Bibliographic Practices and the Preservation of Medieval Manuscript Fragments

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

AbstractA collection of medieval manuscript fragments clearly represents a very different set of bibliographic practices from a collection of whole manuscripts. Whereas whole manuscripts are kept intact because they might be particularly beautiful or particularly significant, manuscript fragments are preserved for different reasons. More often, they can demonstrate what was being discarded, rather than what was being kept, and for this reason, studying manuscript fragments can refine our knowledge of the production and popularity of particular texts at the time their manuscripts were broken up. I intend to focus on bibliographic practices (primarily in bookbinding, and cutting out the decorative parts of a manuscript), and how these practices were perceived, in order to increase our understanding of the roles they played in the preservation of medieval manuscript fragments. I will consider medieval and early modern ideas about manuscripts and their fragmentation, including the perceived link between texts and bodies, and the attribution of morality to breaking up manuscripts, and assess whether these views had an impact on the remaining corpus of fragments. I hope to approach answers to questions concerning the nature of fragments and fragmentology: what bibliographic practices could be used now to account for the bibliographic practices of the past, or, how should we catalogue and curate manuscript fragments? The study will mainly consist of an analysis of the manuscript fragments in the Bodleian library, but could incorporate collections from other Oxford libraries.Research QuestionsDavid Rundle, in his lecture entitled 'Neil Ker and the Tradition of Studying Fragments in the UK', said there is a tendency to assume that a well-stocked bookbinder would choose their binding materials, in terms of manuscript fragments, based on what was technologically most suitable for the book they were binding, with little thought given to the content or the provenance of the fragment they were using. Rundle suggests that this not always the case and cites the Latin set of hymns for Sarum Use bound in 1555 in the manuscript collection at Christ Church College that uses fragments containing musical notation in its flyleaves as one example. I would like to examine this phenomenon further, considering how much thought was given to the use of fragments. Looking at pastedowns in bindings is one place to start with this enquiry, but I would be keen to look for fragments used elsewhere. Although I think unlikely that every fragment was carefully chosen for its content, it would be interesting to at least rule this out, to work out what proportion of fragments at the Bodleian have a textual relevance in their later context. This question speaks to the value of manuscripts after they have been broken up, and whether they can be said to be obsolete if, after being broken up, they are meaningfully used in a new context.I also want to look at what manuscript fragments can reveal about the practice of, and motivations for, cutting up manuscripts for display. I would investigate the contemporary views about this practice, and what kind of moral judgements have been attached to them. De Hamel notes that while it may not be 'right' to repurpose parts of a manuscript, it is, at least, 'a tradition as old as the history of medieval books.' If manuscript destruction is as old as manuscript creation, then how have the views concerning cutting up manuscripts changed over time? At what point did it become morally dubious to do this?Ideas about texts and bodies interest me; I want to consider whether this had any impact on bibliographic practices. John the Apostle wrote that, at Jesus' incarnation, God's 'Word became flesh' (John 1:14), expressing a link between texts and bodies. There are medieval texts which link Christ's physical body at his crucifixion to physical manuscripts. Given this blurring of boundaries between bodies, particularly Christ's bo