Interdisciplinary Studies of Structure -Signalling Devices in Palaeography

              ADDENDA
Paleografía
Boletín Míllares CarIo
2005-2006,24-25: 303-304
Introduction
ISSN: 0211-2140
Interdisciplinary Studies 01Structure-Signalling
Devices in Palaeography
The four papers comprising the Philology section in this volume of Boletín
Mí/lares CarIo are the result of a seminar, "Organization in Medieval English
Texts: Structure and Signalling Devices", convened at the ESSE-7 conference
in Zaragoza. lt seems highly fitting to present the results of a seminar which
took place in Spain in a joumal published in Spain, and we are grateful to the
edi tors for hosting the publication of these papers.
Our motivation was to encourage dialogue and collaboration between the
relatively new ficlds of historical pragmatics (and historical discourse analy­sis)
and the more traditional fields of philology and manuscript studies. We
sought papers on the ways in which medieval texts were structured and the
ways in which this structuring is signalled. We were also interested in the
extent to which palaeographic features could serve as eontextualising factors
in thc intcrpretation of encoded meaning. Traditionally this has been over­looked
by many editors of medieval texts, who have paid little attention
to information eonveyed by non-linguistie means. However, this is now
changing, and researchers like our contributors are elaborating a more holistic
approach to the interpretation of medieval texts.
The papers in this Philology seetion can be read as a dialogue. Carroll's
study of medieval English recipe structure ends with a call for better palaeo­graphic
descriptions of manuscripts. Alonso Almeida 's paper answers that call
with an analytical aceount of the palaeography of a medieval English gynae­cological
text. Peikola's survey of almost a hundred manuscript attestations of
tahlllae lectionlltn is another model of fine-grained palaeographic description.
Thaisen 's paper reinforces the need for such description by demonstrating its
value, using the electronic transcripts of the Canterbury Tales Project.
Alonso Almcida combincs traditional text linguistic concerns, such as the
intendcd 'audiencc' as distinct from the actual 'readers', with traditional
palaeographic concems such as hierarchy of decoration, and incorporates into
his analysis elcments, such as boxes and marginalia, which early palaeogra-
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R. Cormll ond F Alonso-Almeido InlerdiscipliniJI}' SIl/dies ojSll"lIcll/re-Signul/ing Del'ices in Polueograplll'
phers frequently dismissed as merely decorative or amusing. He shows that
these palaeographic elements integrate with more strictly linguistic phenom­ena,
not only signalling textual structure, but also actually creating that struc­ture:
organising the contents into meaningful chunks of information. Using
systemic functional linguistics, he uncovers the generic structure of these
scientific treatises, which then enables him to define the interrelationship of
contents, structure, and signalling strategies.
Carroll demonstrates that text linguist Michael Hoey's concept of the
'discourse colony' is applicable to medieval texts (readers will notice that
indeed all four articIes address texts which are discourse colonies). She iden­tifies
minor anachronisms and one important gap in Hoey's characterisation,
highlighting the benefits of cross-disciplinary collaboration between manu­script
studies and modern linguistics. We encourage readers to follow her
links to digitized manuscript images on the internet, not only to better
understand her paper but also to explore some of the resources that are be­coming
increasingly available. These provide at least a partial remedy to the
inadequacy of some editions' descriptions of manuscript features such as
rubrication and mise-en-page.
Peikola's extremely thorough account ofthese very features for Wycliffite
tables of lections is a salutary illustration of the level of detail which can be
achieved. His section 3.1 may also remind us ofthe ways in which modern lin­guistics
and manuscript studies have independently arrived at similar concIu­sions.
Where pragmatics, for instance, emphasizes the importance of 'uttcr­anccs'
---different contextualisations of the same sentence- this is not unlikc
the shift in palaeographic practice from editions which conflatc different
extant versions to diplomatic editions of single attestations.
Thaisen, in contrast to the others, analyzes a literary text (or literary dis­course
colony), one for which many of the resollrces that Alonso Almeida,
Carro11 , and Peikola are cllrrently devcloping already exist. His paper offcrs
insights into the scribal transmission of the Canterhury Tales (and even new
speculation abollt thcir composition), bllt it also providcs an ill ustration of thc
benefits that meticlllolls manllscript description can bring to the scholarIy
community, even for very familiar texts. Again, one sees the congruence of
recent insights in palaeography and lingllistics. Thaisen's insight is reminis­cent
of that in sociolingllistics, that seemingly random, irrelevant variation is
in fact motivated.
As the seminar convenors, we wOllld like to cIose this foreword by thank­ing
Peikola and Thaisen, the ESSE conference organizers, the editors of this
journal, and you, ollr readers.
RlIth CARROLL and Francisco ALONSO-ALMEIOA
Bo/etín Mi//ares CarIo
2005-2006.24-25: 303-304
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