Foreword

Foreword The articles appearing in this issue of Parergon are the record of a happy event, the Text, Scribe, Artefact Colloquium held at Sancta Sophia College within the University of Sydney, under the auspices of the Sydney Medieval and Renaissance Group, on 1-3 February 1995. Contributors were invited, in the following terms, to reflect on differences between scripted texts and printed editions generated from them: The aim of the Colloquium is to focus attention on the manuscript as a material artefact, and investigate the impact which the scripted object is capable of exerting on the observer's physical senses. This could mean examining features of the scripted text which observers may find puzzling, annoying, delightful or amusing, but which typically do not survive into print: materials, scripting and illumination, page layout and the organisation of works within a codex, the incorporation of apparently superfluous material such as glosses and marginalia, alternative readings and emendations, and so on. The occasion attracted speakers from a wide selection of departments (French, Romance Languages, Modern Greek, English, History, Ancient History, Celtic Studies, Italian and the Rare Books section of the University Library), examining texts scripted in many languages (Latin, Classical and Medieval Greek, Old French and Anglo-Norman, Italian, Welsh and several forms of English). In time, subjects ranged from texts inscribed on papyrus (the focus of the only paper which most regrettably is not represented in this volume) to manuscripts of works printed in the nineteentii century. N o attempt has been made to group the papers in any recognisable way. Rather, the collection imitates the medium it was designed to explore in the miscellaneous character of its elements and composition. As a result, echoes and similarities abound, linking the disparate subjects discussed across time and space and disciplinary boundaries. One of the most noticeable effects seen in die shift from 'text' to 'context', as the exigencies of the individual codex come to die fore, is the progressive marginalisation of the concepts 'original autiior' and 'original text'. Several authors draw attention to the implications which this altered focus holds for the art of editing. Others underline the anonymous (and even ungendered) character of the scribes/artists involved in manuscript production. Many speakers, too, stress the clash between the practical aims apparendy being served by the act of writing and the essential superfluities viii Foreword of the framework, both physical and conceptual, in which the scribes set then texts. Here there is adherence to a range of aesthetic principles which transcends by far the strictly 'literary'. Here, too, there is humour. The little human figure incorporated into the lettering of the Colloquium logo, reproduced as a frontispiece to the present volume, has been 'borrowed' for the occasion from the St John Incipit page in the Lindisfarne Gospels, f. 21 lr . (This page is in fact the 'wrong' place for this image as the Homo is Matthew's symbol. The error is one of many, just as startling in then way, to be found in the design pages of this de luxe manuscript.) This is only the first of several similar 'little people' w e will meet in these pages. The figure's inclusion in the logo points to the integration of verbal and visual components in the scribes' art. It stands here as an emblem for the many features of an equally 'aberrant' nature which inevitably disappear in the transfer from script to print. Our little homo is supported in this role by thetiiirdword in our tide, in which the readings 'Artefact' and 'Artifact' are combined. Use of the expunctuation device in this context serves two purposes. First, it illustrates the greater flexibility of script in comparison with print, as it is only in the former that two equally legitimate readings can really be made to coincide in a single graphic space: neither of the two component forms is given precedence, and neither is actually suppressed. Second, use of the device allows us to recognise the validity of variant expressive conventions, an important advantage in our multi-cultural assembly: which of the two forms is seen to be correct or faulty or an acceptable variant depends very much on where, in relation to...