art’ and ‘Nature’: Looking for (Medieval) Principles of Order in Chansonnier N (Morgan 819),” in The Whole Book: Cultural Perspectives on the Medieval Miscellany (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996) pp. 83–121. For the interaction of marginal sketches and songs, see my study, “Reading and Seeing Troubadours in a Manuscript Context,” Poetica: Zeitschrift für Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft 38 (2006), 297–328. 15. The codex is L’Arsenal 5080 réserve, fol. 1. It’s Volume 2 of the presentation copy of the French translation of Vincent de Beauvais’s Speculum historiale that Jeanne de Bourgogne commissioned from Jehan de Vignay in 1333 for her son, the future Jean II. Volume 1, bearing Jean’s autograph ex-libris (effaced) as Duke of Normandy and Guyenne, is now in the library of Leiden University, MS. Voss. GGF3A. The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore owns a later fourteenth century copy of this codex (Walters MS. 140). In the Walters frontispiece, Jehan de Vignay is shown wearing his robes of the order of the Hospitalers of Saint Jacques de Haut-Pas. That frontispiece is reproduced as fig. 129, catalog entry no. 64, in Lilian M. C. Randall’s Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the Walters Art Gallery, vol. 1, France, 875–1420 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989). A description of the manuscript and miniatures may be found on pp. 165b–173a. 16. Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS français 313. Vincent de Beauvais, Miroir historial [Speculum historiale], volumes 1, 2, 3, 4, translated into French by Jehan de Vignay. Miroir historial, vol. 2, books IX–XVI. Perrin Remiet, illuminator, Raoulet d’Orléans and Guillaume Hervi, scribes. 392 folios: incipit, fol. 1r: Cy commence le secont volume du Mirouer hystorial, translaté de latin en françois par la main de Jehan de Vignay. Lequel Mirouer frere Vincent de l’ordre des freres preescheurs compila en latin a

Notes | 205 la requeste monseigneur saint Loys, roy de France.” Explicit, fol. 392v: Cy fenist le secont volume du Mirouer hystorial. 17. On Remiet see the excellent book by Michael Camille, Master of Death: The Lifeless Art of Pierre Remiet (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996). 18. On “The Poetry of Interlace,” see Eugene Vinaver, The Rise of Romance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), Chapter 5. 19. Christine de Pizan, Le livre des Fais et bonnes meurs du sage roy Charles V, ed. Suzanne Solente (Paris: Société de l’Histoire de France, 1936–1940), Book III, chapter xii. 20. Andrew Hughes, “Western European Music,” Dictionary of the Middle Ages, ed. Joseph R. Strayer (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1987), 8: 579a. 21. Gordon K. Greene, “Ars Nova,” Dictionary of the Middle Ages, ed. Joseph R. Strayer (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1982), 1: 548a–b. 22. Walter Benjamin, “Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century,” in Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings, trans. Edmund Jephcott, ed. Peter Demetz with a Preface by Leon Wieseltier (New York: Schocken Books, 2007). 23. Walter Benjamin, “Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century,” op. cit., p. 147.

Chapter 2 1. Bruce Holsinger, “Medieval Studies in the Age of Big Data …,” December 13, 2012. http://burnablebooks.com/medieval-studies-in-the-age-of-big-data-a-serial-forum/. 2. Alexandra Gillespie, “In Praise of Small Data (Medieval Studies in the Age of Big Data VII).” March 1, 2013. http://burnablebooks.com/author/alexandra-gillespie/. 3. “Morris condemned the typewriter for creative work,” Bethany Nowviskie reported in a 2013 MLA paper, saying that “anything that gets between a man’s hand and his work, you see, is more or less bad for him. […] The minute you make the executive part of the work too easy [by using a machine], the less thought there is in the result. And you can’t have art without resistance to the material …” Bethany Nowviskie, “Resistance in the Materials.” http://nowviskie.org/2013/resistance-in-the-materials/. 4. Deborah McGrady, “Change in the Age of Big Data, or, How Nostalgia-Driven Studies May Be Our Future (Medieval Studies in the Age of Big Data IV).” January 27, 2013. http://burnablebooks.com/change-in-the-age-of-big-data/. 5. Ibid. 6. Plato, Cratylus, ed. H.  N. Fowler (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1926), pp. 163, 165. Note that for Plato here, names, like paintings, depict (i.e. trigger an image in interlocutor’s mind) as well as denote the person. 7. Stephen Halliwell, Plato: Republic 10 (Warminster, Wilts., U.K.: Aris & Phillips, 1988), p. 5. 8. Halliwell, ibid., p. 5.

206 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

9. Plato, Republic, trans. G. M. A. Grube, revised by C. D. C. Reeve (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Co., 1992), p. 77. (My emphasis.) 10. Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Co., 1976), p. 112. [Hereafter cited in text as (LA).] 11. I discuss the issue of dynamism and stability in manuscript versions of the “same” work in the next chapter. 12. I am referring to the concept of “variance” as Bernard Cerquiglini developed the idea in Éloge de la variante: Histoire critique de la philologie (Paris: Seuil, 1989). English translation: In Praise of the Variante: A Critical History of Philology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999). As I argue in Chapter 5, what Bernard Cerquiglini and I [The New Philology issue of Speculum 65.1 (1990)] understood by “variance” in 1990 was an analog concept whose reference was the critical edition.

Chapter 3 1. Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language defines “stability” similarly as: “the property of a body that causes it when disturbed from a condition of equilibrium or steady motion to develop forces or moments that restore or adapt the body to the original equilibrium or motion” (Springfield, MA: G. & C. Merriam Co., 1967): 2217. 2. With the advent of an increasingly more complex environment for computational and Internet technology, stability engineering has evolved from such areas as physics and structural engineering to address problems of distributed applications. Pankaj Garg and his collaborators at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories define the paradox of mutable stability in a computational environment as follows: “… a distributed application is stable when it can provide an intended level of service over time, as the underlying hardware, networks, and usage patterns change. … Being stable means that an application is not going to exhibit chaotic or catastrophic behavior when there are perturbations [to the system].” Pankaj K. Garg, et al., “Towards distributed applications stability engineering” (Palo Alto, CA: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Technical Publications Department, 1996). HP Laboratories technical report, HPL-96-24, pp. 1–2. 3. For an account of the transformation of Paris at this time see my essay, “Inventing Paris: The Birth of a Cultural Capital during the Long Fourteenth Century,” in Europe: A Literary History, 1348–1418, ed. David Wallace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), Vol. 1, pp. 11–42. 4. See S. G. Nichols, “‘The Pupil of Your Eye’: Vision, Language and Poetry in Thirteenth-Century Paris,” in Rethinking the Medieval Senses: Heritage/Fascinations/Frames, ed. Nichols, Kablitz & Calhoun (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008): 286–307; see also D. C. Lindberg, Roger Bacon and the Origins of Perspectiva in the

Notes | 207 Middle Ages: A Critical Edition and English Translation of Bacon’s Perspectiva with Introduction and Notes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996); also pertinent is Gérard Simon, L’Archéologie de la vision: L’optique, le corps, la peinture (Paris: Seuil, 2003). 5. Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, Le Roman de la Rose, Paris, BnF, MS fr. 25526, f. 1a, ll. 1–4, unless otherwise indicated, all transcriptions and translations are my own. The quoted lines correspond to ll. 1–4 of the Poirion’s edition Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, Le Roman de la Rose, ed. Daniel Poirion (Paris: GarnierFlammarion, 1974. 6. Roman de la Rose, BnF fr. 25526, f. 1c, ll. 6–26 (correspond to ll. 26–38 of Poirion). 7. Medieval philosophy found Aristotle’s hylomorphic concept of pysche congenial to Christian doctrine, not least because of the active role of perception in mediating change while revealing essential and persistent characteristics of an entity. Aristotles sees the psyche as the essence of being or existence: “the principle of life or of animation.” In consequence, it perceives the body as intimately linked to mental processes. As Martha Nussbaum and Hilary Putnam note, it not only “deals with the beings and doings of all substances,” it also “asks some very global and general questions about all these things, and two questions in particular. First, it asks: How do and should we explain or describe the changes we see taking place in the world? … Aristotle holds that any coherent account of change must pick out some entity that is the ‘substrate,’ or underlying persistent thing, of that change, the thing to which the change happens and which persists itself as one and the same thing throughout the change. … Second, he asks: How do and should we answer ‘what is it?’ questions about the items in our experience? What accounts give us the best stories about the identities of things, as they persist through time? … What is it that must remain one and the same, if we are going to continue to regard it as the same individual? … Any good account of change will need to single out as its underlying substrates or subjects items that are not just relatively enduring, but also relatively definite or distinct items that can be identified, characterized as to what they are.” Martha Nussbaum and Hilary Putnam, “Changing Aristotle’s Mind,” in Essays on Aristotle’s De Anima, ed. Martha C. Nussbaum and Amélie Rorty (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992): 28–29 [cited henceforth as “Nussbaum and Rorty, 1992”]. 8. Christopher Shields, the Oxford philosopher and specialist on De anima, points to hylomorphism as one reason why “Aristotle is happy to speak of an affected thing as receiving the form of the agent which affects it and of the change consisting in the affected thing’s ‘becoming like’ the agent (De Anima ii 5, 418q3–6; ii 12, 424a17–21).” C. Shields, “Aristotle’s Psychology,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-psychology/#6). Gerard Watson points to the importance of phantasia as the activity responsible for such changes: “Aristotle describes phantasia in the De Anima as a movement which comes about in beings that perceive of things of which there is perception and because of an actual perception. It is similar to perception, and beings which possess it often act or are affected

208 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

in accordance with it (iii.3, 428b10–17) [p. 100]. … If phantasia is to be considered to belong to consciousness … we must look for it among the potentialities in virtue of which we are enabled to judge and arrive at truth or falsity, among which we also count capacities like perception, belief, knowledge and intuitive apprehension [pp. 105–106]. … Aristotle considered phantasia central to all human cognition … [which is] how we come to act on our understanding of good and bad. He says that to the intellective soul phantasmata serve as sense-perceptions, aisthemata. When [the pysche] asserts or denies something to be good or bad, it avoids or pursues it. And that, he says, is why the soul never thinks without a phantasma (431a8–17) [pp. 108–109].” Gerard Watson, “Phantasia in Aristotle, De Anima 3.3,” The Classical Quarterly, N. S., 32,1 (1982): 100–113. 9. There is a venerable medieval tradition of treatises “on the soul,” or psyche, usually called De anima, from Aristotle to Augustine and on down to Aquinas’s Commentary on Aristotle’s ‘De Anima’. These treatises locate the processing of external visual stimuli in that part of the psyche called the imagination. On these accounts, the imagination produces phantasiae or images as a mimesis of external visual stimuli. We must understand mimesis, however, as performative rather than a passive reproduction of stimuli. From a modern standpoint, we can picture the imagination in terms of image processing. In consequence, each individual processes visual stimuli in a unique way, where “seeing” means perception of a phenomenal reality processed through the mind/psyche of the viewer. Medieval perception is thus a dual process of
ingesting a raw image of phenomenal reality and refracting it
through analytic concepts previously formulated by acquired knowledge, or, in the case of erotic love, through the libido, or even—as Guillaume would argue—through refinement of libidinal forces by the “laws” or “art” of love. This means, of course, that perception so conceived privileges not objective reality, a faithful reproduction or copy of the object one has seen, but an affectively constructed version. The dynamic faculty of the medieval imagination spans, then, the space separating raw perception and performative representation. The literature on this topic is extensive, but see the following: Michael Frede, “On Aristotle’s Conception of the Soul,” in Nussbaum and Rorty, 1992: 93–107; K. V. Wilkes, “Psuchē Versus the Mind,” in ibid.: 109–127. Terrell Ward Bynum, “A New Look at Aristotle’s Theory of Perception,” in Aristotle’s De Anima in Focus, ed. Michael Durrant (London and New York: Routledge, 1993): 90–109, particularly 100–107; Malcolm F. Lowe, “Aristotle on Kinds of Thinking,” in ibid.: 110–127, particularly 112–115, 119–123; William Charlton, “Aristotle’s Definition of the Soul,” in ibid.: 197–216, especially p. 205ff. 10. Chapters 2 and 3 of The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, ed. Norman Kretzman, Anthony Kenny, and Jan Pinborg (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982) offer an excellent overview of the medieval reception of Aristotle. See also, “Medieval Aristotelianism” in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward Craig (New York: Routledge, 1998).

