A speculative collation model
Suzette van Haaren
Development history: what is a speculative manuscript collation model?
The speculative collation model is a collection of data visualised in a diagram that speculates about the historical quire structure of manuscript LJS 479 kept in the Kislak Center at the University of Pennsylvania. The term ›collation‹ refers to the physical structure of a manuscript—the way its quires (gatherings of folded leaves) are arranged and bound. Understanding a manuscript’s collation is crucial for comprehending its production and use throughout time. LJS 479 is a manuscript containing moral and medical texts in Italian and was written in the fourteenth century. It consists of fragments of the original book and is no longer bound in the correct order. The booklet was likely part of a larger miscellany (a gathering of multiple texts and codices), but it is now clearly fragmented and missing parts.
The diagrammatic collation model is established and visualised in VCEditor. This is an open access digital tool designed to describe manuscript collation constructed for the implementation of the VisColl (visualising collations) data model. It allows scholars to visualise how leaves and quires are arranged, offering insights into the manuscript’s physicality. Moreover, it allows for mapping additional information about the manuscript, like material, page number—which manuscript scholars describe in terms of leaf number, recto or verso—textual contents and digital images. The speculative collation model is a diagrammatic reconstruction of what a previous collation of the fragmented LJS 479 could have looked like, based on the early modern numbering in the upper right corner of each leaf.
Competences: what does a speculative collation model do?
The speculative model ventures into informed conjecture, piecing together a possible past for the manuscript beyond what can be definitively proven. It takes physical evidence and creates a virtual medieval object. This allows users to engage dynamically with a manuscript’s structure. Rather than merely understanding the damaged and altered state of a manuscript as it is now, this approach enables an exploration of its past forms. By virtually dismantling the manuscript and reassembling it, we can test different configurations and infer how the manuscript might have originally existed. Fragmentation is a key part of digitisation, but so is reconstruction. VCEditor offers the space for the user to reconstruct their own research objects, and in this allows for great flexibility. It pulls the manuscript apart, virtually, but also put it back together again, with an imagined past in mind.
This form of speculative modelling highlights the manuscript’s status as both a physical and conceptual object. It embraces the digital space as a site for reconstructing lost materialities and provides an experimental approach to codicology. The model shows, in one clear overview, what is and what likely was—where there are leaves and where there are parts missing. The reconstruction thus revels in uncertainty and variation, making the speculative model particularly virtual.
Findings: what does a speculative collation model tell us?
Speculative collation modelling contributes to the broader epistemology of manuscript studies by emphasizing knowledge creation as an iterative and imaginative process. The use of digital tools like VisColl indicates a more conceptual and digital engagement with manuscripts, keeping in mind that this engagement is partly shaped by the possibilities and restrictions of the software. The room for speculation in the digital environment provides an avenue for playing with different outcomes, testing hypotheses, and expanding our understanding of what a manuscript might have been. In doing so, the digital research object becomes more personalised, adhering to the material reality of the surviving manuscript, but at the same time affording different possibilities for the users’ interpretation.
The speculative model of LJS 479 will not function as addition to the digital collections of the Kislak Center. It functions as an intellectual exercise, a virtual object to push the boundaries of traditional codicology allowing for play—pulling apart and putting back together again. Ultimately, speculative collation modelling stands in line with what may be termed as speculative codicology: a new direction in the field that embraces uncertainty, conjecture, and the creative reconstruction of historical objects within a digital space. By taking apart and reassembling the manuscript in multiple ways, we engage with it not just as a historical artifact but as a dynamic entity with multiple possible pasts.This approach allows for a different kind of engagement with manuscript history, offering new perspectives on how we interpret and understand the material culture of the past.
Bibliography
»Moraland medical miscellany, speculative«, in: VCEditor. Online unter: https://vceditor.library.upenn.edu/project/662a9fc35d69680001445530/viewOnly (Letzter Zugriff: 21.02.2025).
»LJS479: Moral and medical miscellany«, in: University of Pennsylvania Catalogue. Online unter: https://find.library.upenn.edu/catalog/9959022663503681?hld_id=resource_link_0 (Letzter Zugriff: 21.02.2025).
»VisColl«. 2022. Online unter: https://viscoll.org/ (Letzter Zugriff: 21.02.2025).
Further reading
Campagnolo, Alberto (2020): »Insides and Outsides«, in: Gillespie, Alexandra/Lynch, Deidre (Hrsg.): The Unfinished Book, Oxford University Press, S. 47–61. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198830801.013.4.
Staley, David J (2020): Historical Imagination, London: Routledge.
Porter, Dot (2022): »Modelling the Historical Manuscript: Theory and Practice«, in: Dot Porter Digital (blog). Online unter: https://www.dotporterdigital.org/modelling-the-historical-manuscript-theory-and-practice/ (Letzter Zugriff: 21.02.2025).
Haaren, Suzette van (2025 forthcoming): The Digital Medieval Manuscript: Material Approaches to Digital Codicology, Studies in Art& Materiality, Brill.
Das Virtuelle Objekt des Monats
Seit April 2023 stellen wir jeden Monat ein »Virtuelles Objekt des Monats« (VOM) auf der Website des Sonderforschungsbereichs 1567 »Virtuelle Lebenswelten« vor. Die präsentierten Objekte entstammen der Forschung in den Teilprojekten. Im Zusammenspiel von Text und Animation, desktop- oder smartphonebasierter Augmentierung oder anderer grafischer Aufbereitungen eröffnen wir Einblicke in die verschiedenen Forschungsthemen und den Arbeitsalltag des SFB. Das VOM macht unsere Wissensproduktion transparent. Zugleich wollen wir hier mit den Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der Wissensvermittlung in und durch Virtualität und Visualität experimentieren.
Das »Virtuelle Objektdes Monats« ist mehr als ein populärwissenschaftlicher Text und mehr als ein illustrierendes Bild. Die Autor*innen des jeweiligen VOM präsentieren kurz einen Gegenstand ihrer Forschung um daran ein Argument scharfzustellen. Dabei werden die Objekte auf ihren Mehrwert hin befragt, den sie in dem jeweiligen Forschungssetting preisgeben. Mit dem Text skizzieren unsere Wissenschaftler*innen das Bemerkenswerte, das Eigentümliche oder auch das Einzigartige, welches das jeweilige Objekt zeigt. Sie machen so die Forschung des SFB in einem kurzweiligen Schlaglicht sichtbar. Die zum VOM gehörende Visualisierung ist eine weitere Transformation des Forschungsgegenstands, die das Argument noch einmal auf eine andere Art und Weise zugänglich macht.
