Speranza
This
describes the rationale for the pilot phase of a computer data-base of text and
pictures that we hope will eventually form a Corpus of Lancelot-Graal
Manuscripts on the one hand and on the other will present a model for manuscript
analysis in general.
An international team of specialists, art
historians and manuscript specialists are collaborating with technical
consultants in information science and telecommunications to create and use a
searchable data-base of primary manuscript text and secondary commentary linked
to a searchable data-base of images.
The specialists will use the data-base to
generate a variety of products, both in the traditional form of books and
articles, and in electronic form on the Web and CD-ROMs.
Participants
Elspeth M. Kennedy, Emeritus Fellow, St. Hilda's College, Oxford
Roger H.
Middleton, Lecturer Emeritus, French Department, University of Nottingham
Keith Busby, Professor of French, University of Wisconsin-Madison
M.
Alison Stones, Professor of History of Art and Architecture, University of
Pittsburgh
Susan A. Blackman, Ph.D. History of Art, independent scholar,
Kansas City
Martine Meuwese, Ph.D., University of Leiden, Research Associate
University of Utrecht
Irène Fabry, Doctorant, Université de Paris
III-Sorbonne Nouvelle
Ken Sochats, Director, Visual Information Systems
Center, School of Information Science,
University of Pittsburgh
Guoray
Cai, Assistant Professor, Institute of Science and Technology, The Pennsylvania
State University
Jane Vadnal, M.A., Technical Assistant, School of
Information Science, University of Pittsburgh
We
are developing an approach that treats the manuscript page as a conceptual map
whose constituent elements can be identified and defined, plotted, compared,
contrasted, linked to each other in any number of possible combinations, and
accompanied by commentary. What we hope to learn is more about the intentions of
the makers of the manuscripts and those (patrons ? directors of operations ?)
who guided them in the choices they made--in terms of text variants and the
wording of rubrics; the types and places of minor initials in a hierarchy of
decorative levels in relation to the text; the types and levels of
illuminations, whether historiated initials, miniatures, or marginalia, their
places and components; the episodes they depict and the particular narrative
emphasis of each depiction.
Our work to date shows that the choice,
placement, and composition of the illustrations varies very considerably from
one manuscript to another, even among copies produced by the same scribes,
decorators and artists. Certain manuscripts display at times a very surprising
degree of careful attention to the nuances the text in that copy conveys.
Illustrations showing the same episode in other copies will not necessarily
present a comparably text-dependent picture. We are looking at which, where and
how, in the hopes of moving a step closer to understanding
why.
Our conceptual model is a unique
application of a Geographical Information System (GIS) to associate information
objects with the appropriate passages, illuminations and pictures in the
manuscript, to assist the reader or analyst with exploring the manuscript
further. These information objects can be sounds, text, images or other forms of
information. These annotations will provide expert commentary, guides to
characters or underlying themes and other information, to support the analysis
and understanding of the manuscript. The attachments will underly the image of
the manuscript so as to not interfere with its pictorial impression and
interpretation. They will be summoned by "clicking" on parts of the manuscript
or on buttons located outside the manuscript. We are not aware of any similar
GIS application of the type we propose in existence today. We are also
developing a web interface based on GIS concepts but using a MSACCESS data base
linked to Active Server Pages. The prototype has been demonstrated at several
Art-Historical, Medieval, and Information Science conferences.
Unravelling
the links between and among the different types of information about the
Lancelot-Graal is our narrow aim in this project, but as an intellectual
exercise our tools and methodologies are generalizable to all kinds of other
areas of conceptualization and analysis beyond the limits of humanities
disciplines.
Medieval manuscripts are now inaccessible to all but a small
audience of scholars. They are carefully preserved, with restricted access, in
research libraries. Disseminating the contents of those originals while
preserving them from direct handling is thus an important by-product of this
project.
Pilot Phase
The pilot phase consists of photographing, scanning,
digitizing, encoding, and analysing the texts and images in three prose Lancelot
-Graal manuscripts: the copy now divided between Amsterdam BPH 1/Manchester
Rylands Fr. 1/Oxford, Bodl. Douce 215, and the other two copies produced by the
same team of craftsmen: London, BL Add. 10292-4 and Royal 14.E.III.
This group
of manuscripts has been selected for the pilot study because of its particular
textual, stylistic, iconographic, and historic, importance. Add. 10292-4
contains the entire Lancelot-Graal cycle and was the base manuscript chosen by
H.O. Sommer for his edition published in 7 volumes between 1909 and 1913.
Written by at least two scribes, decorated by two or more decorators,
these books also offer a wealth of illustration by at least three artists, and
accompanying sets of lemmata. Yet the text versions are not the same. The
selections of illustrations also differ, and there are significant variations in
how comparable subjects are depicted and described in the accompanying lemmata
or rubrics.