Notes | 209 11. Although Aquinas did not write his commentary on Aristotle’s De Anima until c. 1267—well after Guillaume’s Rose, but over a decade before Jean de Meun wrote his continuation—Aquinas’s commentary on Book II, especially chapters 9–15 (pp. 176–226), and his observations on Book III, particularly on phantasia and Intellect chapters 5–14 (pp. 327–402), are pertinent to Guillaume de Lorris’s positive exposition, and even more cogently to the more nuanced and ironic debates of Jean de Meun. See Thomas Aquinas, A Commentary on Aristotle’s De anima, trans. Robert Pasnau (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999). 12. Paris, BnF fr. 25526, f. 13 b, ll. 1–35, 13c, ll.1–4 (corresponds—except for Poirion’s l. 1581, missing in fr. 25526—to Poirion ll. 1543–1582). 13. The Latin verb miro, meaning “to wonder,” connotes the notion of meraviglia or awe akin to the marvellous reflexive sight associated with “mirroring” phenomena in early societies. It comes into Old and Middle French with the connotation of absorptive or attentive looking, regarder attentivement. It also expresses the action of viser, “to to take aim at.” A. J. Grimas, Dictionnaire du moyen français (Paris: Larousse, 1992): 417b. 14. For a logical exposition of this phenomenon, see Aquinas’s commentary to §431A17-B2 of De Anima, entitled “Phantasms are like sense objects.” Op. cit. III, 12, ¶¶142–195, Pasnau translation, pp. 384–385. 15. P. Ovidi Nasonis, Metamorphoses, ed. R. J. Tarrant (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004), Liber III, ll. 339–401 (Echo), 402–510 (Narcissus). Ovid juxtaposes Echo and Narcissus precisely as examples of the failure of reciprocal erotic representation: Echo as intransitive sound, and Narcissus as “intransive” gaze. Echo: “inde latet silvis nulloque in monte videtur,/omnibus auditur: sonus est, qui vivit in illa.”  (“She hides in the forest, no longer seen on the hills,/heard by all: it is sound that lives in her.” III: 400–401). Narcissus: “dumque bibit, visae correptus imagine formae/spem sine corpore amat, corpus putat esse, quod umbra est.” (“While he drinks, he’s seized by the image of a reflection: he loves desire without a shape, for the body he thinks he sees is but a shadow,” III: 416–417). 16. Émile Mâle, The Gothic Image: Religious Art in France in the Thirteenth Century (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1958): 117–118 and fig. 57. This work is a reprint of an edition published in New York in 1913. 17. Miniatures of this scene portray Oiseuse variously. Sometimes, as with figs. 13 and 14, they follow the text in showing her with a mirror. Or she may be shown with a large key indicating her function as huissier (doorkeeper) to the garden, as in MS Bibliothek der Kunstakademie Düsseldorf A. B. 142, f. 6r (Paris, 14th c.). At other times, she is portrayed simply ushering the lover through the garden door, as in MS Bibliothèque Interuniversitaire Sainte Geneviève 1126, f. 4r (Paris, 1325–75). 18. Prudentius, with an English translation by H. J. Thomson, ed. T. E. Page, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1949), vol. 1: 301–302. 19. See Morton W. Bloomfield, The Seven Deadly Sins: An Introduction to the History of a Religious Concept, with Special Reference to Medieval English Literature (East Lansing:

210 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

Michigan State College Press, 1952). Bloomfield calls Evagirus of Pontus (d. A.D. 400) “the father of the seven cardinal sins” (p. 57). Cassian was his pupil. Evagirus’s list includes Porneia and Cassian’s fornicatio as its Latin equivalent. Gregory the Great uses luxuria. Gregory’s version of the Seven Deadly Sins became the authority for the Middle Ages. “In Gregory’s list luxuria is substituted (in seventh place) for fornicatio. Given the historical impact of Gregory’s account this substitution now establishes itself. In Gregory luxuria has a wide remit. It incorporates moral blindness and selflove as well as hatred of God; indeed a little earlier it is said to destroy all virtues (Moralia XXI, 12).” Christopher J. Berry, The Idea of Luxury: A Conceptual and Historical Investigation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994): 97. 20. R. A. Markus, “‘Imago-similitudo’ in Augustine,” Revue des Études augustiniennes 10 (1964), p. 137. 21. Confessions, VI, 3, 4. 22. Markus, “‘Imago-similitudo’…”: 138. 23. Ibid., 125 (italics mine). Markus extrapolates Augustine’s analysis of the terms from one of the first things he wrote after his elevation to the episcopacy: De div. quaest. LXXXIII, 74. 24. Markus, “‘Imago-similitude’ …”:140. 25. Ibid., 140. 26. Augustine, De Trinitate VII, 6, 12. 27. Ibid., VII, 6, 14. Cf. Markus: 140. 28. Gerhard Ladner, The Idea of Reform: Its impact on Christian Thought and Action in the Age of the Fathers (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959): 53, 198. 29. Markus, “‘Imago-similitudo’…”: 142. 30. Sapientiae 1:3: “perversae enim cogitationes separant a Deo probata autem virtus corripit insipientes.” 1:4: “quoniam in malivolam animam non intrabit sapientia nec habitabit in corpore subdito peccatis.” Biblia Sacra iuxta vulgatam versionem (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1983), t. 2: 1003. 31. Umberto Eco, The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas, trs. by Hugh Bredin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988): 49. 32. Ibid., 50. 33. Ibid., 50. 34. See, Augustine, Confessions VIII, 29, ed. James J. O’Donnell 3 volumes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992): 101. In his commentary on the fig tree in the garden conversion scene in VIII, 28—ego sub quadam fici arbore stravi—O’Donnell identifies Augustine’s reference as John 1:47–48 where seeing (video) structures the narrative, especially in the source for Augustine’s direct quotation: “… sub arbore fici vidi te.” Other discussions of sight in Augustine’s hierarchy of the senses include De libero arbitrio libri tres, II, vii, and De Genesi ad litteram, XII, 29–33, where he develops the technical connotations of visa, visio as well as his doctrine of the infallibility of intellectual vision. Oeuvres de Saint Augustin, 49, La Genèse qu sens littéral en douze

Notes | 211 livres, traduction, introduction, et notes par P. Agaësse et A. Solignac (Bruges: Desclée de Brouwer, 1972), vol. 2: 374–385. See also the editors’ notes regarding “Les trois genres de visions,” “L’infaillibilité de la vision intellectuelle,” and “L’objet de la vision intellectuelle,” ibid., 575–585. 35. Eco.: 50. 36. Ibid., 76. Quotations from Boethius De Institutione Musica, ed. Godofredus Friedlein (Leipzig, 1867), I,3; also in MPL 63, cols 1167–1300. 37. Ibid., n. 32: 244. 38. Ibid., 76–77. 39. Ibid., 3. 40. Daniel Poirion, “Écriture et ré-écriture au moyen âge,” Littérature 41 (février 1981): 109–118. 41. Pierre-Yves Badel, Le Roman de la Rose au xive siècle: Étude de la réception de l’oeuvre (Genève: Droz, 1980. 42. Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, trans. Blackwell, Spath, and Thirkel (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963): 136–137. 43. The manuscripts in question are: Berlin Staatsbibliothek gall. Qu. 80 and Ham 577, Düsseldorf Bibliothek der Staatlichen Kunstakademie A.B 142, Frankfurt Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek lat. Qu. 65, München Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Gall 17, and Stuttgart Württembergische Landesbibliothek Cod. Poet. et phil. 2° 6. 44. Gregor Weyer, “The Roman de la Rose Manuscript in Düsseldorf,” De la Rose: Texte, image, fortune, Études publiées par Catherine Bel et Herman Braet (Louvain: Peters, 2006): 118. 45. Richard H. and Mary A. Rouse, Illiterati et uxorati. Manuscripts and Their Makers. Commercial Bok Producers in Medieval Paris 1200–1500. Vol. 1 (London: Harvey Miller, 2000), pp. 235–239. Quoted by Weyer: 125. 46. See Keith Busby, Codex and Context: Reading Old French Verse Narrative in Manuscript, Vol. 2 (Rodopi: Amsterdam, 2002): 591. 47. Éléonore Fournié, Catalogue des manuscrits de la Bible historiale (1/3), L’Atelier du Centre de recherches historiques, Revue électronique du CRH 03.2, 2009: Sources et documents: La Bible historiale: Les manuscrits de la Bible historiale. http://acrh.revues. org/index1467.html#tocto1n25, #107—“Paris, France, Bibliothèque nationale de France, fr. 15391, Présentation.” 48. Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, MS W 145 A & B; Enshede (Netherlands), Rijksmuseum Twente, Inv. No. 2; New York, Morgan Library MS 322 and 323; New York Public Library MS Spencer 4; Paris, BnF MS fr. 15391; Paris, Bibliothèque Sainte Geneviève MS 20 and 21; Philadelphia, Free Library MS M VIII 10. For a list of Bible historiale manuscripts see Éléonore Fournié, Catalogue des manuscrits de la Bible historiale (1/3), L’Atelier du Centre de recherches historiques, Revue électronique du CRH 03.2, 2009: Sources et documents: La Bible historiale: Les manuscrits de la Bible historiale. http://acrh.revues.org/index1467.html#tocto1n25.

212 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

49. All of the Rose manuscripts mentioned above may be consulted on the Roman de la Rose site of the Digital Library of Medieval Manuscripts curated by the Sheridan Libraries of Johns Hopkins University. The site also contains manuscripts of Christine de Pizan’s works from the Bibliothèque nationale de France. 50. Early Music History 10 (1991): 1–14.

Chapter 4 1. Textual criticism and manuscript editing are represented by a number of recent titles, of which the following are but a sample. Raymond Clemens and Timothy Graham, Introduction to Manuscript Studies (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007); Adrian Armstrong, “Scholarly Editing,” French Studies 67.2 (2013): 232–240; János M. Bak, “An Introduction to Editing Manuscripts for Medievalists” (2012). All Complete Monographs. Book 1. http://digitalcommons.usu.edu/lib_mono/1; Yvan G. Lepage, Guide de l’édition de textes en ancien français (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2001); Alfred Foulet and Mary B. Speer, On Editing Old French Texts (Lawrence: The Regents Press of Kansas, 1979); Vincent McCarren and Douglas Moffat, eds., A Guide to Editing Middle English (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998); Making the Medieval Book: Techniques of Production, ed. Linda L. Brownrigg (Los Altos Hills, CA: Anderson-Lovelace, 1995). 2. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), via the Hubble Space Telescope, “is one of the most ambitious and influential surveys in the history of astronomy. Over eight years of operations (SDSS-I, 2000–2005, 2005–2008), it obtained deep, multi-color images covering more than a quarter of the sky and created 3-dimensional maps containing more than 930,000 galaxies and more than 120,000 quasars.…” http:// classic.sdss.org/. Subsequent phases of the SDSS continue to produce enormous quantities of data to the point of spawning new protocols for big data curation. 3. On medieval theories of vision and perception, see, for example, my article, “‘The Pupil of Your Eye”: Vision, Language and Poetry in Thirteenth-Century Paris,” in Rethinking the Medieval Senses: Heritage/Fascinations/Frames, eds. Stephen G. Nichols, Andreas Kablitz and Alison Calhoun (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008): 286–307. 4. The concept of “extensible likeness” or “similitude as opposed to sameness,” deeply permeated medieval historiography, philosophy, and theology, and, through them, modes of representation. For a wide-ranging discussion and demonstration of these ideas, especially as they influenced the art and literature of the early Middle Ages, see my Romanesque Signs: Early Medieval Narrative and Iconography, second edition (Aurora, Colorado: The Davies Group, Publishers, 2010), passim. 5. R. A. Markus, “‘Imago-similitudo’ in Augustine,” Revue des Études augustiniennes 10 (1964), p. 125. Markus extrapolates his analysis from Augustine’s De div. quaest. LXXXIII.

Notes | 213 6. Umberto Eco, The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas, trans. Hugh Bredin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), pp. 49–50. 7. For the term “manuscript matrix,” see my introduction to the New Philology issue of Speculum, “Philology in a Manuscript Culture, Thoughts on the Discipline,” Speculum 65,1 (1990): 1–10; also infra, Chapter 2. 8. Franco Moretti, Graphs, Maps, Trees (London: Verso Books, 2007); Geraldine Heng, Empire of Magic: Medieval Romance and the Politics of Cultural Fantasy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003); see also her project, “The Global Middle Ages: An Experiment in Collaborative Humanities, or Imagining the World, 500–1500,” www. utexas.edu/cola/depts/english/_files/pdf/faculty-files/Heng_global-midages.pdf. 9. “Inventing Paris: The Birth of a Cultural Capital during the Long Fourteenth Century,” in Europe: A Literary History, 1348–1418, ed. David Wallace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).

