Tuesday, 8 November 2016

Notes on (medieval) manuscripts

- skin as ground
- skin as ground is transparent at times
- book as body (pig, sheep, goat)
- book as body mirrors the bodily representation of Christ
- reading as looking/looking as reading
- manuscript translates from Latin literally as written by hand
- the organisation of quires is highly meticulous; individual pages are not designed, but rather folded pairs
- quires are rebound many times, sometimes in different orders
- size of manuscript dictates function
- personal devotion or meditation or communal reading
- remembering and praying as a repeated activity over function as pedagogy
- axes of books displayed (in hands, on table, tilted up on lectern)
- there exist added notes and asides on the book
- capitals that tell stories 
- narrative of manuscripts as cinematic experience of unfolding events
- experience of manuscripts as temporal 
- multiple scenes occur on the same page
- space in books, space around books
- multiple frames





Hildesheim, Dombibliothek, MS St. Godehard 1 ('St Albans Psalter'), p. 285
 

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