Senior Seminar "Manuscripts, Materials, Memory"

What is a manuscript? This seemingly naive question has given rise to discussion. Using materials prepared at CSMC, we will discuss this term, as well as 'written artifact', 'manuscriptology', 'manuscript culture', semiology of manuscripts as complex cultural signs, 'book form,' 'visual organization,' and others.
This conceptual exercise will involve a fundamental shift in perspective that will lead to looking with fresh eyes at the “regional” written artifacts each of us is working on.

In some manuscript cultures there is little choice in the production of a manuscript, since only one type of writing medium, writing material, and writing instrument is available. But even here one can distinguish more or less careful writing surfaces and varying degrees of refinement in the execution of writing. These distinctions are multiplied when one can choose, for example, between roll and codex or paper and parchment. In addition, one can identify differences in quality and quantity (how much “content” does a writing surface contain?). In addition to the significance of material features per se, we will analyze the manipulation of manuscripts as a cultural practice, leaving material traces that become part of the written artifact and thus embody memory.

Contextualizing manuscripts in their history leads to the realization that the transmission of texts is only one of their functions, albeit an increasingly important one. The Buddhist tradition of copying sutras is one example, the production of textual amulets another. We will discuss other cases and establish a typology of the nontextual functions of manuscripts, mainly based on their “content.”

Although distant in time and space, two types of manuscripts actually share many characteristics: the East Asian tradition of the art of writing (“calligraphy”) and the autographs of modern Western authors and composers.
In both cases, the traces of the individual hand are immediately understood to be related to the person to whom they belong.
In this way, the manuscript becomes an artifact that represents that person even after his or her death, similar to a relic.