Chapter 5 1. “La variance de l’œuvre médiévale romane est son caractère premier, altérité concrète qui fonde cet objet …” Bernard Cerquiglini, Éloge de la variante: Histoire critique de la philologie (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1989): 62. Translation by Betsy Wing: In Praise of the Variant: A Critical History of Philology (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999): 37. 2. A manuscript produced in Paris, for example, bears the date of 1407 (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, MS. Cod. Gall. 17), while the inventories of the new Royal Library created by Charles V around 1364, and enlarged by Charles VI after 1380, record a number of copies of the Roman de la Rose produced in the late fourteenth century. For the Royal Library, see Léopold Delisle, Recherches sur la Librairie de Charles V (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1907), 2 vols. For the so-called Querelle de la Roman de la Rose, see Christine de Pizan: The Debate of the Romance of the Rose, ed. David Hult (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2010). 3. Le Livre des fais et bonnes meurs du sage roy Charles, Ve roy d’icelluy nom, fait et compilé par CHRISTINE DE PIZAN, damoiselle, acompli le desrenier jour de novembre l’an de grâce 1404…, Paris, BnF MS. fr. 10153, fol. 1r. Suzanne Solente published a critical edition: Le livre des fais et bonnes meurs du sage roy Charles V. Société pour l’histoire de France (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1936–40). 2 vols. Eric Hicks and Thérèse Moreau published a translation into modern French: Le livre des faits et bonnes mœurs du roi Charles V le Sage (Paris: Stock, 1997). 4. ESTS 2013: “Variance in Textual Scholarship and Genetic Criticism.” Paris, 22–24 November 2013. http://textualscholarship.eu/conference/previous-editions/. 5. Here is how one textual scholar recently described dilemma of variants. “Historically, in cases [of a large number of manuscript versions], the only sensible solution [to indicate variations in wording] has been to reconstruct the version that corresponded

214 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

most closely with the theoretical orientation of the editor [or author], and to serialize the rejected variant readings in the apparatus. The result is the provision of a clean, reading edition, where the variants are conveniently marginalized at the bottom of the page or at the end of the volume, in the name of ease of reading. However, such a format has generated a fair amount of criticism because it gives texts a false impression of stability and purity, and makes it almost impossible to really appreciate the editorial work and complexity of the tradition.” Elena Pierazzo, “Digital Documentary Editions and the Others,” Scholarly Editing: The Annual of the Association for Documentary Editing, Volume 35, 2014 | http://www.scholarlyediting.org/2014/ essays/essay.pierazzo.html, p. 6. 6. Cerquiglini, “The aesthetic of return lay at the basis of vernacular writing,” Wing translation, p. 36. Cerquiglini’s exact expression runs: “Ce qui est pour nous lourdeur répétitive de la prose participe d’une esthétique du retour qui fonde l’écriture romane.” Éloge de la variante. p. 60. 7. In Praise of the Variant, p. 71. Éloge, p. 101. 8. Ibid., p. 37. “Esthétique du retour, plaisir à la variance: écrire déplace minutieusement les acquis, lire/entendre se prête aux hasards de la reconnaissance et de la surprise”, Éloge, p. 61. 9. Ibid., 77–78. “Or l’écriture médiévale ne produit pas des variantes, elle est variance. La récriture incessante à laquelle est soumise la textualité médiévale, l’appropriation joyeuse dont elle est l’objet, nous invitent à faire une hypothèse forte: la variance n’est jamais ponctuelle”, Éloge, p. 111. 10. Stephen G. Nichols, “Introduction: Philology in a Manuscript Culture. Thoughts on the Discipline,” The New Philology, Speculum 65.1 (1990), p. 8. 11. Éloge de la variante, p. 39. 12. Regression analysis refers to tools for measuring the effect that variables in two or more phenomena have on one another. It allows one to infer relationships—usually causal or associative—among variables. The latter are often grouped according to labels such as “dependent” or “independent.” Movement among and between variables provides data enabling inferential propositions. See, for example, Kleinbaum, Kupper, Azhar, and Muller, Applied Regression Analysis and Other Multivariable Methods, Fourth Edition (Belmont, CA: Thomson Brooks/Cole, 2008), chapters 1, 2, & 4. 13. Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet, “Thinking the Medieval Text,” in Philology, History, Theory: Rethinking the New Medievalism, ed. Joachim Küpper et al. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014), p. 152. My translation of the original French: “Mais qu’est-ce qu’un texte et comment l’appréhender dans la culture manuscrite du Moyen Age ? … Plus radicalement, on est en droit de se demander: dans le manuscrit, où est le texte ? Comment s’opère son individuation factuelle et matérielle, comment se réalise son identité littéraire?”

Notes | 215 14. “The new reflections of 1990 reminded philologists not to forget that their work implies a theory of the text, much as they might wish it otherwise. In fact, the practice of critical text editing had attempted to play down, if not deny altogether, the role of the editor as agent.” Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet, ibid., p. 151. 15. Ibid., p. 152. 16. Ibid., p. 152. 17. London, British Library, MS. Harley 4431, fol. 4r. The codex, known as “The Queen’s Book,” was made in Paris between 1410 and 1414, and presented to Queen Isabeau presumably in the latter year. Christine de Pizan was the master scribe who planned and laid out the codex and is thought to have copied certain parts of it herself. Held in London at the British Library, MS. 4431, a detailed description may be found here: http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/record.asp?MSID=8361. 18. For a recent study of how the representation of characters in the Roman de la Rose can be colored by political convictions of a given version, see the article by Timothy L. Stinson, “Illumination and Interpretation: The Depiction and Reception of Faus Semblant in Roman de la Rose Manuscripts,” Speculum 87.2 (April 2012), 469–98. 19. David Bradshaw, Aristotle East and West: Metaphysics and the Division of Christendom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 1. 20. “A word Aristotle often uses as a synonym for energeia [in the sense of actuality] is entelechia [έντέλεχεια]. Aristotle coined the term entelechia as he did energeia. … it seems clear that the word’s root sense is ‘having completeness’ or ‘being fully real.” Bradshaw, p. 13. 21. Aristotle’s Metaphysics Θ, translated, with introduction and commentary by Stephen Makin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). All subsequent quotations from Metaphysics will be to this edition. 22. The Québécois translater of The Eudemian Ethics, Vianney Décarie, renders hexis [έξις] as habitus. “Nous rendons ici έξις par habitus, pour le distinguer du mot précédent: ‘disposition’; d’après les Catégories, 8b 25–9a13 l’habitus est une disposition ferme et stable, par exemple la vertu.” Aristote, Éthique à Eudème, ed. Vianney Décarie (Paris: J. Vrin, 1978), pp. 80–81. 23. D. J. Allan notes that ergon [έργον] has the sense of “work/function” and “product.” “Individual and State in the Ethics and Politics,” in La Politique d’Aristote (Fondation Hardt, Entretiens XI), 1965, p. 87. 24. Aristotle, The Eudemian Ethics, trans. Anthony Kenny (Oxford: University Press, 2011), p. 14. 25. Vianney Décarie notes in his French translation of this passage that while phronêsis may denote both contemplative and practical wisdom, depending on context, in the Eudemian Ethics, he uses it “in the sense of practical wisdom and prudence” (“… phronêsis est utilisé dans le sens de prudence ou sagesse pratique”). Éthique à Eudème, p. 79, n. 4. 26. The Eudemian Ethics, Kenny translation, p. 14.

216 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

27. Bradshaw, Aristotle East and West, p. 8. 2 8. Bradshaw, ibid., p. 12. 29. Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, Le Roman de la Rose, Bibliothèque Sainte Geneviève MS 1126–1127, Paris, 1325–1375. Parchment codex of 155 folios of which five of the original leaves (folios 4, 5,10, 33, 152) have disappeared. 107 miniature paintings, decorated margins, decorated initials. Folio dimensions: 300 x 218 mm; two columns of text per folio averaging 33 lines. 30. Paris, Bibliothèque Sainte Geneviève 1126, fol. 8r-a, ll. 4–12 (my translation). Corresponds to Lecoy’s edition, t. 1, ll. 1257–1265. 31. Paris, Bibliothèque Sainte Geneviève 1126, fol. 8r-a, ll. 13–20 (my translation). Corresponds to Lecoy’s edition, t. 1, ll. 1266–1273. 32. In Old and Middle French, enclos does indeed mean “included, contained.” But since it rhymes here with Rose, rhyme and grammar require the feminine form, enclose. But enclose is a substantive in its own right, with several meanings, each indicating the opposite of “open,” or “free.” The first sense is that of a circle, or enclosure, and the second signifies a cloistered or sequestered woman, hence, a nun. This aptly describes the situation of “Rose,” who will spend much of the poem walled up in a tower. It also meets the case of the “art d’amour,” whose complexities, contradictions, and conflicts both Guillaume and Jean represent with no resolution … or, since only Jean completes the poem, he represents as insoluble. 33. Paris, Bibliothèque Sainte Geneviève, MS 1126, fol. 1v-c, ll. 17–21 (my translation). Corresponds to Lecoy, t. 1, ll. 34–38. 34. Paris, Bibliothèque Sainte Geneviève, MS 1126, fol. 7v, col. 2, ll. 1–6 (my translation). Corresponds to Lecoy, t. 1, ll. 1103–1108. 35. Ibid., rubric + line 7. 36. The rubric being by definition hors texte, it can’t rhyme with the line it twins with. Its unrhymed status as well as its color firmly identifies it as rubric. But that’s exactly what allows it to supplement the poetic narrative with critical information; in this case, providing a variant reading for 7v-d, line 7 of this manuscript. 37. Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet, “Conceiving the Text in the Middle Ages,” in Rethinking the New Medievalism, op. cit. n. 2, p. 154. 38. Bibliothèque Municipale de Lyon MS. 763, fol. 12r-a, ll. 4–18 (my translation). Corresponds to Lecoy, t. 1, ll. 1679–1693. 39. P. Ovidius Naso, Metamorphoseon, liber III: 138–252. Bibliotheca Augustana: http:// www.hs-augsburg.de/~harsch/Chronologia/Lsante01/Ovidius/ovi_me03.html#02. 40. Ovid places the reader just behind Actaeon’s vantage point so that we witness simultaneously: (1) what he sees; (2) the embarrassment of the nymphs and their attempts to shield their mistress’s nudity; and (3) the outraged fury of Diana. Thus, when the goddess flings the transforming drops of water onto Actaeon’s forehead and eyes, there is no doubt of the voyeuristic transgression being punished. “Nunc tibi me posito visam velamine nares,/sit poteris narrare, licet!” (“Now you may tell, if you can

Notes | 217 tell that is, of having seen me naked!”), ll. 192–193. A. S. Kline translation, Ovid: The Metamorphoses, Book III (2000). http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/ Latin/Metamorph3.htm#anchor_Toc64106184. 41. P. Ovidius Naso, Metamorphoseon liber III: 198–205. http://ovid.lib.virginia.edu/ sources/OviLMet.part3.html. 42. P. Ovidius Naso, Metamorphoses Brookes More. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/ hopper/text?doc=Ov.+Met.+3.165&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0028. 43. Ovid, Metamorphoseon 3, 193–198. “… nec plura minata/dat sparso capiti vivacis cornua cervi,/dat spatium collo summasque cacuminat aures/cum pedibusque manus, cum longis bracchia mutat/cruribus et velat maculoso vellere corpus;/additus et pavor est …” http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/ovid/ovid.met3.shtml. [“Without more threats, she gave the horns of a mature stag to the head she had sprinkled, lengthening his neck, making his ear-tips pointed, changing feet for hands, long legs for arms, and covering his body with a dappled hide. And then she added fear.”] A. S. Kline http://ovid.lib.virginia.edu/trans/Metamorph3.htm#476975706. 44. Dijon, Bibliothèque municipale, MS. 525, fol. 4r (Paris, 1355–1362). 223 folios now (37 were lost at some point). Beginning with the Roman de la Rose, folios 4r–112v (109 folios), the next 111 folios contain shorter or longer moralizing texts— often about women. There is an interesting version of Gervais du Bus’s Roman de Fauvel, folios 158–164, and the miscellany ends with the French translation ascribed to Jean de Meun of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, folios 201–221. The scribe, Mathias du Rivau, who copied everything but the Roman de la Rose, was originally from Poitou. Recent studies of this manuscript include Sylvia Huot, The Romance of the Rose and its Medieval Readers: Interpretation, Reception, Manuscript Transmission (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 75–84, and John Haines, “An Anti-feminist Motet by Jean de Meun(?): O bicornix/A touz jours/Virgo Dei genitrix,” Nottingham Medieval Studies 53 (2009), pp. 21–38. 45. Guillaume de Lorris, Roman de la Rose, BSB Munich, MS Cod. Gall. 17, fol. 2r. This folio may be viewed at www.romandelarose.org. 46. Guillaume de Lorris, Roman de la Rose, Dartmouth College Library, MS. Cod. Rauner 3206, fol. 4r (see www.romandelarose.org). 47. On the dialectical configuration of Dijon 525, see my article, “The Codex as Critic: MS Dijon 525’s Debate with the Roman de la Rose”; in Digital Philology: A Journal of Medieval Cultures 6, 1 (Spring 2017). 48. “Prosa” is a late classical and rhetorical term connoting “continuous speech,” or speech “moving forward,” as opposed to the recursive rhetoric of verse. “The term prosa (oratio) means ‘speech turned forwards’ (proversa). It is the opposite of versus, which indicates the return of the same regular course of the meter. … In prose we are concerned with a flow of words …” Handbook of Literary Rhetoric: A Foundation for Literary Study, ed. Heinrich Lausberg, David E. Orton, R. Dean Anderson (Leiden: Brill, 1998): 748 a–b.

