![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hrjSession 171 Schneider 1220
Technical Communication in the Middle Ages
Organizer: M. Wendy Hennequin, Tennessee State Univ. Presider: M. Wendy Hennequin
Cookeries as Technical Literature in Late Medieval England and France
Sarah Peters Kernan, Ohio State Univ.
Latin and vernacular works on a variety of technical subjects arose in the medieval period, but cookbooks were rare before the 15th century. Scholars such as Scully questioned whether cookeries were truly intended as practical technical manuals as opposed to for other educational and managerial purposes rather than being used by those engaged in direct food production. But these opinions in the context of cookeries don't jibe with the purposes and uses of other technical literature during the same era. This paper proposes that roll-type mss such as the Viandier of Taillevent and the Forme of Cury were intended, at least in part, as practical technical manuals for cooking. Physical evidence of the strucure of the texts support this.
The structure as a roll rather than a codex seems an odd format for a usable practical text, hoewver it was a form commonly used for practical texts such as accounts, armorial texts, and wills.
The physical manuscript of Supesaxo 108 (Taillevent) shows manipulations such as folds, creases, and worn spots indicating regular handling for the purpose of better displaying specific portions of the text. There are also stains found on both sides of the membrane suggestive of foodstains. Marginalia are another type of evidence for the interactional use of the text rather than it being a static object. It is suggested that the roll format was specifically retained for use due to their portability and ease of storage. (Here the paper moves on to modern uses of roll-style documents to provide analogies for the practical aspects of the format. I'm a bit less convinced on this argument.)
“A Comyn Rule in Cure”: Medieval Cookbooks as Technical Writing
Mary Frances Zambreno, Elmhurst College
Focuses on the Liber Cure Cocorum, a 15th c. English cookbook in verse ("epicly bad verse"). Some opinions propose that the use of verse was intended as an aid to memory, however a review of medieval thoeries of memory don't seem to support the idea that rhyme was deliberately used for this purpose.
Conflict between the idea that a cookbook as a technical manual would belong in the kitchen, but that the view of a valuable object such as a book should not be exposed to this level of hazard. And different cookery collections are clearly aimed at different purposes and may have been handled differently in this regard.
Three recipes in the Liber Cure Cocorum are relevant to the question of purpose, being "joke" recipes or illusion/subtlety texts that would seem most relevant to an "insider" in the cooking process.
Like the previous paper, she cites medieval theories of memory, where books are not a replacement for memory but a art of the memory process, e.g., using the physical layout of a text as an imaginative guide to the memorized contents. Thus the physical format of a text can itself be a part of the process of memorizing/recalling its process.
The LCC has no decoration or ornamentation, although it does have a table of contents. The presented suggests that the verse format is not intended as an artistic statement, but as a way of visually organizing the text for better learning and recall of its contents.
The presenter now considers the question of the literacy of medieval cooks and raises the question of what purpose literacy would provide to a cook. (But she notes that there is little evidence addressing the general question of literacy levels in the profession, although individual cooks clearly were literate.)
Byrhtferth’s Enchiridion and the Rhetoric of Instruction
Trey Gorden, Purdue Univ.
New title: Flattery and Contempt: Condescension Topos inthe Enchiridion and other Medieval Scientific Texts
Compares the technical writings of Aelfric of Eynsham and Byrhtferth on the subject of the computus. Byrhtferth is far more verbose in style while covering the same content. One feature of his style is the use of condescension, specifically addressing the reader as an ignorant child, in order to explain the contents in the desired detail. The specific passage used for this analysis is an explanation of the nature of "falling stars" and how they don't contradict the theory of the immutability of the heavens. Another feature of the two texts is Aelfric's contrast of the rarer and more narrowly construed word "steorra" as opposed to "tunglum" witha a more general meaning of heavenly body", whie Byrhtferth uses only "steorra" despite the greater detail and length of the text.
Byrhtferch not only lapses into snarky commentary on his putative audience, but uses a more elevated and scholarly tone while doing so, e.g., making the side comments in Latin as oopposed to the English of the main text. The author proposes that this is meant to contrast his putative audience of priests with his "real" audience of monastic students who are being flattered into considering themselves an "in-group", better than the off-stage priests, in order to encourage them to learn the material more thoroughly.
Repurposing the (E)MEMT Corpus and Presenter Tool: Identifying Trends and Transitions in Page Design and Genre in Late Medieval through Early Modern Medical Texts
Susan Rauch, Texas Tech Univ.
She presents a synopsis of a much more detailed work on a corpus-based study of manuscript page design in medieval texts. (This is going to be very hard to take notes on because she's speaking very rapidly and using a lot of area-specific jargon.) Her specific topic of study is Timothy Bright's medical publications, whch shifted from a learned audience in the earliest editions to a "common man" audience in the later editions, in combination with a great increase in the use of page layout and textual structure (index words, tables of contents, use of white space) to assist in following the contents for practical use.
(Two referenced sources that might be of interest to my readers are the collections Middle English Medical Texts (2005) and Early Modern English Medical Texts (2011) , which include culinary contents in many of the texts. These appear to be electronic formats with extensive tools for doing comparative studies and searches. It looks like the publisher is John Benjamins.)
She briefly covers some linguistic differences between the two texts, especially in how the audience is addressed. Thre was more, but I couldn't keep up.
