VMs: RE: VMS Quires

["GC" <glenclaston@xxxxxxxxx>]

My initial inquiry into the formation of the quires had not taken
into account all these details, but since they've come up, it is
incumbent on me to say something of my observations.

I use a "cut and paste" system for transcription, cutting a line
or segment from the image and pasting it into the word processor,
which allows me to see in front of me the very symbols I'm
transcribing.  This causes me to notice variations from paragraph
to paragraph, or when something changes in the middle of a line.
I've long ago reached the conclusion that whatever system is in
use, it more often than not varies between clearly delineated
paragraphs.

Where it really gets interesting is when you're typing merrily
along and one of your fingers notices it's hitting a key far more
often than usual, as is the case with folios 25r and 25v.  These
are unlike the pages before them, but still identified as
Currier's "Hand A".

If I may quote D'Imperio, Aegean Press p.45,
Tiltman, (1975) sums up Currier's recent work on the manuscript as
follows: "Since his retirement...seven years ago Captain Currier
has spent a great deal of time performing his own analyses of the
manuscript.  He holds the view that there are at least two
different handwritings which he calls A and B. In every case the
two sides of a leaf recto and verso are in one and the same
hand..." '

>From this statement we must assume that Currier defined A and B as
"hands" because he felt there were two different "handwritings".
While I have very few problems with Currier's general statistical
analysis of the pages themselves, I have a problem with his basic
premise of two different "hands" or "handwritings" being evident.
Any one of us with a program like PaintShop Pro can overlay words
and characters from different pages, judge the angle of stroke,
the depth of curve, the relative glyph height and average spacing
to reach the inescapable conclusion that there is only one "hand"
or "handwriting" present.  This seems to me the proper test for
determining handwriting, and as such I've always had a problem
with anyone using Currier's associated statistics as evidence of
multiple "scribes" at work.  Nevertheless, tradition causes us to
be saddled with the terminology of "hand A" and "hand B", as
inaccurate as these descriptions are, for Currier's general
statistical analysis.

When pages like 25r and 25v are encountered, and I find them to be
categorized statistically into one of two slots, this causes me to
question the foundation of that analysis.  These pages are within
Currier's definition of what constitutes a "hand", but clearly a
departure from the "language" (another inappropriate term) of the
preceding pages.  Awhile ago I remember a discussion that extended
the "hand" analysis to at least four, a step in the right
direction once all references and suppositions pertaining to
"multiple scribes" are removed from the core argument.

Disregarding Currier's assumption of two different "handwritings",
his basic approach was sufficient in pointing out that the VMS
could be analyzed in sections without having to be digested as a
whole.  The question of what constitutes a "section", or a
"contiguous unit of communication" naturally defaulted to the page
in Currier's view.  Currier did not have the problem of
determining what constitutes an individual glyph, since his
transcription and orientation was primarily glyph-based, and as
any good statistician of his time would tell you, there was not
enough information in a line or a paragraph to render sound
statistical judgment.  Currier did however concede that the line
was most probably the simplest analyzable unit of construction, an
indication that he at some time became aware of the shortcomings
of his "hand A", "hand B" analysis.

It occurs to me that repeated use of traditional terminology
causes us to readily accept outdated concepts, and as long as
these terms are used without challenge the inaccuracies of these
concepts directly affect our perception of the problem.  This
holds for "hand A", "hand B", "ignorant scribe", "language",
"picnic tables" with walking feet, or even transcriptions that
avoid glyph identification.  When one realizes that <iii> in the
middle of a word is calligraphically identical to <iin> at the end
of a word, or regresses to Currier days when these multiple
strokes were widely viewed as a single character, counts change,
statistics change, and general assumptions of system construction
are necessarily revised.  Indeed, one enters into an entirely
different realm of thinking in regard to the VMS.

GC