218 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

Chapter 6 1. “Le 21 février de cette année, Charles V convoqua en l’hôtel de Saint-Pol tous les membres de son conseil pour prendre part à l’élection d’un nouveau chancelier. Le mot conseil doit être pris ici dans le sens le plus large, puisque le greffier du Parlement évalue à deux cents environ le nombre des votants, prélats, barons, et autres.” Siméon Luce, “De l’élection au scrutin de deux chanceliers de France sous le règne de Charles V,” Revue historique 16, 1 (1881), p. 95. 2. “L’élection au scrutin d’un chancelier de France … était une nouveauté qui dut frapper vivement les contemporains.” Ibid., p. 96. 3. Grandes chroniques de France, BnF fr. 2813, fols. 461v-d–462r-a, emphasis mine. All manuscript transcriptions and translations are my own, unless otherwise indicated. 4. “L’élection au scrutin d’un chancelier de France … était une nouveauté qui dut frapper vivement les contemporains.” Siméon Luce, Revue historique, p. 96. 5. François Du Chesne, Histoire des chanceliers et Gardes des sceaux de France, Distingués par les règnes de nos monarques depuis Clovis premier Roy Chrestien, jusques à Louis le Grand XIVesme du nom, heureusement Regnant (Paris: 1680), pp. 370–371. Siméon Luce quotes this passage in the Revue historique, pp. 96–97, but reworks the French to accord with his own philological views. 6. “… par voie de scrutine,” renders literally the Latin phrase per viam scrutini, the term used in canon law for electing officials to ecclesiastical office by secret ballot (as, for example, in papal conclaves when the cardinals choose this process to elect a pope). 7. Aristotle, Politics I.1.8 (1252b 28–36), trans. H. Rackham (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), pp. 8/9. 8. Aristotle, Politics II.1.4 (1261a 24–25), ibid., pp. 70/71–72/73. Emphasis added. 9. Aristotle, Politics II.1.2 (1260b 40–1261a1), ibid., pp. 68/69 10. On the dynamic growth and history of Paris during this period, see my essay: “Paris,” in Europe: A Literary History, 1348–1418, ed. David Wallace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), vol. 1, pp. 11–42. 11. As Oresme says in the prologue to his translation of Aristotle’s Ethics, “Semblablement est il verité que savoir la science de politiques profite moult as sages qui ont a gouverner” (“In the same way, it’s true that familiarity with political science proves invaluable to wise men whose task it is to govern”). “Prohème,” Aristote, Livres de Ethiques et politiques, translatez par Maistre Nichole Oresme. Brussels, MS. KBR 9505–06, fol. 1c. 12. Aristotle, Politics III.1.2 (1274b 39–42), trans. H. Rackham, pp. 172/173. 13. Ibid. III.2.5 (1277a 16–19), pp. 188/189. 14. Ibid., III.2.9–10 (1277b 12–17), pp. 192/193. 15. Ibid., III.5.11 (1280b 7f.), pp. 214/215. 16. Ibid., III.5.14–15 (1281a 1–9), pp. 218/219. Emphasis added.

Notes | 219 17. In the gloss to his translation of the passage corresponding to that quoted just above, Nicole Oresme echoes Aristotle’s thought more closely than does his translation of the passage: “Ce est a dire que excés ou habundance de vertu politique et pratique laquelle est vraie prudence est a preferer en cité devant liberté et devant noblece de lignage et devant richeces quant est a participer as princeys, offices, honneurs et biens publiques.” “That is to say that abundance and excess of political and practical virtue (excellence) is true wisdom and to be prized in the city above freedom, and above noble lineage, and above wealth when it comes to serving the kingdom, public offices or honors, and public works.” Albert D. Menut, “Maistre Nicole Oresme: Le Livre de Politiques d’Aristote, published from the text of the Avranches manuscript 223,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, New Series, Vol. 60, No. 6 (1970), Livre III, xi, p. 132. 18. Aristotle, Politics II.1.5 (1261a 31). Rackham, pp. 170/171. See also Nichomachean Ethics 1132b 33: “In the interchange of services, Justice in the form of reciprocity is the bond that maintains the association: reciprocity, that is, on the basis of proportion, not on the basis of equality.” 19. Ibid., III.6.9 (1282a 8), Rackham, pp. 226/227. 20. Ibid., III.6.10 (1282a 16–22), Rackham, pp. 226/227. 21. “Prohème,” Aristote, Livres de Ethiques et politiques, translatez par Maistre Nichole Oresme. Brussels, MS. KBR 9505–06, fol. 1b (my emphasis). 22. Menut, “Le Livre de Politiques d’Aristote,” pp. 381–383. 23. For a selected list of neologisms that Oresme introduced into French, see Menut, ibid., pp. 377–380. 24. He also discusses the inadmissibility of women as rulers, wealth inequality, universal monarchy, Avignonese popes, the conciliar movement (for reforming Church governance), the mendicant movement, the election of bishops, how conflict between kings and/or kings and popes leads to fluidity of power, appropriate size of a city, tyranny. See Menut, ibid., p. 375. 25. For the Bibliothèque municipal d’Avranches MS. 223, fol. 72r, see: http://bvmm. irht.cnrs.fr/consult/consult.php?mode=visionneuse&VUE_ID=1210308&carouselThere=false&nbVignettes=4x3&reproductionId=5628&page=7&panier=false&angle=0&zoom=petit&tailleReelle=/ 26. The Oxford English Dictionary derives the first sense of “policy” from “Middle French policie, pollicie government, political organization, the state (c1370), (system of ) political and social organization, public administration (15th cent.), conduct, comportment (15th cent.) < post-classical Latin politia citizenship (late 2nd cent. in Tertullian), political organization, government (4th cent.), urbanity (15th cent.), … already in classical Latin (as polītīa) as the title of Plato’s Republic (Cicero) < ancient Greek πολιτεία citizenship, government, administration, constitution, polity, form of government < πολίτης citizen.” OED, ed. Weiner and J. A. Simpson (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1989).

220 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

27. Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), p. 84. 28. Aristotle, Politics, III.2.1 (1276b22), Rackham, pp. 186/187. 29. Ibid., III.5.11 (1280b7f.), pp. 214/215. 30. Politics, III.2.2 (1276b25–32), Rackham, pp. 186/187. 31. Aristote, Le livre de politiques, MS BM Avranches, fol. 74a. http://bvmm.irht. cnrs.fr/consult/consult.php?mode=visionneuse&VUE_ID=1210311&carouselThere=false&nbVignettes=4x3&reproductionId=5628&page=7&panier=false&angle=0&zoom=petit&tailleReelle=%2F/ 32. “Prohème,” Aristote, Livres de Ethiques et politiques, translatez par Maistre Nichole Oresme. Brussels, MS. KBR 9505–06, fol. 1b–c. 33. Oresme probably refers here to Cicero’s De republica (On the Republic and Laws), and to Apuleius’s De Dogmate Platonis (On Plato and His Doctrine). Plutarch’s bibliography is extensive, but, given Oresme’s equation of sound political doctrine with civic virtue, something like Plutarch’s De virtute morali (On Moral Virtue) may be intended, or other similar works. 34. In Metaphysics 8.6, 1045b19, Aristotle notes: “Proximate matter and form, as we have said, are one and the same thing, on the one hand dunamis [δύναμις, potentiality & actuality], on the other energaia [ένεργεία, activity]. For a discussion of these terms, see Aryeh Kosman, The Activity of Being: An Essay on Aristotle’s Ontology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), pp. 35–36, and chapter 2, passim. 35. Léopold Delisle made the most comprehensive description and inventory of this first royal library at the beginning of the last century: Recherches sur la librairie de Charles V, 2 vols. (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1907). See also François Avril et al., La Librairie de Charles V (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, 1968); and, The Library of Charles V and Family: A paradigm for princely libraries reconstructed in Europeana Regia: http://www.europeanaregia.eu/en/historical-collections/library-charles-v-family. 36. “… pour l’utilité publique du royaume et de toute la Chrétienté.” Mandements de Charles V, p. vii; quoted from Léopold Delisle, Recherches sur la Librairie de Charles V, Partie 1 (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1907), p. 2. 37. Delisle, Recherches, vol. 1, Appendice X: “Somme donnée à Nicole Oresme pour sa traduction d’Aristote (31 août 1374),” p. 379. 38. The manuscript is now in the Bibliothèque municipale in Besançon, MS français 434. At some point the inscription was semi-erased, but deciphered at the end of the nineteenth century by Auguste Castan. See Delisle, I, p. 259. 39. In chapter 12 of Part III of her biography of Charles V, Christine writes: “Dirons nous encore de la sagesse du roy Charles, la grant [69d] amour qu’il avoit à l’estude et à science, et qu’il soit ainsi, bien le demonstroit par la belle assemblée des notables livres et belle librairie qu’il avoit de tous les plus notables volumes, qui par souverains auteurs aient esté compilés, soit de la sainte escripture, de theologie, de philosophie, et de toutes sciences …” (“Let us speak once again of the wisdom of King Charles,

Notes | 221 his great love of study and of learning, and that this be the case, is perfectly shown by his amazing collection of notable books, compiled by the greatest authors, on Holy Scripture, on theology, on philosophy, and all the sciences …”). Le Livre des fais et bonnes meurs du sage roy Charles, Ve roy d’icelluy nom, fait et compilé par CHRISTINE DE PIZAN, damoiselle, acompli le desrenier jour de novembre l’an de grâce 1404…, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS. fr. 10153, fol. 69v. 40. Proverbs 21:1: sicut divisiones aquarum ita cor regis in manu Domini quocumque voluerit inclinabit illud. As the divisions of waters, so the heart of the king is in the hands of the Lord: withersoever he will, he shall turn it. http://www.latinvulgate. com/. 41. Hugh of Saint Victor, Didascalicon 2,19, Migne, Patrologia latina, 176, col. 759D. Jerome Taylor translation: “The public science [politica] is that which, taking over the care of public affairs, serves the welfare of all through its concerns for provisions, its balancing of justice, its maintenance of strength, and its observance of moderation.” The Didascalion of Hugh of St. Victor: A Medieval Guide to the Arts, translated from the Latin … by Jerome Taylor (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961), p. 71. 42. Proverbs 8:15: By me kings reign, and lawgivers decree just things,” http://www. latinvulgate.com/. 43. Nicole Oresme, Politique d’Aristote, Bibliothèque municipale d’Avranches, MS. 223, fol. 2v. http://bvmm.irht.cnrs.fr/consult/consult.php?mode=ecran&reproductionId= 5628&VUE_ID=1210240&panier=false&carouselThere=false&nbVignettes= 4x3&page=1&angle=0&zoom=&tailleReelle=. See also, Albert D. Menut, Maistre Nicole Oresme, Le Livre de Politiques d’Aristote, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, New Series, vol. 60, part 6, 1970, p. 44. 44. Marsilius of Padua (1280–1343), rector of the University of Paris from 1313, published the Defensor Pacis in 1324. Jean de Jandun made a French translation soon afterwards that has not survived. Defensor Pacis attacked papal claims to temporal power by articulating a doctrine of popular sovereignty grounded in civil law— similar to modern democratic principles—and based on a clear separation of church and state. In response, Pope John XXII condemned Defensor as heretical and Marsilius and Jean as heretics in 1327, resulting in their exile from Paris. 45. Aristotle, Livre de Politiques, III, xiv. Transcribed from Paris, MS. BnF fr. 9106, fol. 91c–d. In his edition, Menut identifies the passage in Oresme’s gloss as paraphrasing Defensor pacis, Disc. I, cap. 13, “Maistre Nicole Oresme …,” p. 137. 46. Christine de Pizan, Le livre des faiz et bonnes meurs du sage Roy Charles V, MS. BnF fr. 10153, fol. 74c–d. Quoted by Delisle, Recherches, 1, p. 10. 47. Aristotle, Metaphysics 1047a30: “… the phrase being-at-work, which is designed to converge in meaning with being-at-work-staying-complete.” Joe Sachs, Aristotle’s Metaphysics, A New Translation (Santa Fe, NM: Green Lion Books, 1999). 48. Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, The Online Liddell-Scott-Jones Greek-English Lexicon: http://www.tlg.uci.edu/lsj/ἀρετή.

