A Newly Discovered Account of Ben Jonson's Walk to Scotland: an Annotated Edition, Contextual Essays and Resources for Heritage Interpretation

2009年2月，詹姆斯·洛克斯利在存放在切斯特档案馆的文件中发现了一份手稿，其中记录了本·约翰逊1618年前往爱丁堡的著名旅程。虽然这次徒步旅行是约翰逊一生中最引人注目的事件之一，但我们对这次徒步旅行的确切时间、原因以及沿途可能发生的事情知之甚少。这份7500字的报告有望深刻改变这种状况。标题为“我的八卦，约翰的儿子，他的徒步旅行和我的苏格兰之旅”，似乎是由一个至今未被怀疑的同伴写的。此外，它还提供了旅行者冒险的日常叙述，包括他们在哪里和谁一起吃饭和住宿的重要信息，以及他们一路上的冒险经历。鉴于这种来源的稀有性和学术价值，尽可能快地向所有可能与之相关的人提供完整注释的文本是至关重要的。出于这个原因，洛克斯利和朱莉·桑德斯承诺合作制作这样一个版本。但这种说法带来了实质性的挑战。首先，手稿的来源是不确定的，在形式和内容上，它与发现它的其他藏品完全不同。这个账户没有签名，也没有内部证据可以让我们轻易地确定它的作者。也不确定写这封信的人是不是旅行者本人。因此，重要的档案和古生物学工作是探索这些问题的必要条件。叙述中大量的姓名提出了进一步的挑战：提到了240多个独立的个人，其中许多人既不为人所知，也没有在第二手资料中得到充分记录。对这些人的全面调查将使编辑和未来的研究人员能够绘制出潜在的重要关联模式和隶属关系。因此，我们的研究将需要对档案来源进行大量的工作，以便使我们能够尽可能彻底地注释这些名字。该项目还将寻求在一系列相关的背景下设置该记录，以确定其对学术受众的重要性，这些受众不仅包括约翰逊学者或早期现代文学专家，还包括对文化地理和所访问的人和地方的历史感兴趣的人。因此，评论版将与上下文文章一起出版，讨论现代早期英国步行的文化意义，这段旅程对约翰逊作品的影响，它对非大都市社会网络的影响，以及早期现代文学名人。在进行这方面的工作时，该小组将适当考虑到早期现代旅行研究中跨学科的最新发展，特别是其理论和方法上的影响；我们也将确保我们的工作是通过广泛的研究进行新的剑桥版约翰逊。但我们也要确保向更广泛的受益人提供这种吸引人的账户。故事叙述了琼森和他的同伴去过的地方，并给出了他们在其中许多地方活动的有趣细节。这些地方中的很大一部分现在由遗产机构保护，或者是由所有者和保管人为现代游客进行历史解释的对象。这种叙述阐明了这些遗址本身的历史和作为参观地点的历史，并可以为它们的解释增添色彩和细节。我们将与一名专家顾问合作，召开一次演讲和研讨会，向管理员和口译员传播我们的发现，与他们讨论这些资源对其口译工作的相关性和有用性，并将其纳入资源包，我们将提供给参与者和其他人用于开发他们自己的材料。

In February 2009 James Loxley discovered a manuscript containing an account of Ben Jonson's celebrated 1618 walk to Edinburgh among papers deposited in Chester Archives. Although this walk was one of the most eye-catching episodes in Jonson's life, we have had little knowledge of exactly when it was undertaken, why, and what might have transpired along the way. The 7,500 word account promises to change this situation profoundly. Entitled 'My Gossip Joh[n]son his foot voyage and mine into Scotland', it appears to have been written by a hitherto unsuspected companion. Furthermore, it provides a day-by-day narrative of the travellers' adventures, including crucial information on where and with whom they dined and stayed, and their adventures along the way. Given the rarity and academic value of such a source, and it is of the utmost importance that a fully annotated text is made available to all those to whom it might be relevant as quickly as possible. For this reason, Loxley and Julie Sanders have undertaken to collaborate on the production of such an edition.But the account presents substantial challenges. For a start, the manuscript's provenance is uncertain, and in form and content it is quite unlike the items that make up the rest of the collection in which it was found. The account is unsigned, and there is no internal evidence that would allow us easily to determine its authorship. It is also not certain that the hand in which it is written is that of the traveller himself. So significant archival and palaeographic work is necessary to explore these questions. The profusion of names in the account presents a further challenge: more than 240 separate individuals are mentioned, many of whom are neither well known or well documented in secondary sources. Full investigation of these people will allow the editors and future researchers to draw out potentially significant patterns of association and affiliation. Our research will therefore require substantial work on archival sources in order to allow us to annotate these names as thoroughly as possible.The project will also seek to set the account in a series of relevant contexts, in order to establish its significance for an academic audience that includes not only Jonson scholars, or specialists in early modern literature, but also those with interests in cultural geography and the history of the people and places visited. The critical edition will therefore be published with contextual essays, addressing the cultural significance of walking in early modern England, the influence of this journey on Jonson's work, the light it shines on non-metropolitan social networks, and early modern literary celebrity. In undertaking this contextual work, the team will take due account of recent interdisciplinary developments in the study of early modern travel, and in particular in their theoretical and methodological implications; we will also ensure that our work is informed by the extensive research undertaken for the new Cambridge edition of Jonson.But we also want to ensure that such an engaging account is made available to a wider range of beneficiaries. The narrative identifies the places visited by Jonson and his companion, and gives intriguing details of their activities at many of them. A large proportion of these places are now in the care of heritage bodies, or are the object of historical interpretation for modern visitors by owners and custodians. This account illuminates the history of those sites in themselves and as places to visit, and could add colour and detail to their interpretation. Working with a specialist consultant, we will convene a presentation and workshop to disseminate our discoveries to custodians and interpreters, to discuss with them the relevance and usefulness of such sources to their interpretative work, and to feed into resource packs which we will provide to participants and others for use in developing their own materials.