VMs: Re: VMS Quires

[Rene Zandbergen <r_zandbergen@xxxxxxxxx>]

--- GC <glenclaston@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> I use a "cut and paste" system for transcription,
> [...]
> 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.

I'm glad you brought this up. It matches my own
experience when transcribing (quite a long time ago
now). Even within sections that are suposedly about
one subject, one can notice clear variations.
Also I remember having the impression that the text
was not always written line by line, from top to
bottom. This was from the way in which the (imaginary)
line of writing could vary in unusual ways.

One often gets the impression that the pages have
been shuffled even more than what would appear at
first sight.

> 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.

Currier himself issued clear warnings about the 
suitability of his terminology (in his own paper).
Also don't forget that he based it on a subset
of the MS, and in this (mostly herbal and biological)
the differences between A and B, and 1 and 2 are
rather more clear than in the sections he did not
or could not transcribe. In fact it is only 
really obvious in the Herbal section.
The subtle differences made me do the digraph
statistics analysis. That also showed that the
statistics of the Herbal A pages which are near
the end of the MS are closer to the Pharma pages
than the rest of the Herbal A pages.

Cheers, Rene

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