The OMS finished off our 2015 schedule with a bang this past November, hosting Dr.
Julia Craig-McFeely and Professor
Henrike Lähnemann to discuss the digitization of manuscripts and the future of the medieval codex in the digital age. The topic is timely, considering we're posting this update on a blog (even Geoffrey Chaucer
hath one) and sharing it with you in the medievalist Twitter-sphere (Geoffrey Chaucer hath
one of those, too).
'Old Hall' Manuscript (London, British Library Add. MS 57950)
Dr. Craig-McFeely is the Project Manager of the Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music (DIAMM), and she explained to the Society the inner workings and the founding story of one of the largest resources of digitized manuscripts in the world. She told stories of traveling around the country to photograph manuscripts, described the huge number of resources required to compile DIAMM's metadata, and passed around several of the project's published facsimiles. "This is the sexy part," she declared, as she began to talk about the power of digital restoration. She showed us 'before' and 'after' images of damaged musical manuscripts, some nearly illegible with age –– all restored to readable condition with a little computer work. She showed us how digital tools can find faded musical notes on the page and undo poor previous (read: Victorian) edits. She explained to us the difficult questions inherent in restoration: how much damage is part of the manuscript's history? What should be erased, and what should be left? She concluded by touching on an issue near, if not necessarily dear, to the hearts of all medieval scholars: funding. Digital projects, she pointed out, need constant funding because the formats of documents, photos, and other resources need to be constantly updated in order to keep up with changing technology, and not become obsolete. (One thinks of a lot of data stored on a lot of floppy disks.) If digitization is going to provide lasting resources, we need to be willing to reinvest in scholarship.
Easter sun rising over Medingen in one of Prof. Lähnemann's newly-digitized images.
"Let us understand Scripture! Not reading is evil!" Prof. Lähnemann translated from the medieval High German of one of the Medingen manuscripts. She continued on to detail her current scholarly endeavor: collecting, compiling, and digitizing the manuscripts of the Cistercian nuns of the convent of Medingen. She explained to us that in the convent itself, large numbers of manuscripts have been discovered, as well as something called "nun dust" –– the underneath-the-floorboards detritus of centuries of lives lived within the convent walls, things like lost spectacles and dropped needles. She showed us the carefully illuminated pages of the nuns' scribal work and offered insights into how these manuscripts tell us things about the nuns' lives, attitudes toward literature, and ability to circulate manuscripts. She pointed out moments of interaction between the nuns and the laypeople of the town of Medingen, and showed us how the nuns collaborated on manuscript work –– co-production, synchronized production, collective artwork –– as part of the spirit of Windesheim and Lutheran reform. The text production, she pointed out, was a communal and polyphonic process –– and editing and digitizing these manuscripts is
also a communal and poylphonic process in our day and age.
Our next meeting will prove to be just as timely –– and probably have a lot more blood, guts, and sordid love affairs. Medievalism is the theme of the term, and Dr. Carolyne Larrington will be kicking us off with a look at her new (and highly anticipated by medievalists/nerds/the OMS committee members) book on medieval influence in
Game of Thrones!
THIS NEVER HAPPENED, OKAY? IT NEVER HAPPENED. CAN SOMEONE PLEASE BUY ALL THE STARKS SOME BETTER ARMOR?!
Couldn't get tickets to her Waterstones event? The OMS has you covered,
for free (if you're a member –– and membership is still only £5 for
students)!
She'll be followed by Professor David Matthews of the University of Manchester, the author of Medievalism: A Critical History to explain how we even got to Game of Thrones in the first place. How do we conjure up the Middle Ages in our art and media? Why does it have such a hold on our imaginations? And what are we all getting wrong?
Thursday, February 18th at 8 pm, in the Goodhart Seminar Room at Univ. As always, there will be plenty of wine and an exciting assortment of crisps. Keep watching the blog for more details and, for Society members, an invitation to dinner!
