Disbinding Some Manuscripts, and Rebinding Some Others

Disbinding Some Manuscripts, and Rebinding Some Others

Paper by Dot Porter

Given at the 49th International Congress on Medieval Studies (2014)

This paper will discuss the theory and practice of virtual disbinding, how to virtually disbind manuscripts in order to answer questions about how they were designed and built by their creators. We will also discuss how the same approaches can be used to virtually rebind manuscripts that have long since been disbound and re-distributed in other contexts. The primary example used for virtual disbinding will be British Library Cotton Claudius B iv, known colloquially as the Old English Hexateuch. The primary example used for virtual rebinding will be the manuscripts now known as the Archimedes Palimpsest, which are currently bound together, primarily, in a 13th century prayerbook.

Given by Dot Porter of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. It is a redux of a presentation by Dot Porter at the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan, on May 8, 2014, in a session on digital manuscripts organized by Elaine Treharne, Stanford University.