The body and the book, England 1350-1600: manuscripts and printed books at Wellcome Collection

《身体与书本，英国 1350-1600 年：威康收藏中的手稿和印刷书籍》

• 批准号: 2278428
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Birkbeck, University of London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2019 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2278428
• 关键词: body; book; England; 1350; 1600

Since I first encountered manuscripts as an undergraduate, I have been captivated by the material aspects of medieval culture. My research encompasses manuscript study, physicality, and domesticity, where I have found the 'mundane', the 'unassuming', and the 'marginal' to offer the most productive sites for investigation. The signs of use in recipe manuscripts, medical collections, and even domestic records reveal the intimate associations between bodies and books, fostering a profound connection with the individuals whose interactions with their books endure to this day. Wellcome Library MS 632, a birth girdle stained with use and worn to the point of illegibility, encapsulates this intimacy. Pressed against skin and bound up in the protective rituals of birth, the talismanic comfort offered by this text is as relatable as its form is alien for modern readers. Texts for and about women's bodies can be both surprisingly familiar and tantalisingly strange, motivated by timeless fears and fascinations, and yet represented in varied and ever-developing ways. I wish to explore the changes in attitudes towards pregnancy in the late medieval/early modern period, and investigate how manuscript form was deployed to reflect the changing status of the female body across diverse discourses.The pregnant body was a nexus for numerous concerns - about spirituality, morality, medicine, literature, and more. The material contexts of writing about pregnancy (from conception, through gestation, to birth) epitomise this, with pregnancy and birth amongst the various topics included in manuscript miscellanies. I would like to investigate the relationships between pregnancy and other topics as they appear alongside each other textually, to establish the boundaries (or lack thereof) between different discourses. My previous work on culinary recipes has used both codicological and archaeological approaches to evaluate the distinctions between culinary and medical texts, assessing palaeographical formality, mises-en-page, organisational strategies, and written content to understand the overlap between these genres, and re-evaluate their relative grades of formality. I will continue this methodology, understanding the place writers gave the female body and birth compared with other topics. Wellcome MS 510, for example, would be ideal for this evaluation. As a collection of extracts, MS 510 evinces a particular fascination with the body, containing several tracts on physiognomy and chiromancy (including illustrations), as well as a birth chart. I am curious to see how this manuscript, and similar examples, treat birth palaeographically and codicologically; whether it is afforded a similar status to topics separate from the female body, or whether this astrological table differs from the material surrounding it. More generally, how are these topics presented on the page? Are they central, or marginalised? Elaborate, or plain? Obviously, every manuscript is different, and they will undoubtedly complicate and contradict each other. However, I believe this evaluation will illuminate the shifting attitudes towards the female body, and its associated concerns, demonstrating broad trends in the presentation of pregnancy-related texts.

自从我在本科第一次接触手稿以来，我就被中世纪文化的物质方面迷住了。我的研究涵盖了手稿研究、物理研究和家庭生活，在这些领域，我发现“平凡的”、“谦逊的”和“边缘的”为研究提供了最多产的场所。食谱手稿、医学收藏品甚至国内记录中的使用迹象揭示了身体和书籍之间的密切联系，培养了与个人的深刻联系，这些个人与书籍的互动一直延续到今天。惠康图书馆MS 632，一条因使用而沾染的出生腰带，穿到难以辨认的程度，概括了这种亲密。紧贴在皮肤上，被出生的保护性仪式捆绑在一起，这本书提供的护身符般的舒适对现代读者来说是可以联系到的，因为它的形式是陌生的。关于女性身体的文字可能既令人惊讶地熟悉，又令人着迷，受到永恒的恐惧和迷恋的驱使，但以各种不断发展的方式呈现。我希望探索中世纪晚期和现代早期人们对怀孕态度的变化，并调查手稿形式是如何在不同的话语中反映女性身体地位的变化的。怀孕的身体是许多关注的纽带--关于精神、道德、医学、文学等。关于怀孕的写作的具体背景(从受孕到怀孕，再到分娩)就是这一点的缩影，手稿杂文中包含了怀孕和分娩的各种主题。我想调查怀孕和其他话题之间的关系，因为它们在文本上并排出现，以建立不同话语之间的界限(或缺乏界限)。我之前关于烹饪食谱的工作使用了编码学和考古学的方法来评估烹饪和医学文本之间的区别，评估了古地理形式、Mises-en-Page、组织策略和书面内容，以了解这些流派之间的重叠，并重新评估它们相对正式的等级。我将继续这一方法论，与其他主题相比，理解作家赋予女性身体和出生的地方。例如，Wellcome MS 510将是此次评估的理想之选。作为摘录的集合，MS 510表现出对身体的特殊魅力，其中包含几个关于相貌和男女关系的章节(包括插图)，以及一张出生图表。我很想知道这份手稿和类似的例子是如何从古地理和编纂的角度看待分娩的；它是否被赋予了与女性身体分开的主题类似的地位，或者这张占星表是否与周围的材料不同。更广泛地说，这些主题在页面上是如何呈现的？他们是处于中心地位，还是被边缘化？精致的，还是朴素的？显然，每一份手稿都是不同的，它们无疑会相互复杂化，相互矛盾。然而，我相信这一评价将阐明对女性身体态度的转变及其相关关切，表明与怀孕有关的文本呈现的广泛趋势。