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Abstract
The Spiegel Historiael (1284–1317) is a Middle Dutch translation of Vincent de Beauvais’ Speculum Historiale which was initiated by Jacob van Maerlant and completed by Philip Utenbroeke and Lodewijk van Velthem. The text survives in various manuscripts and fragments, except the Fourth part, started by Maerlant and finished by Velthem, which has only been fragmentarily preserved. Two newly discovered pieces of parchment (Tilburg A and B) at the Regionaal Archief Tilburg were part of an unknown, early fourteenth-century Spiegel Historiael manuscript. Only Tilburg A contains text, i.e. part of the table of rubrics for three books, including the transition between Maerlant’s and Velthem’s work. Its use as binding material has rendered the recto of Tilburg A largely illegible. At the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures in Hamburg, Multispectral Imaging and X-Ray fluorescence spectroscopy were applied to Tilburg A, greatly increasing our understanding of the fragment. Palaeographical and codicological analyses showed that the original codex to which the fragments belonged was made between 1315–c.1330. The text is written in a Brabantine dialect. These properties situate the fragments in temporal and geographical proximity to Lodewijk van Velthem. Furthermore, we claim the same decorator was responsible for the penwork in both Tilburg A and the Velthem-owned Lancelot Compilation. This could place the fragments in a wider network of scribes and decorators around Velthem. This article provides the first study of the fragments and an edition of Tilburg A.
Comparisons with both the Spiegel Historiael manuscript at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in The Hague as well as a fifteenth-century German prose translation reveal distinctive variants between the latter two texts and Tilburg A.
Abstract
In this article, we analyse a sammelband of incunabula held at the Diocesan Library of Córdoba, which we believe belonged to William Hewster († 1492), a clergyman and professor at Oxford. It contains six incunabula from Antwerp, Leuven, Paris and Oxford, printed in the workshops of Gerard Leeu (3), John of Westphalia, Antoine Caillaut, and Theodoric Rood & Thomas Hunte. Among the works is the only known copy of Elegantiae terminorum ex Laurentio Valla et aliis collectae, Antwerp: Gerard Leeu, 7.XI.1487 (GW M35200) and the only complete copy of Ars memorativa by Jacobus Publicius [Paris: Antoine Caillaut, 1483–90] (GW M36439).
Abstract
As this essay aims to show, explicit self-reflection in early illustrated journals cannot be trusted: They underlie discursive constraints and may therefore (also) obscure the aims of such periodicals instead of exposing them. The illustration practice of texts (in which these statements are included), however, frequently offers, such is the working hypothesis, an implicit self-reflection which moves in a different direction: in the example presented in this article, one that refutes an explicit self-description by employing paratextual aspects such as the use of a layout plan (or lack thereof), paper quality, page numbering, placement of illustrations, and intertextual references. With the reconstruction of this implicit self-disclosure, the close reading of Magasin Pittoresque and Penny Magazine in the following case study intends to blaze a trail for an adequate analysis of illustrated journals of the 1830s – a trail that sheds particular light on the surprising complexity of verbal-visual forms of communication.
Abstract
In modern media history, newspapers, radio stations, and news platforms on the Internet are viewed as agents with their own agenda in an area of tension between politics, economy, culture, science, and the public. Thus, a new way of thinking has arisen in this discipline. The past media historiography had often tended to view historic events through a “mirror of the media.” This assigned the media the passive role of spectators of current events. In addition to this, internal operations of the media were rarely contextualized historically, and the editorial department was often viewed as a black box that functions independently from external influences. However, said discipline has abandoned this perspective over the past several years.
Currently, modern media history makes use of interdisciplinary approaches such as basic concepts of system theory according to Niklas Luhmann, the medializing theory, and the agenda-setting research, which enable the examination of the interrelation between media and their social environment. A further component of modern media history is a heuristic multiperspectivity which frees itself from press coverage as the only source and includes internal editorial documents as well as sources from archives of interaction partners. The third aspect are methodological tools, the use of which is enabled by the digital access to source material and leads to new questions and findings.
In this article, these approaches are outlined and illustrated using the history of the economics department of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The goal is to present components for a stringent examination of media as productive societal agents which can be used for further research.