Technical Communication in the Middle Ages
Organizer: M. Wendy Hennequin, Tennessee State Univ. Presider: M. Wendy Hennequin
Cookeries as Technical Literature in Late Medieval England and France
Sarah Peters Kernan, Ohio State Univ.
Latin and vernacular works on a variety of technical subjects arose in the medieval period, but cookbooks were rare before the 15th century. Scholars such as Scully questioned whether cookeries were truly intended as practical technical manuals as opposed to for other educational and managerial purposes rather than being used by those engaged in direct food production. But these opinions in the context of cookeries don't jibe with the purposes and uses of other technical literature during the same era. This paper proposes that roll-type mss such as the Viandier of Taillevent and the Forme of Cury were intended, at least in part, as practical technical manuals for cooking. Physical evidence of the strucure of the texts support this.
The structure as a roll rather than a codex seems an odd format for a usable practical text, hoewver it was a form commonly used for practical texts such as accounts, armorial texts, and wills.
The physical manuscript of Supesaxo 108 (Taillevent) shows manipulations such as folds, creases, and worn spots indicating regular handling for the purpose of better displaying specific portions of the text. There are also stains found on both sides of the membrane suggestive of foodstains. Marginalia are another type of evidence for the interactional use of the text rather than it being a static object. It is suggested that the roll format was specifically retained for use due to their portability and ease of storage. (Here the paper moves on to modern uses of roll-style documents to provide analogies for the practical aspects of the format. I'm a bit less convinced on this argument.)
“A Comyn Rule in Cure”: Medieval Cookbooks as Technical Writing
Mary Frances Zambreno, Elmhurst College
Focuses on the Liber Cure Cocorum, a 15th c. English cookbook in verse ("epicly bad verse"). Some opinions propose that the use of verse was intended as an aid to memory, however a review of medieval thoeries of memory don't seem to support the idea that rhyme was deliberately used for this purpose.
Conflict between the idea that a cookbook as a technical manual would belong in the kitchen, but that the view of a valuable object such as a book should not be exposed to this level of hazard. And different cookery collections are clearly aimed at different purposes and may have been handled differently in this regard.
Three recipes in the Liber Cure Cocorum are relevant to the question of purpose, being "joke" recipes or illusion/subtlety texts that would seem most relevant to an "insider" in the cooking process.
Like the previous paper, she cites medieval theories of memory, where books are not a replacement for memory but a art of the memory process, e.g., using the physical layout of a text as an imaginative guide to the memorized contents. Thus the physical format of a text can itself be a part of the process of memorizing/recalling its process.
The LCC has no decoration or ornamentation, although it does have a table of contents. The presented suggests that the verse format is not intended as an artistic statement, but as a way of visually organizing the text for better learning and recall of its contents.
The presenter now considers the question of the literacy of medieval cooks and raises the question of what purpose literacy would provide to a cook. (But she notes that there is little evidence addressing the general question of literacy levels in the profession, although individual cooks clearly were literate.)
Byrhtferth’s Enchiridion and the Rhetoric of Instruction
Trey Gorden, Purdue Univ.
New title: Flattery and Contempt: Condescension Topos inthe Enchiridion and other Medieval Scientific Texts
Compares the technical writings of Aelfric of Eynsham and Byrhtferth on the subject of the computus. Byrhtferth is far more verbose in style while covering the same content. One feature of his style is the use of condescension, specifically addressing the reader as an ignorant child, in order to explain the contents in the desired detail. The specific passage used for this analysis is an explanation of the nature of "falling stars" and how they don't contradict the theory of the immutability of the heavens. Another feature of the two texts is Aelfric's contrast of the rarer and more narrowly construed word "steorra" as opposed to "tunglum" witha a more general meaning of heavenly body", whie Byrhtferth uses only "steorra" despite the greater detail and length of the text.
Byrhtferch not only lapses into snarky commentary on his putative audience, but uses a more elevated and scholarly tone while doing so, e.g., making the side comments in Latin as oopposed to the English of the main text. The author proposes that this is meant to contrast his putative audience of priests with his "real" audience of monastic students who are being flattered into considering themselves an "in-group", better than the off-stage priests, in order to encourage them to learn the material more thoroughly.
Repurposing the (E)MEMT Corpus and Presenter Tool: Identifying Trends and Transitions in Page Design and Genre in Late Medieval through Early Modern Medical Texts
Susan Rauch, Texas Tech Univ.
She presents a synopsis of a much more detailed work on a corpus-based study of manuscript page design in medieval texts. (This is going to be very hard to take notes on because she's speaking very rapidly and using a lot of area-specific jargon.) Her specific topic of study is Timothy Bright's medical publications, whch shifted from a learned audience in the earliest editions to a "common man" audience in the later editions, in combination with a great increase in the use of page layout and textual structure (index words, tables of contents, use of white space) to assist in following the contents for practical use.
(Two referenced sources that might be of interest to my readers are the collections Middle English Medical Texts (2005) and Early Modern English Medical Texts (2011) , which include culinary contents in many of the texts. These appear to be electronic formats with extensive tools for doing comparative studies and searches. It looks like the publisher is John Benjamins.)
She briefly covers some linguistic differences between the two texts, especially in how the audience is addressed. Thre was more, but I couldn't keep up.