222 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

49. Christine de Pizan, Le livre des faiz et bonnes meurs du sage Roy Charles V, MS. BnF fr. 10153, ff. 74d–75a. 50. “Et fu ediffiée celle cité [Paris] ou temps de Amasie, roy de Juda, et de Jheroboam, roy d’Israel, VIIIc et XXX ans avant l’incarnacion nostre Seigneur.” Saint Augustin, Cité de Dieu, gloss by Raoul de Presles, MS. BnF fr 22912, f. 271a–b. See also Antoine Jean Victor Le Roux de Lincy, Paris est ses historiens aux XIVe et XVe siècles (Paris: Imprimerie Impériale, 1867), pp. 99–115. 51. Saint Augustine, The City of God Against the Pagans, Book 18, Chapter 41.1 The Fathers of the Church: The City of God (Book XVIII): www.newadvent.org/fathers/120118.htm. “Ut autem iam cognitionem omittamus historiae, ipsi philosophi, a quibus ad ista progressi sumus, qui non videntur laborasse in studiis suis, nisi ut invenirent quomodo vivendum esset accomodate ad beatitudinem capessendam, cur dissenserunt et a magistris discipuli, et inter se condiscipuli, nisi quia ut homines humanis sensibus et humanis ratiocinationibus ista quaesierunt?” http://www.augustinus.it/latino/cdd/index2.htm 52. Ibid., ch. 41.1. “… sed sui dogmatis et opinionis inventor, tamen ut nonnullos vel etiam plurimos eorum fuisse concedam, quos a suis doctoribus vel discendi sociis amor veritatis abruperit, ut pro ea certarent, quam veritatem putarent, sive illa esset, sive non esset: quid agit aut quo vel qua, ut ad beatitudinem perveniatur, humana se porrigit infelicitas, si divina non ducit auctoritas? Denique auctores nostri, in quibus non frustra sacrarum Litterarum figitur et terminatur canon, absit ut inter se aliqua ratione dissentiant. Unde non immerito, cum illa scriberent, eis Deum vel per eos locutum, non pauci in scholis atque gymnasiis litigiosis disputationibus garruli, sed in agris atque urbibus cum doctis atque indoctis tot tantique populi crediderunt.” http://www.augustinus.it/latino/cdd/index2.htm 53. Ibid., ch. 41.1. “… nec tamen ita pauci, ut eorum non sit miranda consensio.” 54. Item 986, Léopold Delisle, Recherches sur la Librairie de Charles V (Paris: H Champion, 1907), v. II, p. 162. 55. H.  S.  M. Coxeter, Regular Polytopes, 3rd Edition (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1973), Part VII, “Historical remarks,” p. 141. 56. Almost certainly, the assurance with which Oresme takes Aristotle as foundational for his own thought owes much to the success of John of Salisbury’s pioneering work, however critiqued for its Arstotelian turn in John’s own day. 57. Kevin Guilfoy, “John of Salisbury,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Stanford: Center for the Study of Languages and Information, Spring 2009): p. 7. http://plato. stanford.edu/archives/spr2015/entries/john-salisbury/. 58. St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle’s De anima, trans. Kenelm Foster and Silvester Humphries, Introduction by Ralph McInerny (Notre Dame, IN: Dumb Ox Books, 1994): 219–222. 59. Kevin Guilfoy, “John of Salisbury,” pp. 20–21. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/ spr2015/entries/john-salisbury/. 60. Ibid., pp. 15–16. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2015/entries/john-salisbury/.

Notes | 223

Coda 1. This chapter first appeared in Poetica: Zeitschrift für Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft 45 (2013), 1–17. 2. Jason Bartulis, “The (Super)Naturalistic Turn in Contemporary Theory,” Nonsite. Org 8 (January 20, 2013), p. 2. http://nonsite.org/feature/the-supernaturalistic-turnin-contemporary-theory/. 3. Wai Chee Dimock and Priscilla Wald, “Preface: Literature and Science: Cultural Forums, Conceptual Exchanges,” American Literature 74:4 (December 2002), p. 705. 4. Bartulis, p. 2. 5. Ruth Leys, “The Turn to Affect: A Critique,” Critical Inquiry 37, No. 3 (Spring 2011), p. 436. 6. Bartulis, p. 2. 7. Ibid., p. 3. 8. Lee Spinks, “Thinking the Post-Human: Literature, Affect, and the Politics of Style,” Textual Practice 15:1 (2001), pp. 23, 24. 9. Nigel Thrift, “Intensities of Feeling: Towards a Spatial Politics of Affect,” Geografiska Annaler 86 (2004), p. 58. 10. Bartulis, p. 2. 11. Ibid., p. 3. 12. Bjørn Ramberg, “Richard Rorty,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosopy (Stanford, CA: Center for the Study of Language and Information, The Metaphysical Research Lab, 2009), p. 11. Language, in Rorty’s view, is imbricated in one’s self-defining, personal worldview. “All human beings carry about a set of words which they employ to justify their actions, their beliefs and their lives. … I shall call these words a person’s ‘final vocabulary.’ It is ‘final’ in the sense that if doubt is cast on the worth of these words, their user has no noncircular argumentative recourse.” [Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 72.] Rorty defines an “ironist” in part as someone who has “radical and continuing doubts about the final vocabulary she currently uses, because she has been impressed by other vocabularies, vocabularies taken as final by people or books she has encountered.” Ibid., p. 73. 13. Richard Rorty, “Dewey’s Metaphysics,” The Consequences of Pragmatism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982), p. 81. Quoted by Bartulis, p. 1. 14. John Dewey, Logic: The Theory of Inquiry. The Later Works, vol. 12 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University, 2008), p. 108. 15. John Hartmann, “Dewey and Rorty: Pragmatism and Postmodernism,” Presented at: Collaborations Conference, SIUC, March 20–21, 2003. (Southern Illinois University, Carbondale), p. 5. http://mypage.siu.edu/hartmajr/pdf/jh_collab03.pdf/. 16. Hartmann, p. 5. 17. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 75. For Rorty’s definition of “final vocabulary,” see note 11.

224 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

18. Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Thirtieth Anniversary Edition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), p. 132. (Rorty’s emphasis.) 19. Ibid., pp. 168–169. (My emphasis.) 20. Rorty and Pragmatism: The Philosopher Responds to His Critics, ed. Herman J. Saatkamp (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1995), p. 32. 21. “Quine, after arguing that there is no line between science and philosophy, tends to assume that he has thereby shown that science can replace philosophy. But it is not clear what task he is asking science to perform. Nor is it clear why natural science, rather than the arts, politics, or religion should take over the area left vacant.” Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, p. 171. 22. Ibid., p. 170. 23. Direct or given knowledge “is simply knowledge which is had without its possessor having gone through any conscious inference … What we know non-inferentially is a matter of what we happen to be familiar with.” PMN, p. 106. Rorty also notes that “… behaviorists, at their epistemological best, [think] that the only sort of entities directly present to consciousness [are] states of physical objects.” PMN, p. 105. 24. Rorty and Pragmatism …, p. 92. (My emphasis.) 25. Rorty defines the “ironist” as “someone who fulfills three conditions. (1) She has radical and continuing doubts about the final vocabulary she currently uses, because she has been impressed by other vocabularies, vocabularies taken as final by people or books she has encountered; (2) she realizes that argument phrased in her current vocabulary can neither underwrite nor dissolve these doubts; (3) insofar as she philosophizes about her situation, she does not think that her vocabulary is closer to reality than others, that it is in touch with a power not herself. Ironists … see the choice between vocabularies as made neither within a neutral and universal metavocabulary nor by an attempt to fight one’s way past appearances to the real, but simply by playing the new off the old.” Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 73. 26. Hartmann, p. 7. 27. “Keeping the conversation going, “is the goal of what Rorty calls “edifying philosophy,” whose purpose is to prevent critical discourse from being pre-empted or—as he would say—“shut down” by some epistemologically privileged discourse. “… the point of edifying philosophy is to keep the conversation going rather than to find objective truth. … Edifying philosophy [has] sense only as a protest against attempts to close off conversation by proposals for universal commensuration through the hypostatization of some privileged set of descriptions.” Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, p. 377. 28. Anne Burdick, Johanna Drucker, Peter Lunenfeld, Todd Presner, Jeffrey Schapp, Digital_Humanities (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2012), p. 120. 29. Ibid, p. 137.

Notes | 225 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

Digital_Humanities, p. 105. Ibid., p. 29 Ibid., p. 107. Ibid., p. 107. Ibid., p. 118. Ibid., p. 118. Cf. also, p. vii: “The model we have created is experimental. It moves design—information design, graphics, typography, formal and rhetorical patterning—to the center of the research question that it poses. It understands digital and physical making as inextricably and productively intertwined.” 36. John McDowell, Mind and World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), p. xxi. John Locke Lectures, Cambridge University, 1991. 37. Bartulis, p. 14. Cf. McDowell: “To make sense of a mental state’s or episode’s being directed towards the world, in the way in which, say, a belief or judgement is, we need to put the state or episode into a normative context. … This relation between mind and world is normative, then, in this sense: thinking that aims at judgement, or at the fixation of belief, is answerable to the world—to how things are—for whether or not it is correctly executed.” Mind and World, pp. xi–xii. 38. Digital_Humanities, p. 91. 39. Here is another example where the authors query the rigidity of digital propositions: “Is computational work fated to remain locked in the realm of quantifiable and repeatable phenomena? How might one model the complex dynamics of interpretation or the processes by means of which reading, viewing, and playing generate cultural meanings within a given community or tradition? How might techniques like probabilistic modeling, interpretive mapping, subjective visualizations, and selfcustomizing navigation alter our experience of the digital realm and the character of the web as a public domain?” p. 103. 40. Ibid., pp. ix–x. 41. Jan Cuny, Larry Snyder, Jeannette Wing, “Demystifying Computational Thinking for Non-Computer-Scientists,” work in progress, 2010; cited in Jeannette M. Wing, “Computational Thinking—What and Why?” Carnegie Mellon University, School of Computer Science. The Link, Spring, 2011. (http://link.cs.cmu.edu/ article.php?a=600). 42. Ibid. 43. Schnapp and his colleagues prefer the term “disambiguation,” while making the same point. They also concede humanities have yielded important ground to computational thinking. “In the intersection between these two domains, humanists have given in to demands of a process that requires that they work in accord with its methods. What is less-often noted is that computational methods have been altered in significant ways by humanist approaches.” It’s unclear how they support their belief that humanists have forced concessions in computation protocols, however. Digital_Humanities, pp. 16–17.

226 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

44. Cuny, Snyder, Wing, “Demystifying Computational Thinking for Non-ComputerScientists.” 45. Ibid. 46. The quotation continues: “We don’t worry about the details of the underlying hardware, the operating system, the file system, or the network,” she reports; “furthermore, we rely on the compiler to correctly implement the semantics of the language.” Ibid. 47. Digital_Humanities, p. 17. 48. “Reverse engineering is taking an object apart to see how it works to duplicate or enhance it. The practice, taken from older industries, is now frequently used on computer hardware and software. Software reverse engineering involves reversing a program’s machine code (the string of 0s and 1s that are sent to the logic processor) back into the source code that it was written in, using program language statements. Software reverse engineering is done to retrieve the source code of a program because the source code was lost, to study how the program performs certain operations, to improve the performance of a program, to fix a bug (correct an error in the program when the source code is not available), to identify malicious content in a program such as a virus or to adapt a program written for use with one microprocessor for use with another.” http://searchcio-midmarket.techtarget.com/definition/reverseengineering/. I am am indebted for this suggestion to my colleague, Arthur Pittenger, a mathematician specializing in probability theory and mathematical problems in quantum computing. 49. On this question see a recent blog by Alexandra Gillespie, “In Praise of Small Data,” March 1, 2013, posted on the Burnable Books website: http://burnablebooks.com/ in-praise-of-small-data/. 50. Arthur Bahr, Fragments and Assemblages: Forming Compilations of Medieval London (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press), p. 1. 51. Quoted from “What Do We Mean by Autonomy?” a review by Todd Cronan of Lisa Siraganian, Modernism’s Other Work: The Art Object’s Political Life. Nonsite.Org #8, January 20, 2013. http://nonsite.org/review/what-do-we-mean-by-autonomy.

