From the beginning of the 13th century, a new book type appeared in German codicology, in which narrative texts were illustrated and the illustrations were accompanied by inscriptions, conceived as a summary of the action, character lines or comments by the narrator (mostly in close relation to the main poetic text). The milestone of this emerging book form is the so-called Berliner Eneit (mgf 282), where the individual parts that make up the codex were conceived and produced at the same time. Similar codicological structuring can be found in the oldest complete manuscript of the Tristan by Gottfried von Straßburg (München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cgm 51), where, however, both illustrations and inscriptions were produced at successive times, over the course of at least two centuries (until the beginning of the 15th century), and with the assistance of several agents (at least two illustrator workshops and an unknown number of hands for the inscriptions).
The inscription apparatus, in particular, represents a remarkable example of sequential collaborative writing: several agents contribute to a kind of intermodal gloss in progress to the poetic text. Given the uncertainties about the manuscript’s place of origin and the early stages of its history, the palaeographic cataloguing of the hands involved in the inscriptions would represent a remarkable philological achievement. Cgm 51 has already been studied within the framework of the TRISDE 51 sub-project of the EP 2018-2022 of the DiLLS: the illustrations and inscriptions were analysed and annotated, developing a new XML/TEI encoding model for studying the text/image relationship. However, the palaegraphical analysis of the active hands in the inscriptions has yet to be completed. The project presented here intends to produce a diplomatic edition of the inscriptions that follows FAIR principles. Tools developed in the field of digital palaeography and Handwritten Text Recognition (DigiPal, Graphoskop, PSL Scripta, etc.) will be employed, to attempt at least an attribution of the palaeographically homogeneous groups of inscriptions to the scriptural customs and provinces of the German area in the centuries involved. Where possible, an analytical distinction of the active hands in the illustrations will also be attemped.
The project will be introduced by a survey of the tools currently available in digital palaeography and automatic script recognition. The results will be of great significance for Gottfriedian philology, for the study of the illustrated manuscript book and for the history of the reception and active hand in such an intermodal codicological object.
Group leader: Maria Adele Cipolla (PO)
Internal members:
- Stefano Bazzaco
- Anna Cappellotto
Action:
WP 1.3
Bibliography:
Baisch, M., „Das Skriptorium des Cgm 51“, in Schubert, M., Schreiborte des deutschen Mittelalters: Skriptorien, Werke, Mäzene, Berlin-Boston: de Gruyter, 2013, 669-90.
Ciula, Arianna, “Digital palaeography: What is digital about it?”, Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 32/2 (2017), 89-105
Graphoskop
Nichols, Stephen (ed.). 1990. «Introduction: Philology in a Manuscript Culture», Speculum, 65, 1, 1-10.
PSL Scripta