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Post by John Green on Nov 18, 2021 13:08:42 GMT
www.theguardian.com/books/2021/nov/18/fragment-of-lost-12th-century-epic-poem-found-in-another-books-binding"manuscripts that were dismembered and reused as waste were no longer valued as texts. Their only value was as a material commodity – parchment – that could be used to reinforce the binding of another book. The manuscripts containing these French poems were probably recycled because the texts were considered old-fashioned and the language outdated,” said Atkin. “It’s fantastically exciting to discover something that’s been lost all this time, but I do think it is also worth simultaneously holding the thought that actually, the only reason these fragments have survived is because at some point, someone thought the manuscripts in which they appeared were not valuable as anything other than waste. There’s a sort of lovely tension in that, I think.” I've got what seems to be part of an early-to-mid nineteenth-century chemist's flyer in the binding of one of my books, but it would be nice to find a Shakespeare holograph...
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Post by Richard Marple on Nov 18, 2021 21:43:12 GMT
A bit like paintings being wiped off a canvas, which is then reused for another picture, but the original can be seen when X-rayed.
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Post by John Green on Nov 18, 2021 23:16:22 GMT
Or like video tapes...
I love it with the Shakespeare (and other) quartos where they say e.g.
"The most excellent and lamentable tragedie, of Romeo and Iuliet. Newly corrected, augmented, and amended: as it hath bene sundry times publiquely acted, by the Right Honourable the Lord Chamberlaine his seruants."
As seen on TV! Lots of extras! Director's cut!
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Post by markboulton on Dec 1, 2021 20:23:12 GMT
Verily such sires and theyre scribes in toil perpetual in devotion to the Ministrie of Truth, cutting from the cloth any such fruit of revered loins done such discredit and disservice by thy offspring and theyre wanton and impetuous moral revision, before such tyme that they may learn the value of experience dyed in the pages and dead in the ground, epitomes that serve only as a pale epitaph, such that even if carved in stone, fall as cold as the poor wretch who lays beneath.
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