SOME CONSIDERATIONS ON THE ATTRIBUTION OF THE ‘NEW APULEIUS’

The ‘New Apuleius’ is a set of Latin summaries of Plato's works first published in 2016 by Justin Stover, who attributed it to Apuleius. The present article attempts to assess two key aspects of Stover's argument, viz. his reconstruction of the manuscript transmission of the new text and his use of computer-assisted stylometric techniques. The authors suggest that both strands of his argument are inconclusive. First, it is argued that the transposition of gatherings in the archetype of the Apuleian philosophica as envisaged by Stover is highly unrealistic. Second, replications of Stover's stylometric experiments show that their results are highly dependent on the particular algorithm settings and on the composition of the corpus. It is further shown that Stover's choice of highly specialized stylometric techniques is suboptimal, because popular generalist methods for statistical data analysis are demonstrably more successful in correctly identifying authors of Latin text fragments and do not support the case for Apuleius’ authorship of the new text. The authors conclude that there are no solid grounds to conclude that the ‘New Apuleius’ was indeed written by Apuleius.

The Birth of a Successful Prayer Book

The vast project to reconstruct a history and geography of the spread of the Dalāʾil al-Khayrāt necessarily involves looking into the beginnings of the prayerbook’s manuscript transmission. Composed in Morocco before 869/1465, the prayerbook was already known in the Eastern Maghreb from the mid-11th/17th century. It then reached Turkey and the rest of the Mashriq. After that it found its way to Central, South and Southeast Asia. Returning to the core of the book’s diffusion, this article questions the existence of an autograph copy of Dalāʾil al-Khayrāt. How was the manuscript tradition of one of the most copied religious books in pre-modern times established? This article also poses essential questions about the work of the actors (copyists, illuminators) responsible for the diffusion of the book in its early days.

Keeping Knowledge Secret in Edo-Period Japan

Why were certain kinds of knowledge kept secret during the Edo period and what impact did secretive practices have on the relationship between manuscript and print? In this article these questions are explored through a close examination of selected manuscripts in various genres, including medicine, etiquette, flower arrangement, and poetry. From this it becomes clear that some knowledge leaked out into the world of print, either by accident or by design, and that in other cases secrecy was more effectively maintained. But even the appearance of printed books did not necessarily undermine manuscript transmission of knowledge, for person-to-person transmission via oral teaching as well access to manuscript embodiments of knowledge remained standard through the period in most knowledge traditions.

Modes of Manuscript Transmission (Ninth–Fifteenth Centuries)

The chapter presents some patterns of the transmission of Byzantine texts in their cultural context. It stresses the importance of material causes to explain the conservation or loss of texts, such as the use of a particular support or the conservation in a specific library; thus, e.g., the use of fragile Eastern paper undoubtedly explains the scarcity of manuscripts preserved from such a rich literary culture as that of the Komnenian period. It also analyzes the transmission of texts in miscellanies and the beneficial combination of ancient and Byzantine works; the role of the author and his circle, especially his disciples, in the conservation and transmission of his works; the center/periphery dialectic in an empire like Byzantium, where the learning and the literary canon promoted by the administration determined not only the texts that were most widely circulated but also those that were not. To sum up, the study of transmission offers a likely window into the values and goals of those who purchased, owned, read, and wrote books, and it can illuminate the multiple functions of books in Byzantium.

The categories in Petrus Hispanus’s Tractatus commentators: John Buridan, John Versor and Peter Tartaret

One of the features of the manuscript transmission of Petrus Hispanus’s Tractatus (or Summulae logicales) is the fact that the treatise on the Categories does not always appear in the same place. In some manuscripts, it appears in third place, after the treatise on Porphyry’s Isagoge, following the traditional order of the logica vetus. But in some others, the treatise on the Categories appears in fifth place, after the treatise on the Topics and right before the treatise on supposition. In both cases, it seems that the place of Aristotle’s Categories in logic is defined by the notion of “term”. The purpose of this article is to understand why this variation occurs, since it is not theoretically neutral. Hence, to address the problem of placing the treatise on the Categories within logic, three of the most prominent Tractatus commentators will be presented: John Buridan, John Versor and Peter Tartaret. This exercise will provide some insights on the relation between the categories and the theory of supposition, and also on the vexata quaestio of what categories are about (words, concepts, or things).

En fædrene forbindelse?: Om sammenhængen mellem de fire Hrafnistumannasögur

This article explores the connection between the four legendary sagas collectively known as the Hrafnistumannasögur. Through analysis of their entire manuscript transmission it is investigated how the saga group is transmitted historically, and it is argued that the 15th century manuscript AM 343 a 4to has had a significant impact on the reception of the sagas as a group. An analysis of literary elements and parallels between the sagas reveals substantial differences in genre, themes, and literary style, which appears to contradict the idea that the group was originally connected. The article argues that the Hrafnistumannasögur cannot without hesitation be treated as a group, and it is proposed that the sagas have been grouped together in some manuscripts not due to inherent thematic parallels but because of historical and cultural circumstances that favored the genealogical ties between saga heroes. It is argued that the connection, however fragmentary and instable, was formed initially between Ketils saga hængs and Gríms saga loðinkinna, after which these sagas were grouped with Örvar-Odds saga. Finally, Áns saga bogsveigis was added to the group, and it is hypothesized, that this last connection presumably happened around the time of the writing of the important manuscript AM 343 a 4to (ca. 1450–75).