Index

A

Albritton, Benjamin 45 allographic artforms

abstraction process, in computational thinking 195 Acarie, Girard 28, 31–32 acrostic, in acronym FAUVEL 141 Actaeon 126–129, 216–217 Advocate for Peace (Defensor Pacis), Marsilius of Padua 163–164 aesthetic appreciation demonstrating social and religious utility of art 102 differential imitation in manuscript copies 90–94 literature portraying struggle for human perfection 102 manuscript transmission within 85–86 perception and 83–85, 87–88

aesthetic of return, and variance, 108–109, 111 The Aesthetic of Thomas Aquinas (Eco), 102

autographic works vs. 48 digitalized manuscripts cannot be fraudently copied 52

Anaxagoras anecdote of 170–171 reaction to death of his sons 168 as source for Christine de Pizan in City of God 174–175

anthropological perspective, of synoptic reading 104–105 Aquinas, St. Thomas 90 arete (striving to achieve one’s potential) in Augustine 170, 175 in case study of Charles V’s librarian 165–168 Charles V creating court culture based on 163 fulfilling duties of office 148

Aristotle. see also citizenship, and Aristotle Charles V initiates seismic shift based on 150–154

228 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

defining energeia. see energeia Economics 149, 160, 162–163 The Eudemian Ethics 116–119, 146–149 John of Salisbury as early adopter of 175–176, 179 philosophy of psyche and change 206 Physics 90, 159 reforms of Charles V guided by political theory of 146–150

B Badel, Pierre-Yves 87, 135 Bartulis, Jason 188, 190 bas-de-page sketches (marginal paintings). see also marginalia enhancing reader understanding 61, 64 by Jeanne and Richard de Montbaston 92 in production of manuscript books 20 self-referentiality of 25–27 signifying discourse via 180

Ars Nova 37–38 artisanal versioning ancient manuscripts compatible with 18 maintaining essential structure/narrative in 53 as primitive form of publication 19

Augustine. see also Cité de Dieu (City of God), Augustine adding aesthetic contemplation to views of 83–85 on developing love of mind through Scripture 80–83 on hierarchy of senses 84 on knowledge 84–85 prophecies on coming of Christ 170–171 representing innovation in book culture 171

authenticity, recreating original version 2 author portraits role of 25–28 as varied and numerous 32

beauty, humans linked to universe via 83–85 Beauvais, Bishop of 143–145 Beauvais, Vincent de 32–35 Beethoven, Sixth Symphony analogy 52–53 beliefs, challenging/confirming reader’s 97–98 Berry, Duc de 91–92 Bible historiale, production of codices 92–93 Bibliothèque de l’Arsensal 6–8 bifurcating analyses 195, 196 biological approach, to digital humanities 189 Boethius 84–86 Bus, Gervais de 38–39, 136–140

authors classifying manuscripts representing original intentions of 2, 19–20 manuscripts not transmitting autograph work of 13, 19 medieval concept of 3 scribes reformulating in each generation 48–49 using decorated initials to mark transitions 29–30

autonomy, medieval works lacking 198 Avarice, in the Rose excised miniatures in 131, 133–136 linking Dijon Rose and Fauvel 140 painting of Courtly Vices 58–59

C Cent Ballades 114 Cerquiglini, Bernard on medieval literature as variance 12, 108–111 support for digitized manuscript images 13

Cerquiglini-Toulet, Jacqueline on cognitive perception of manuscript 114 Le Testament by François Villon edited by 8–9 on role of text in medieval manuscript culture 112

Index | 229 on text implying gloss and authority 125

chain analogy, in manuscript transmission 57 Chancellor of France, Charles V holding elections for 143–149, 155, 161 Charles IV, King of France 21–22 Charles V, King of France commissioning translation of Polycraticus 175–180 court culture based on political principles 162–164 elections for Chancellor of France 143–149, 155, 161 ethical standards of 108 founding Royal Library. see Royal Library of Charles V, King of France good governance of 37–38 governance based on Aristotle’s political theory 146–150 initiating seismic shift in intellectual/ literary life 150–156 paying for translations of books 160 portrayed in translation of City of God 175 shaping culture/politics in manuscripts 21–22 synoptic reading revealing culture of 104 translating great works for political advantage 33 on virtues of his librarian 165–168

Charles VI of France 34–35, 61–62, 65 Christian iconography, symbol of mirror in 75 chronology inflecting reader’s image of work 87–88 in manuscript matrix 23, 110 validity of all versions of work, irrespective of 118

Cicero 156, 158, 184 Cité de Dieu (City of God), Augustine on founding of city of Paris 169–170 marginal rubrics in 36, 61, 64 presenting heterogenous material intelligibly 36–37

prophecies on coming of Christ 170 in Royal Library of Charles V 155–156, 160 as source for Christine Pazan 173

citizenship, and Aristotle Charles V’s court culture based on principles of 162–165 defined by virtue 154 guiding political decisions of Charles V 149–153 inherent right to participate in state governance 146–148, 153–154

City of God. see Cité de Dieu (City of God), Augustine civic virtue, of good citizen 148 Classiques français du Moyen Âge (Champion), as critical editions 98 codex as manuscript books. see medieval manuscripts understanding 202–203

cognitive activity, in philosophical enquiry 191–192 collaboration medieval authorship as 12, 41 between medieval colleagues via digital environment 13–14 of reading and representation 104 of senses and psyche in knowledge 84 synoptic reading requiring 105

commoners, criterion for public office 147–149 compilation manuscripts 142 composition by analogy 142 composition-by-compilation complex parallax effect of 142 fostering new literary works 40 manuscript technology creating 35–36

computational thinking 195 Confessions (Augustine) developing love of mind through Scripture 80–82 distinguishing image vs. likeness 102

230 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

on knowledge development 84 on reading and listening 86

consciousness, scientific methodology to uncover 189–190 contemporary aesthetics of paintings as 60, 88 manuscript culture as 23, 41 rendering older works as 61, 90, 180–181 as represented in early vs. later manuscripts 107–108 social/political issues added to later manuscripts 104 Villon’s poems as 7–8

contingency, in medieval literature 8 copying, weak concept of exact imitation in medieval times 101–102 Cratylus (Plato), 46–47 critical editions. see also printed books arguments against master texts as 85 collaborative nature of medieval manuscripts and 12 creating master versions as 20 eschewing non-textual components 19–20, 49 function of modern 198–199 as master versions 20 modernizing medieval works via 2 offering reader a blueprint 99–100 popularity of work, and number of 2–3 questioning primacy of 6–7 researched by modern literary scholars 1 textual critics vs. literary historians in creating 2 variants as rejected passages in 108–109

critical intelligence digitization of medieval codices driven by 199 overview of 192 “Why” questions in 194

critical theory 193–194. see also digital humanities, and contemporary critical theory culture, synoptic reading revealing 104–105

D De anima 207–208 De officiis (Saint Ambrose), 184 decorated initials. see also historiated initials differently interpreting same manuscripts via 49–50 multi-media experience of parchment 103 portraying Charles V in Polycraticus 176–178, 180 in works for noble or royal patrons 60–61, 63

decorations as complex handwritten artifacts 3–4 intensive human activity creating 5 master scribe planning layout with 2–3 removed from manuscripts in printed books 2–3 variations in late thirteenth century 20

Defensor Pacis (Advocate for Peace), Marsilius of Padua 163–164 Deguileville, Guillaume de 40 demand, manuscript book production and 57 Dewey, John 190–191, 223 differential imitation in Bible historiale 92–93 defined 82 as dynamic exchange between work/context of production 90–91

differential reading. see dynamic (differential) reading differential repetition as generative dynamic of transmission 89–90 as work’s ability to renew itself in each generation 115

digital humanities, and contemporary critical theory bias against humanistic research 188 computational thinking and 194–196 digital humanities footprint of in universities 196

Index | 231 how/why questions and 193–194 as humanistic research aided by digitized resources 199 incompatibility of science and humanities 194, 196 loss of confidence in critical/aesthetic literary enquiry 189 overvaluing reason/rationality in politics/ ethics 188–189 overview of 187 promoting design over rhetoric 193–194 on science behind consciousness 189–190 science illiteracy no longer an option 188 turning to science in 188

Digital Library of Medieval Manuscripts. see Johns Hopkins’s Digital Library of Medieval Manuscripts digital repositories altering understanding of works in Middle Ages 197 fostering innovative research 197–199 for historical research of Royal Library of Charles V 157–158 reading critical editions vs. manuscripts in 100 reading medieval literary texts in 98 sites for 98 studying multiple manuscripts of evolving style in 103 for synoptic reading of medieval manuscripts 104–105

Digital Research and Curation Center, John Hopkins University 13–14 Digital_Humanities book 192–194 digitized manuscripts as allographic artforms or performances 52 ambivalence towards 45–46 challenging/enriching study of medieval texts 14 collaborators required for 13–14 comparative perspective of 53 creating for medieval codices 13 difficulties of accessing rare book repositories 12–13

disruption and disorientation of 14 manuscript culture. see manuscript culture reconstituting using spectral imaging 18 resistance to 44–45

Dimock, Wai Chee 188, 192 Dormans, Cardinal Jean de 143–145, 147 Düsseldorf Rose 92 dynamic (differential) reading. see also variance comparing differentiation/revision across multiple manuscripts 104 defined 103 in transmission of manuscripts of the Rose 86–90, 103

dynamic imaging evolving from illuminations 40–41 role in manuscript technology 107–108 “variance” as textual equivalence of 108

dynamic perception of illuminated manuscripts 198 manuscript folio as multi-media space of 24

dynamic reading 142 dynamic system each manuscript version as 57 narrative continuity and load change in 65–66

E Economics (Aristotle) chancellor elections conforming to good governance in 149 Charles V creates court culture based on 162–163 translation commissioned by Charles V 160

Edward III, King of England coronation of Philip VI of France and 22, 63 Hundred Years War and 60–61

elections, to Chancellor of France 143–147

232 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

Éloge de la variante (Cerquiglini), 108–111 enclose of love in Roman de la Rose 69, 71, 123 several meanings of 216

energeia affect on reader of excised illuminations 129–134 Aristotle’s definition of 90 dynamic reading exploring 104 encouraging mediatic diversity 119 entelechia as synonym for 90, 118, 156, 215 in medieval rhetorical treatises 23–24 in moment of visual insight 129 pluripotential capacity of 115–119 as potential required for actuality 117–118 renewing/rethinking nature of work 125

entelechia 90, 118, 156, 215 erotic vision eyes as accomplices guiding psyche into 70–72 paintings with textual nuances of 72–73

Estoire du graal (Chrétien de Troyes), 102 ethical standards, in early fifteenth century 108 The Eudemian Ethics (Aristotle), 116–119, 146–149 European Society for Textual Scholarship 108 Europeana Regia, digital repository site 98 experience, manuscript folios vs. printed books 10 extensible likeness 101, 212 exuberant (joyeuse) appropriation, of work by its versions 111–112

F Fabrizio, Don 66–67 Facta et Dicta memorabilia (Valerius Maximus), 172

Fauvel, Le Roman de 38–39 forgery, impossible for known musical work 47–48 Foulechat, Dennis creating notable authority for Charles V’s policies 178–180 imputing philosophical demonstration of Charles V 181 translation of Polycraticus 175–178, 181–184

Fountain of Narcissus 70–75 fourteenth century generative dialectic of literary production in 91–93 Roman de la Rose as model for works in 88–91

François 1, King of France 29 François Villon, Oeuvres completes (Cerquiglini-Toulet et Tabard), 8–9 Frankfurt Rose, paintings of 91 French language, Charles V initiating shift in 151

G Gaibana, Giovanni 25–26 Galen of Pergamon 17–18 generative force 90 generative matrix, as medieval manuscript 9–10 Genesis 1:26 and 1:27, 81–82 geographic space, and cultural production 104 Gerson, Jean 108 Gillespie, Alexandra 45 glosses, differently interpreting same manuscripts via 49–50 Goodman, Nelson 47–48, 52 Göring, Hermann 91 Grandes Chroniques de France (Royal Abbey of Saint-Denis)

Index | 233 dynamic imaging evolving from 40–41 on election of Chancellor of France 143–145 historiated/decorated initials in 60–61, 63 shaping cultural/political perceptions 21–22

of Edward III of England, to Philip VI of France 21–22

“How?” questions, engineering investigations 193–194 human presence creating manuscript folios by hand 4–6 fears that digitization causes loss of 45 feeling in medieval texts 8–10

Guillaume de Lorris on dream vision-as-frame 67–69, 79–80 literature portraying struggle for human perfection 102 on mechanics of seeing as loving 69–75 metaphoric language of 126–129 on mirror as symbol of self-contemplation 75–78 parallax principle of perception and 79–80 presentation of courtly, youthful love in 119–122 Roman de la Rose 49–50

H hand labor, and concept of “sameness,” 67 hearing, aesthetic appreciation of music 84–86 Hermann Göring-Meisterschule für Malerei 91 historiated initials differently interpreting same manuscripts via 49–50 marking transitions with 29–30 role in codices 27 in works for noble or royal patrons 60–61, 63

historical perspective, of synoptic reading 104–105 holograph manuscripts 48 Holsinger, Bruce 44–45 homage Anaxagoras refusing to pay to false gods 173–174 court rituals of 203 of courtiers to stallion in Fauvel 139–140

humanistic research bias against 188 Digital_Humanities as statement for. see Digital_Humanities book how/why questions and 193–194 marginalization of humanities in digital world 194 on philosophical enquiry 192 as science for controlling/predicting 191 scientific methodology to uncover what is behind consciousness 189–190 turning to science 188