Particularly unusual are the depictions and descriptions of
(a) the
Grail and its liturgy and of
(b) the Lancelot-Guinevere relationship
--the two focal
poles in the story.
Arthurian heraldry is profusely illustrated, with relative
consistency for the first time in the entire illustrative tradition, and there
are also some shields of early ownership.
Their subsequent histories--Royal 14.
E. III may have been owned by Elizabeth Woodville (d. 1492), wife of King Edward
IV of England, and the others are linked to Flemish nobles and even to members
of the bourgeois class--are important witnesses to the reception of Arthurian
material.
We are conducting a comparative analysis of these textual and
pictorial variations in order to find out how these stories were read,
interpreted, copied and received.
The structural principles which we are
devising and appling to the study of these manuscripts, texts, and pictures will
demonstrate a method of multi-layered analysis that will have wide application
potential.
Amsterdam, Biblioteca Philosophica Hermetica MS 1, f. 118
© Amsterdam, Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, reproduced by courtesy of
the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica
Imaging: photography and
digitizing
In the initial phase of the project (1996-2002) the Amsterdam
manuscript which was photographed at the Biblioteca Philosophica Hermetica by
Alison Stones with the assistance of Martine Meuwese in the summer of 1996,
using a Nikon FTN 35 mm. single-lens reflex camera on a tripod and Ecktachrome
daylight slide film. The Rylands Library manuscript was photographed on film
from the same batch by the Rylands photographer. The Bodleian and British
Library manuscripts were newly photographed by the respective photographic
departments.
We consulted specialists at the Morgan Library and the J. Paul
Getty Museum for recommendations about the choice of film and photographic
methods, and drew from Alison Stones' experience photographing in European and
American libraries. Her photographs of manuscripts are deposited at the Conway
Library, Courtauld Institute, London, and at the Photo Study Archive of the J.
Paul Getty Center in Santa Monica; her images of monuments can be consulted on
http://vrcoll.fa.pitt.edu/medart, developed by technical assistant Jane Vadnal.
Transparencies were prohibitively expensive and digitization directly from the
manuscripts was not an available option in 1996. Digitizing was done at the
University of Pittsburgh by graduate students working for academic credit under
the guidance of Alison Stones and Kenneth Sochats. We used a Nikon 35mmslide
scanner LA-1000, upgraded in Fall 2001 to a Nikon Super Coolscan 4000, saving an
archival version at 2400 dpi, together with versions at 1500, 800 and 300 dpi.
The latter were enhanced to a limited degree in Adobe Photoshop, now using
version 6 from Fall 2001. Exact records have been kept for each scanned image
describing the enhancements. However, it is evident that scans of whole pages
made from slides produce poor results.
Digital Photography Phase
(2002-present)
In Spring 2002 the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica kindly
allowed us to have the Amsterdam manuscript digitally photographed by the
Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music (DIAMM: http://www.diamm.ac.uk). A
digital scan of Amsterdam, BPH 1, vol. i, f. 118, is shown above. For web
transmission we are using a jpg at 96dpi made from the archival tiff which is
preserved in several copies on DVD. In Summer 2002 the John Rylands University
Library of Manchester kindly allowed us to have the illustrated pages in Rylands
French 1 digitally photographed, also by DIAMM; and in Summer 2004 the
manuscript curators of the Bibliothèque Municipale, Rennes, and the Médiathèque
Municipale Louis Aragon, Le Mans, kindly allowed us to have the illustrated
pages in Rennes 255 and Le Mans 354 photographed, again by DIAMM. We gratefully
acknowledge our partnership with DIAMM who also holds copies of these scans and
makes them available through the DIAMM site.
In 2007 the Bibliothèque
nationale de France allowed us to download without charge any image from
Mandragore, Banque d'images and Gallica and to incorporate them into our site.
Downloading, resizing and renaming has been undertaken by graduate students in
Art History at Pitt.
Two new developments are resulting:
· A
clickable chronological and geographical ordering of Lancelot-Grail manuscripts.
To be supplemented in 2009 by maps.
· Comparative pages: first selections
are:
Maritime Adventures in Estoire
Merlin and Suite Vulgate in BNF
fr. 95 and BL Add. 10292
Lancelot: the False Guinevere Episode in BL
Add. 10293 and Amsterdam BPH 1
· Sochats developes a model for
selecting manuscripts for comparisons. Full implementation will follow. Further
comparative pages are in preparation.
