Re: "OT/Local" VMs: What's Missing or Different? What Conventions are There?

[Koontz John E <John.Koontz@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, 28 May 2005, jean-yves artero wrote:
> About missing:
>  Here is an excerpt of page 304 of the catalogue of medieval and
> renaissance manuscripts Beinecke library Yale vol.II (Mss 251-500)
> written by Barbara Shailor (MRTS, new York, 1987), about MS 408:
>  "Parchment. ff. 102 (foliation, s. xvi, Arabic numerals; not every leaf
> foliated) + i (paper), including 5 double-folio, 3 triple-folio, 1
> quadruple-folio and 1 sextuple-folio folding leaves. 225x160mm."
>  "Collation is difficult, due to the number of fold-out leaves that are
> not always foliated consistently. I-VII8 (f.12 missing), VIII4 (leaves
> foliated 59 through 64 missing from center of quire), IX2 (double and
> triple fold-out leaves), X2 (1 triple fold-out), XI2 ( 1 quadruple
> fold-out), XII2 (f.74 missing, followed by stubs of conjugate leaves),
> XIII10, XIV1 (sextuple fold-out), XV4 ( 1 triple and 1 double fold-out),
> XV4 ( 1 triple and 1 double fold-out), XVI4 ( 1 double fold-out;
> ff.91,92,97,98 missing, 2 stubs between 94 and 95), XVII4 ( 2 double
> fold-outs, XVIII12 (ff. 109-110, central bifolium, missing)."
>
> Jean
>
> Koontz John E <John.Koontz@xxxxxxxxxxxx> a écrit:
> We may not be on the same wavelength here. I meant missing in the sense
> of a practice or custom not followed that one might expect would have been
> followed. The expressing "nothing is missing" suggests you interpreted me
> to mean missing in the sense of taken away. I just meant conventions
> omitted, not material.

Though, of course, as Jean-Yves conscientiously reminds us, some leaves
actually *are* missing in the sense of absent, taken away!  I see that the
evidence for this is partly cut off ends (stubs), but also, I assume, the
subsequent pagination by the unknown paginator and leaf counts in quires?
We are, of course, somewhat handicapped by not being able to detect
discontinuities in the manuscript by sense.  We can, however, do things
like count stars, on the assumption of 365, for example, and deduce and
estimate missing text on that basis.

But, again, what I was asking this time was what hasn't the author done
that we might expect an author to do at any of the times and places where
we hypothesize the text to have been prepared?

However, since I am the one who brought this up (this time, anyway) and
since folks are interested in the nuances of missing, I suppose that for
the sake of completeness we might distinguish the following kinds of
"missing":

0)  Material omitted in hypothetical consequence of the used leaves
    having been reused, with any previously existing material expunged.

1)  Conventions or practices not followed by the author(s), leading in
    some cases to actually missing material or markings (1a?).

2)  Material deliberately not committed to text by the author(s).

3)  Material expunged and/or written over by the author(s).

4)  Material not included by the author(s) in the selection of leaves that
    we have.

5)  Material subsequently removed by the author(s) ditto.

6)  Material subsequently expunged and/or written over by subsequent
    custodians.

7)  Material subsequently removed (per the inventory above) by subsequent
    custodians.

8)  Material which fading, spilling, tearing, chemical treatment, etc. has
    eliminated.

9)  Loss of auxiliary slips, sheets, leaves or markers intercalated or
    associated at some point by the author or subsequent custodians and
    later removed or lost by one of them.

This last may seem facetious, but, actually, one can sometimes detect the
absence of such things because of marks they have left on the remaining
pages.  Or there may be external (or even internal) references to them.

Of course, I'm being a bit narrow in restricting this catalog to material
missing, because, of course, what has been included and what has been
changed by editing are also of considerable, one might even say
"conventional" interest!

______________________________________________________________________
To unsubscribe, send mail to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxx with a body saying:
unsubscribe vms-list