Hundred Years War 59, 61 Huot, Sylvia 87 hylomorphism 207–208

I iconoclasm, digitized manuscripts as 46 idolatry, in some religions 45 Il Gattopardo, Lampedusa 67 illuminations (miniature manuscript paintings) aesthetic/historical information in 114 affect on reader of excised 129–134 blurring boundaries between poet/scribe 28–29 casting metaphoric language of poet 126–129 in compilation manuscripts 142 as complex handwritten artifacts 3–4 creating parallax effect in narration 114 differently interpreting same manuscripts via 49–50 dynamic imaging evolving from 40–41 evolution in manuscript transmission 60–61

234 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

as important as written text 179 intensive human activity creating 5 as manifestations of pluripotential capacity 119–123 master scribe planning layout using 2–3 in Polycraticus 176–178 reading parchment as multi-media experience 103 removed from manuscripts in printed books 2–3 role in manuscript culture 23–24 Roman de la Rose as one of first vernacular works extensively endowed with 99 self-referentiality in 25–27 shaping cultural/political perceptions 21 with textual nuances of erotic vision 72–73 variations in late thirteenth century 20 as visual commentary 125 in works for noble or royal patrons 60, 62

irony implicit in digital study 14 Jonathan Lear’s reflections on 202

Isabeau de Bavière, Queen of France ethical standards imposed by 108 as patron affecting codex content 61–62 “The Queen’s Book” presented to 65, 215

isorhythmic motet, in Ars Nova 38

J Jandun, Jean de 163 Jardin de Déduit (Pleasure Garden) aesthetic contemplation while reading 87–89 dialectic between poet and painter 133–134 perceptual modes of bi-folio layout 119–122 symbol of mirror in 75–78 thirteenth vs. fifteenth century versions of 58–59

illustrations marking transitions with 29, 31–32 role of author portraits 25–28

images Augustine distinguishing likeness vs. 102 mistrust of 47 power of 46–47

imagination folio images imprinting on 125 of individual versions 103 in medieval vs. modern mind 101 as psyche image-processing faculty 69–70

information technology, textnet and 157 inks, medieval 22–23 intellect, views of knowledge and 84–85 “Intensities of Feeling:.,” Thrift 189 Interpolation of the Privileges, Roman de la Rose 91 interpolations defined 91 in digital images of manuscripts 98–99 manuscript folio layout vs. printed editions 112–114 prevalence in fourteenth century 91–92

Jean II, King of France 33 Jeanne de Bourgogne, Queen of France 32–35 John of Salisbury, adapting Aristotle 175–176 John XXII, Pope 38 Johns Hopkins’s Digital Library of Medieval Manuscripts digital repository site 98 fostering innovative research 197–199 studying some one hundred and fifty versions of the Rose 101 tools for comparative study of codices 111–112

K knowledge inquiry, in digital humanities 193

Index | 235 readers empowered by 156–157 repositories of 157 views of intellect and 84–85

L Les Lais (The Legacy), François Villon 6, 25 Langlois, Ernest 100 Languages of Art (Goodman), 47–48 layout, page bi-folios stimulating perceptual modes 119–120 composition-by-compilation of Speculum historiale 35–36 created with intensive human activity 5 evolution of in manuscript transmission 60–66 late thirteenth century variations in 20–21 manuscript folio as multi-media space 24 in manuscript folio vs. printed editions 112–114 understanding intricacy of in surviving manuscripts 188

Lettres Gothiques, as critical editions 98 Leys, Ruth 188–189 library as information technology 165 as social resource 165 as agency of knowledge politics 165 likeness Augustine distinguishing image vs. 102 concept in medieval mind 101

The Litany of Love, Roman de la Rose 91 literary historians division of labor of textual scholars and 1–2 printed books representing multiplicity of manuscripts 2–3 restricted access to manuscripts 6

literary works Charles V initiating seismic shift in 150–151 as single-stage artform 48

stability in 57

Livre de Politiques d’Aristote (Oresme), 150–154 Le Livre des fais et bonnes meurs du Sage Roy Charles V, (Christine de Pizan), 166–171 load stress, in literary works 57 London Symphony (Haydn), 48 The Lover at the Pool of Narcissus, Roman de La Rose 72–73 Luxuria, Pyschomachia (Battle for the Soul), 78–80 Luxury, seductiveness of Oiseuse 78–79

M Machaut, Guillaume de 38, 45–46, 93 Malet, Gilles Charles V recounts virtues of 165–167 Christine de Pizan using anecdote told about 169 representing innovation in book culture 171

manuscript artifact, effect of transmission on 57 manuscript culture author portraits/self-referentiality in 25–28 circulation of manuscripts in 40 compatible with digital technology 17–18 composition-by-compilation in 35–36, 40 cultural/political perceptions shaped by 21–22 late thirteenth century variations in 20–21 multi-media layout in 32–36 musical composition in 37–39 as observers of present historical moment 23–24, 39–40 as primitive form of publication 19 role of illuminations in 23 scribal error/bias excluded in 19–20 transitions in 29–32

236 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

manuscript matrix actualizing perceptions/concepts of works 118–119 critical editions vs. performative elements of 99–100 defining 110–111 dynamic reading of parchment representing 103 dynamics of 123–124 how to conceive of 23–24 multi-media potential of 37, 41 returning to, as focus of study 110

manuscript transmission chain analogy description of 57 contemporary conditions conveyed in 57, 66–67 dynamic reading-as-representation in 86–87 effect on manuscript artifact 57 erotic vision in 70–74 evolution into semiotic artifacts 61 mutable texts of Middle Ages 55–56 Narcissus myth and 70–75 over time and in response to reader demand 102 patronage affecting 61–66 perception/aesthetic appreciation in 79–86 regenerative force of 67 “sameness” in medieval vs. modern mind 67 stability/transformation in 56–57 on symbol of mirror 75–78 using digital repositories to decipher practices of 103 variables in narrative material 58–59 variables in visual elements 60–61 vision theory and perception in 67–71

manuscriture, defined 87 marginalia. see also bas-de-page sketches (marginal paintings) as complex handwritten artifacts 3–5 different interpretations of same manuscripts via 49–50 evolving in manuscript transmission 60–61 heterogenous material presented in 36

late thirteenth century variations in 20 master scribe planning layout of 2–3 removed in printed books 2–3 in works for noble or royal patrons 61–66

Markus, Robert 102 Marselh, Folquet de 27 master scribes and differential repetition 89–90, 115 meaning/perception using both text and image 179–180 occasionally stripping away illuminations 99 planning layout of given codex 5, 63

materiality and mimesis ambivalence towards digitized manuscripts 45–46 concerns for loss of presence through digitization 45 content maintained over centuries of versioning 48–49 different representations of same passages in 49–50 forgery and 47–48 overview of 43–44

Maubeuge, Thomas de 91–92 McDowell, John 193 McGrady, Deborah 45–47, 52 medieval manuscripts artistic collaboration of 197–198 call for return to 12–13 as complex handwritten artifacts 3–4 concept of author in medieval readers 3 creating digital repositories of 13 distinguishing features removed in printed books 2 experience of manuscript folios 9–10 extensive visual networks in illuminated 179–180 intensive human labor creating folios for 4–6 Internet and digital technology changing status of 18 misconceptions of modern culture about 18–20 modernizing as printed books 2

Index | 237 on primacy of critical editions over 6–7 printed books representing multiplicity of 2–3 as process of transmission 12 projecting multiple personalities 8 revolution creating accessibility of 1 self-referentiality in 25–27 subject to mediation of text editors 198 subject to perceptual experience of scribes/ artists/commentators 198 tasks of textual scholars vs. literary historians 1–2 as text networks. see synoptic reading versions/variance in 12–13

Memorable Deeds and Sayings (Valarius Maximus), 169–170 Metalogicon (John of Salisbury), 179 Metamorphoses (Ovid), 126–129 Metaphysics (Aristotle), 90, 115, 117–118 Meun, Jean de continuation of Le Roman de La Rose 67–68 influencing poetics of Guillaume de Machaut 93 re-presented work differing from original context 107–108 on self as agent of its own fate 70 theories of perception 70, 79–80

Middle Ages mutable stability of 56–57 as period of mutable texts 55–56

Milon, Peire 26–27 mimesis materiality and. see materiality and mimesis Plato’s rejection of 46 of Roman de la Rose. see Roman de la Rose, mimetic transformation

Mind and World (McDowell), 193 miniature paintings. see illuminations (miniature paintings) mirror, in Narcissus myth Narcissus principle and 75 perilousness of 70–74

as symbol of self-contemplation 75–77 as unwitting instrument of fate 74–75

miscellany affect on reader of excised illuminations 129–134 codex encompassing more than one work 129 structuring dialectical response to the Rose via 135–136

Montbaston, Jeanne and Richard de 92 moral vantage points, parallax principle of perception 137–140 Morris, William 45, 205 multi-media layout each representation making imprint on folio 125 manuscript technology creating 24 for music 37 parchment as multi-media experience 103 presenting heterogenous material 36 Speculum historiale portraying 32–35

music aesthetic appreciation of 84–85 analogy between good governance/mastery of 37–38 Ars Nova illuminated manuscripts displaying 37 concept of forgery in 47–48 manuscript versions like performance of 52 as two-stage artform 48

mutable stability defined 56–57 in literary works 57 of medieval narrative forms over time 67 paradox of 94, 206 in Roman de la Rose 56–57

mutable texts 72

N The Name of the Rose (Eco), 20 Narcissus myth 70–75

238 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

Narcissus principle 75 narrative material continuity/load change in 66 new theories on vision/perception in 67–72 stability over time of medieval 67 variables in manuscript transmission 58–59

naturalistic turn in critical studies fear that traditional literacies/critical methods are passé 196 quantitative vs. qualitative analysis and 193 replacing analytics of human behavior 190–191 scientific enquiry in 188–190 status of literary/artistic object at stake in 189 urging quantitative protocols for humanities research 192

naturalized epistemology 188 Nazi swastika, in copy of Roman de la Rose 91 The New Philology issue, Speculum 12–13, 110–111 The Nightwatch painting (Rembrandt), 47 non-cognitive approach, to digital humanities 189

O Oiseuse (doorkeeper), Jardin de Déduit 75–77, 78 Oresme, Nicole Charles V remunerating from his own funds 160 initiating shift in intellectual/literary life 150–155 interpreting Aristotle’s political theory for Charles V 146–150 leading to two elections for Chancellor of France 155 on network of texts to aid proper governance 156

praise to Charles V for the language of politics 163 quoting Defensor Pacis in his glosses 163–164 in Royal Library of Charles V 155–156

Orgement, Pierre d’, 145–147, 148 Orléans, Louis I d,’ 34–35 Orléans, Raoulet d,’ 22, 34–35 Ovid 127–129, 216–217

P page layout. see layout, page paintings. see also illuminations (miniature paintings) forgery of 47–48 power of 46–47

palimpsests as contemporary perception of world 23 defined 17 digital technology compatible with 18 traces of original writing in 17

parallax principle of perception from both text and images 114 composition-by-compilation creating 142 moral vantage points in Dijon Rose and Fauvel 137–142 overview of 79–80 viewpoint of those looking at object 137–140

parallel sign systems, parchment as multi-media experience 103 parchment created with intensive human activity 4–5 digitization of 45 late thirteenth century variations in 20 as multi-media experience 103 traces of original writing in palimpsests 17 in works for noble or royal patrons 60, 62

Paris account of transformation 1348-1418 in 206

Index | 239 as center for parchment book production 20, 34 as center for theory/practice of music 37–38 Charles V fills chancellorship by election in 1372, 143 as cultural center of Europe in thirteenth century 59 expansion of royal court linked to growth of 147 as geographic space influencing cultural production 104 German Rose manuscripts originating from 91–92 growth to largest city west of Beijing 204 liberal philosophical atmosphere in 1260s and 70s 108 literary culture affected by Charles V’s library 165, 171 manuscripts representing same passages differently 49–52

participation, generative transformation 80 patronage affecting essential content of codices 61–66 of large, illuminated codecs 32–34

Pèlerinage de la vie humaine (Pilgrimage of Human Life), Deguileville 40–41, 86, 92 perception aesthetic appreciation and 83–85, 87–88 bi-folio layout stimulating modes of 119–122 combining poetic text with rubrics to effect 124 developing love of mind through Scripture 80–83 further reading on medieval 212 layout of manuscript folios and 114 new theories in Middle Ages on 67–70 parallax principle of. see parallax principle of perception reading as, processed as thought 97–98 of sameness in medieval vs. modern mind 101

performance allographic artforms as 48 digitized medieval manuscripts as 52–53 realizing composition of music via 47–48 study of variance in manuscript 51–52

performance dynamic, of literary works 57 perpetual motion in manuscripts 142 personality of medieval texts 8 of scribe seen in manuscript folios 10–11

perspective, in compositions-by-compilation 142 phantasia 207–209 Philip VI, Count of Valois coronation of 60–61, 63 history of 21–22

philosophy 191–192 phronêsis (wisdom), 116, 215 Physics (Aristotle), 90, 159 Pilgrimage of Human Life (Pèlerinage de la vie humaine), Deguileville 40–41, 86, 92 Pizan, Christine de anecdotes told by 168–171 casting Paris as new center of learning 169 on Charles V’s passion for learning 37–38 copy of work for royal patron 61–62, 65 dynamic reading and 86 ethical standard promoted by 108 examples of self-mastery/perception of material world 166–171 layout of manuscript for Cent Ballades 113–114 Raoul de Presles translation as source for 173 on textnets 171 Valerius Maximus as source for 171–172

