![]() The origins of doodling in the Middle Ages are hard to pinpoint, but they probably started with pen trials. Given the skills and specialization required for writing in the Middle Ages-the training, level of literacy, access to materials, for example-doodles in manuscripts were rarely thoughtless or accidental. It was commonplace to write in margins, underline and annotate, use blank spaces for recipes and handwriting practice, and even color in images. Usually found in the flyleaves or margins, doodles can often give medievalists (specialists in medieval history and culture) important insights into how people in earlier centuries understood and reacted to the narrative on the page. Gazette du livre médiéval, n° 37, automne 2000.Although you wouldn't dare doodle on a medieval manuscript today, squiggly lines (sometimes resembling fish or even elongated people), mini-drawings (a knight fighting a snail, for instance), and random objects appear quite often in medieval books. Although Giovannini offers no new external evidence for the existence of the medieval Giovannini, in a re¬ cent communication ("Quelques commentaires sur la formation des cahiers et sur les piqûres", in GLM 36, 47-48), argues that the search for traces of the "pricking wheel" has been incomplete, not because not enough manuscripts have been perused, but because diplomatic mate¬ rials have been excluded, single sheet documents in particular. highlights practical difficulties with the use of the "pricking wheel", and problems with all proposed tests to detect its traces in manuscripts. sets out a mathematical model of the instru¬ ment, with a particular care to determine the parameters of construction, given the constraints of use, and materials ("La machine à rouler. In a review of the literature, and the evidence to date, Dane re¬ iterates Jones' early observation on the paucity of evidence for the "pricking wheel", writes of the impracticality of such a device should it exist, and offers an "internal" test which could be employed to prove its (unlikely) use ("On the shadowy existence of the medieval pricking wheel", in Scriptorium 50, fase. The weakness of the case for the use of "pricking wheels" in the prepara¬ tion of medieval books was brought into stark light by J. Others merely allowed it as a theoretical possibility. To some moderns the "pricking wheel" was such an attractive seeming device, fit to save labour in the workshop, that they were convinced of its medieval existence. 395), yet, by the time of his last article on the subject he had, apparently, become a believer ("Ancient prickings in eighth-century manuscripts", Scriptorium 15, fase. ![]() Jones, often viewed as the promoter of the "pricking wheel" as an option available to medieval artisans of the book, did in fact state "there is no certain evidence that this convenient device was used in early manus¬ cripts" ("Pricking manuscripts: the instruments and their significance", Speculum 21, no. THEIR PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS, ANS RECORDED USEĪfter more than six decades of scholarly acceptance of the existence of the medieval "pricking wheel" (perhaps more acquiescence than acceptance), the last several years have seen private doubts become printed objections.
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