Coming out was quite a step, but starting all over has many advantages. All forms of traces of use will remain my point of interest. As annotations could not exist without the text they refer to and in view of the fact that my decision to leave the Lyonese publications was instigated by my frustration at not being able to fully grasp the Latin texts, I have decided to switch to books in a language I do understand. Since my passive Portuguese is more or less fluent, I have chosen Lisbon editions as a starting point and postpone further decisions on expansion or limitation of the corpus until the size and content of this new corpus becomes clear. Interestingly an initial survey reveals almost all Lisbon titles in the collection of the University of Amsterdam to be in Portuguese, most of the Lyon books being in Latin.
In addition to the obvious traces of use I will look for any publishing information for the contemporary reader in the preliminary leaves and colophon, i.e. on content, price of the book, reason for publishing, and also make a cursory inventory of illustrations on the title pages, decorated initials (P.D. will surely appreciate that), head- and tail-pieces.
These past months have not been in vain as there is a bulk of material lying dormant in my computer for future reference.
29-10-2010
27-10-2010
Present
I have filed the one thousand plus photographs for future reference and changed the focus of my research.
While making a description of the traces of use in an interesting Lyonese book last week, I suddenly realised my inadequacy to continue with the corpus I had selected. In my enthusiasm I had not realised what effect not being able to read the books would have on my research. The meager Latin picked up at Highschool long ago and the Latin course I followed a couple of years ago at the University are helpful, but ultimately not enough to feel at ease studying Latin books and annotations, let alone annotations in Greek (which they often are, Lyon being an important city of Humanist thought).
This was last Friday. I spent the weekend cleaning up my computer, filing the Lyonese material and restarted Monday with a clean slate.
While making a description of the traces of use in an interesting Lyonese book last week, I suddenly realised my inadequacy to continue with the corpus I had selected. In my enthusiasm I had not realised what effect not being able to read the books would have on my research. The meager Latin picked up at Highschool long ago and the Latin course I followed a couple of years ago at the University are helpful, but ultimately not enough to feel at ease studying Latin books and annotations, let alone annotations in Greek (which they often are, Lyon being an important city of Humanist thought).
This was last Friday. I spent the weekend cleaning up my computer, filing the Lyonese material and restarted Monday with a clean slate.
24-10-2010
Past
More than seven months of scrutinizing 16th century Lyonnese books for traces of use have resulted in more than a thousand photographs
of ownership marks inside the books
of annotation marks
of annotations
of other interesting traces of use
and of their prices. 
of ownership marks inside the books
of annotation marks
of annotations
of other interesting traces of use
and of their prices. 
Abonneren op:
Posts (Atom)