Plato, rejection of mimesis 46–47 Pleasure Garden. see Jardin de Déduit (Pleasure Garden) Pléiade, as critical editions 98 pluripotential capacity

240 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace modernizing medieval documents as 2–3 offering immediate access to medieval texts 8 rationale of fixed text for 3 omitting distinguishing features of manuscripts 2 textual scholars excluding scribal error/bias in 19–20

as energeia 115–118 illuminated manuscripts manifesting 119–123 in multiple versions of work 115 understanding multiple versions of works via 118–119

political theory and Aristotle’s concept of citizen-agency 165 library acquisition policy of Charles V 165 moral code of Charles V founded on 165

Politics (Aristotle) Charles V paying Oresme to translate 160 Charles V’s impulse to create court culture based on 160–161 themes in 146–149, 163

Polycraticus (John of Salisbury) adapting Aristotle to secular Christian politics 175–176 Foulechat’s translation of passages in 181–183 instruction in civic virtue 183–184 role in Charles V’s translation project 176–178 translation by Foulechat 175

portraits, role of author 25–28 power of images 46–47 presentation miniatures 32–33 presentist, manuscript culture as 23 Presles, Raoul de. see also Cité de Dieu (City of God), Augustine Charles V remunerating from his own funds 160 in Royal Library of Charles V 155–156 translating City of God for Charles V 36–37, 61

printed books. see also critical editions authentic historical medium not represented by 8 experience of variance in 111–112 human experience of manuscript folios vs. 8–10 medieval literary works vs. modern primacy of 6–7

Prohème (Oresme), 156 prosa (oratio), 136, 217 Prudentius, Aurelius 78–80 public access, via digitalized medieval manuscripts 53 Pyschomachia (Battle for the Soul), Prudentius 78–80

Q “The Queen’s Book” 215 Quine , W.V. 188, 191

R Ramberg, Bjørn 190, 223 rare book repositories creating online library of 13 difficulties of accessing manuscript samples 6, 12–13 digital repositories fostering innovative research 197 medieval manuscripts held in 1 popularity of the Rose in 103

reading. see also variance aesthetic contemplation initiating perception 87–88 changing whole being via 85–86 chronology and 87–88 critical editions vs. digital images of manuscripts 98–101 developing worldview through 86 dynamic (differential). see dynamic (differential) reading

Index | 241 dynamic reading-as-representation 86–87 imprinting folio images on imagination 125 and medieval concept of sameness 101–102 parchment as multi-media experience 103 perception processed as thought in 97–98 portraying struggle for human perfection 102 recursive 196 sight as paramount because of 84 synoptic 104–105 viewing subject/perceived object in 80 work from different manuscripts 20–23 work of 97

recursive reading 196 regenerative force of transmission 67 regression analysis 111, 214 Remiet, Perrin 35 replicability, and digital humanities 196 representation evolution of manuscripts for changing tastes 102 as variance in manuscript performance 51–52

reproduction, no medieval concept of exact copy 101–102 Republic 3 (Plato), 46 Republic 10 (Plato), 46 Le Roman de Fauvel (Gervais de Bus), 38, 136–141 Roman de la Rose affect of excised illuminations on reader 129–134 author portrait in Girard Acarie’s version of 28 complexities, contradictions, and conflicts in versioning of 123–125 creative emulation of 40 critical edition showing multiplicity of manuscripts 3 different representations of same passages in 49–51 difficulties of accessing rare book repositories for 12

dynamic imaging evolving from circulation of 40–41 marking transitions in 29–30 number of manuscripts of 99 as one of first works illustrated 99 online library of manuscripts for 14 perceptual modes stimulated by bi-folio layout 119–122 performances of manuscript versions 52 pluripotential capacity in 118 relation of manuscript artifacts to digital artifacts 53 re-presented work differing from original 107–108 rhetoric in multiple versions of 114–115

Roman de la Rose, mimetic transformation aesthetic contemplation while reading 87–89 demand for copies to look contemporary 90 differential imitation in production of 90–92 dynamic process of differential repetition over two centuries 89 dynamic reading-as-representation in 86–87 in flourishing book culture of fourteenth century 92–93 mirror as symbol of self-contemplation 75–78 in narrative material 58–59 new theories of vision/perception in 67–72 overview of 56–57 parallax principle of perception in 79–80 participation component in 80 relatively inexpensive copy of 62, 66 in visual elements 60–61 in work for noble or royal patron 61–62

The Romance of the Rose and its Medieval Readers (Huot), 87 Romanesque art forms, stability/transformation in 56 Rorty, Richard 190–192, 223 Rouse, Richard and Mary 92

242 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

Royal Library of Charles V, King of France acquisition policy of 165 creating court culture of sound principles/ virtues 162–163 as instrument of governance 158–159 integrating philosophy with state policy 159–160 motives for founding 157–158 perception of authors as French and contemporary 180–181 physical description of 158 polyphonic or symphonic citations of 181 portraying Charles V as enlightened political leader 180–181 synoptic compilation of work as textnet 156–157 translation of Polycraticus 175–180 translation of The City of God 173–175 translation of Valerius Maximus 171–173 translations of greatest philosophers in 159 virtues of Gilles Malet as keeper of books 165–168, 171

rubrics as complex handwritten artifacts 3–4, 5 as critical commentary or gloss 124–125 differently interpreting same manuscripts via 49–50 evolving in manuscript transmission 60–61 late thirteenth century variations in 20 master scribe planning layout using 2–3 parchment as multi-media experience 103 perceptual modes stimulated by bi-folio layout 119–122 in Polycraticus 177–178 removed from manuscripts in printed books 2–3 shaping cultural/political perceptions 21 in works for noble or royal patrons 60–61

rulers, Aristotle on 147–148

S Saint Louis (Louis IX), 33–35 sameness, concept in medieval mind 67, 101–102

Schapiro, Meyer 56 science for controlling and predicting/not for philosophy 191 humanistic research turning to 188 incompatibility of humanities and 196 network of texts for knowledge-empowered reader 157 skepticism of adapting naturalistic schemas to critical enquiry 190–191 uncovering what’s behind consciousness with 189–190

scribes conversing with poet’s voice via 10–11 creating original versions of poet’s work 19 example of mimesis. see Roman de la Rose, mimetic transformation identifying hand of 114 improvisational freedom of 48–49 leaving mark on work of author 19 master. see master scribes paintings showing creative process of 25–27 poet portraits including presence of 29–30 responsibility for transmitting author’s work authentically 27–28 role of author portraits in codices 27–28 shaping cultural/political perceptions 22 textual scholars excluding error/bias of 19–20 variations in late thirteenth century 20

Scripture aesthetic appreciation and 83–85 Augustine’s use of 80–83 views on knowledge 84–85

SDSS (Sloan Digital Sky Survey), big data curation of 101, 212 seeing as loving 70 self-consciousness, in medieval manuscripts 25–27 semiotic artifacts 61 senses, Augustine’s hierarchy of 84–85 Sheridan Libraries. see Johns Hopkins’s Digital Library of Medieval Manuscripts

Index | 243 single-stage art, literature and paintings as 48 Sixth Symphony, Beethoven 52–53 Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), big data curation of 101, 212 Snow, C. P. 188 Société des Anciens Textes Français, as critical editions 98 Sophocles, on identity theft 47 Speculum historiale (Mirror of History), Vincent de Beauvais composition-by-compilation of 35–36 dynamic imaging evolving from circulation of 40–41 multi-media layouts for 32–35 understanding 204

Speculum journal (Medieval Academy of America), 12 Spinks, Lee 189 stability Middle Ages balancing transformation with 56–57 mutable. see mutable stability

Stanford’s Parker-Library-on-the-Web, digital repository site 98 Stuttgart Rose 91–92, 93 superscripted signs, in bas-de-page sketches 27 Switzerland’s ecodices, digital repository site 98 synoptic reading Charles V’s holds elections for chancellorship 143–146 Charles V’s reforms based on Aristotle 147–150 Charles V’s shift in intellectual/literary life 150–155 as collusion of narrative/codex 142 motives for founding Royal Library 157–158 overview of 104–105 primary purpose of textnet in 156–157 synoptic composition promoting 157 translation of Polycraticus 175–180

of translations in royal library of Charles V 155–156

T technology, creating digital manuscripts 13–14 Le Testament Villon medieval manuscript of 6–8 printed version of 8–10 transmitting poet’s voice/human presence 10–12

text in compilation manuscripts 142 dialectic between poet and painter 133–134 miniature paintings between versions and 119–123 parallax effect and 114 in Polycraticus 176–178 rubrics between versions and 124–125 and variance 108, 112–114 visual image as important as 179

text editors defending necessity of critical edition 198 medieval manuscripts subject to 18–20, 198 attitude of toward variance 109

textnets and Saint Augustine 171 citational cross-referencing within 157 managing content as information technology 157 as raw material for new creations 171 synoptic compilation as 156

textual criticism critical editions based on principles of 99 recent titles representing 212 view of variance in 55–56

textual scholars dilemma of variants and 109–110, 213–214 division of labor between literary historians and 1–2

244 | From

Parchment to Cyberspace

excluding scribal error/bias as principle of 19–20

The Legacy (Les Lais), Villon 6, 25 “Thinking the Post-Human,” Spinks 189 Thrift, Nigel 189 Tompkins, Silvan 188 transformation, Middle Ages balancing stability with 56–57 transitions, marking 29–32 two-stage art 48–49 typewriters, William Morris condemning 45, 205

V Valerius Maximus 168, 170–173 variance call to include manuscript matrix 110–111 Cerquiglini’s concept of 206 change in status of variants 109 defined 108 dilemma of 213–214 exuberant appropriation of 111 illuminations as metaphoric language of poet 126–129 illuminations as visual commentary 125 in manuscript performance 51–52 medieval literature as 12 medieval vs. modern experiences of 112–114 in miniature paintings between versions 119–123 miscellany as example of energeiai 129–133 overview of 107–108 parallax effect in perception of narration 114 pluripotential capacity and 115–119 rhetoric found in multiple versions 114–115 in rubrics between versions 124–125 structuring dialectical response to original folio 135–136

text critics vs. medieval readers on 56 variants as rejected passages in critical editions 108

Vignay, Jehan de 32–34 Villemer, Nicolas de 145–146 Villon, François 6–8, 25 virtue, citizen of Charles V’s trusted librarian 165–168 defined 154 instruction in Polycraticus 183–184 Oresme adaptation of Aristotle on 154–155 as prime characteristic of citizen-subject 163, 165 theory of Aristotle on 116–117, 147–149, 153–154

vision medieval theories of 67–69, 101–102, 212 paintings with textual nuances of erotic 72–73 strongly affecting poetry of the Rose 132–133 theories on love and 70–74

visual elements, in manuscript transmission 60–61 Vitry, Philippe de 37–39

W Wald, Priscilla 188, 192 “Why?” questions, in critical theory 193–194 Wing, Professor Jeannette M. 195 wisdom (phronêsis) 116, 215 worldview, developed through reading 86

MEDIEVAL INTERVENTIONS New Light on Traditional Thinking Stephen G. Nichols General Editor

Medieval Interventions publishes innovative studies on medieval culture broadly conceived. By “innovative,” we envisage works espousing, for example, new research protocols especially those involving digitized resources, revisionist approaches to codicology and paleography, reflections on medieval ideologies, fresh pedagogical practices, digital humanities, advances in gender studies, as well as fresh thinking on animal, environmental, geospatial, and nature studies. In short, the series seeks to set rather than follow agendas in the study of medieval culture. Since medieval intellectual and artistic practices were naturally interdisciplinary, the series welcomes studies from across the humanities and social sciences. Recognizing also the vigor that marks the field worldwide, the series also endeavors to publish works in translation from non-Anglophone medievalists. For additional information about this series or for the submission of manuscripts, please contact: Peter Lang Publishing Acquisitions Department 29 Broadway, 18th floor New York, NY 10006 To order other books in this series, please contact our Customer Service Department: 800-770-LANG (within the U.S.) 212-647-7706 (outside the U.S.) 212-647-7707 FAX Or browse online by series at: www.peterlang.com