Systems
For preliminary
access we copied the 300 dpi images to ImageAXS software; we also use zip disks
and CDs to transmit the images to team members. We can also access the images
and commentary in Fetch directly from the History of Art Department's Visual
Resources Lab server so that the project participants can make use of and
contribute to the work of analysis. We have developed an original taxonomy,
authority subject-lists, and analytical commentary on each of the three project
manuscripts. We are attaching these to the scanned images, basing our structural
approach a specially adapted version of Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
software. Pending a fully developed web application of GIS, we are concurrently
developing a database using non-propriatory MSACCESS and viewing it in
copyrighted Active Server Pages on a password-protected web site which will
eventually be made public with the permission of the libraries. The manuscripts
can be accessed individually or comparatively, serially or by folio, episode,
subject, and key word.
Copyright
The technical structure is
copyrighted by Ken Sochats, the commentary and analysis by individual or
collective project authors, the images by the respective libraries.
Archives
While the project is in progress, the original slides are
preserved in acid-free boxes in the History of Art and Architecture Department
at the University of Pittsburgh. The archival scans are preserved on DVD disks
with backups of DIAMM images housed at DIAMM. The 1500, 800 and 300 scans are in
locked folders on the Department's Visual Resources Lab NT server which is
routinely backed up to tape. Slides and scans will ultimately be maintained in
optimum prevailing conditions at a specialist storage site. Migration strategies
will be developed for its maintenance and transfer as standards of archiving
improve.
Funding
Initial support came from the Central Research Fund of
the University of Pittsburgh. The project has subsequently received research
grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation (January 1, 2001-December 31, 2002) and by Visiting Fellowships to
Alison Stones by All Souls College Oxford (Fall 1999), Magdalen College Oxford
(2001) and Corpus Christi College Cambridge (2002), and a Fulbright Fellowship
to the École pratique des hautes études (2006), and from the American Council of
Learned Societies (2009).
Summary of papers to date
Papers:
University of Pittsburgh, 1995: Stones, Kennedy, Blackman,
Meuwese
Leeds International Medieval Conference, 1997: Kennedy, Meuwese,
Sochats, Stones
London: Computers and the History of Art, 1998, Stones
Western Michigan Medieval Conference, 1999: Kennedy, Meuwese
American
Association of Geographers, 1999, Cai, Stones
Electronic Cultural Atlas
Initiative, Hong Kong, 2000, Cai, Stones, Kennedy, Sochats
Leeds
International Medieval Conference, 2001: Kennedy, Meuwese, Middleton
The
Waynflete Lectures, Magdalen College, Oxford, 2001: Stones
Manuscripts and
Facsimiles, Fidelity or Betrayal? University of Edinburgh, 2002: Stones
International Arthurian Conference, Bangor, 2002: Stones, Kennedy,
Middleton.
University of Amsterdam Palaeography Seminar, 2002: Meuwese
'Franse handschriften en oude drukken in de BPH’, Bibliotheca Philosophica
Hermetica, Amsterdam, 2002: Meuwese.
'Achtste Mediëvistendag van de
Onderzoekschool Mediëvistiek: Terug naar de bronnen,' Utrecht, 2002: Meuwese.
'Symbolic Connotation in Profane Book Illustration’, colloquium: Dimensionen
symbolischer Sinnstifftung in der vormodernen Gesellschaft, Münster, 2002:
Meuwese.
'Visual Motif Transfer in Profane Illustrations’, International
Congress: Manuscripts in Transition - Recycling Manuscripts, Texts and Images,
Brussels, November 5-9, 2002: Meuwese.
'Seeing the walls of Troy: Troy,
Lancelot, Guy de Machaut,' International Congress: Manuscripts in Transition -
Recycling Manuscripts, Texts and Images, Brussels, November 5-9, 2002: Stones.
‘Roses, Ruse and Romance. Iconographic relationships among the Roman de la
Rose and Arthurian Literature’, Roman de la Rose conference in Antwerp, April
10-12, 2003: Meuwese.
GIS Conference, California University of
Pennsylvania, September, 2003: Sochats and Stones.
New England Manuscript
Group, September, 2003: Stones.
Manuscripta, St Louis, October, 2003:
Stones.
Text and Image in Medieval England, University of Minnesota,
October, 2003: Stones.
International Arthurian Congress, Utrecht, 2005:
Kennedy, Meuwese, Stones.
Groupe de Recherches sur l'iconographie
médiévale, Paris, 2006: Stones.
Harlaxton Conference, 2006:
Stones.
'Adventure Mapping' ESRI International Users Conference, San
Diego, June 2006: Sochats, Stones.
Suite vulgate du Merlin, École normale
supérieure, Paris, 2007: Stones.
International Arthurian Congress,
Rennes, 2008: Round Table on Digitization, Stones, Busby,
Meuwese
International Courtly Literature Conference, Cambridge, 2009:
Fabry.
Publications: See Studies of the Lancelot-Grail
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
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