10 Matching Annotations
  1. Aug 2021
    1. The earliest attested manicules appeared in the Domesday Book, the exhaustive survey of England carried out for William I in 1086.

      I wonder if we can find a direct link to the manicule and the use of the hand as a mnemonic device?

    2. In studying the symbol, William H. Sherman discovered no fewer than nine distinct terms by which it was known: in addition to Sherman’s preferred “manicule,” at one time or another the ☞ was called a “hand,” “hand director,” “pointing hand,” “pointing finger,” “pointer,” “digit,” “index,” or “indicator.” “Indicule,” “maniple,” and “pilcrow” have also been bandied around as names for this severed mitt

      Alternate names for the manicule...

    3. Some manicules terminated abruptly at the wrist, while others emerged from sleeves of varying sophistication to reveal, in turn, something of the fashions of their time. Petrarch’s flowing sleeves, for instance, gave way to delicate, lace-trimmed cuffs in later centuries, and continuing the trend, modern-day manicules often show the sober cuff of a suit-wearing businessman. Cuffs and sleeves also provided convenient containers for notes on the pointed-to material, binding a note to its target text.

      Another reference to the clothing of the time attached to manicules. What might these tell us about fashion over time? What other older fashions existed within these?

    1. Helping Hands on the Medieval Page

      👈

      As I'm thinking about this, I can't help but think that Hypothes.is, if only for fun, ought to add a manicule functionality to their annotation product.

      I totally want to be able to highlight portions of my reading with an octopus manicule!

      I can see their new tagline now:

      Helping hands on the digital page.

      image of an octopus drawn in a book margin with the legs stretching so as to indicate an important passage of several lines

      I'm off to draw some octopi...

    2. Interestingly, while the dragon could easily have been doodled by the reader himself, the depictions seen in Fig. 8 are carefully designed and painted. These pointing hands – the manuscript contains many of them – were probably done professionally. If this inference is correct, it suggests that the reader asked the artisan to insert them during production. This is interesting because it means that the reader already knew what passages he would wanted to have highlighted. It appears he already knew the text well before he owned a copy.

      Professionally designed, drawn, and painted manicules may be an indicator that the reader knew a text well prior to commissioning a copy of a manuscript being made.

    3. Then there are the really exotic hands, which are turned into a visual feast. Fig. 7 shows and an arm that was turned into the body of a dragon, while the hands in Fig. 8 (which look like ladies’ gloves) are attached to the wrong location on the human body. These hands are not just meant to point out an important passage, they must also have been intended to bring a smile on the reader’s face.

      Far beyond this, they're most likely used as mnemonic devices to associate the important information with a more memorable image for storing in one's memory palace.

    4. Since the reader was able to shape hand and finger as he or she saw fit, we can sometimes recognise a particular reader within a single manuscript, or even within the books of a library. The charming hands function as a kind of fingerprint of a particular reader, allowing us to assess what he or she found important about a book or a collection of books.

      I've heard the word "hand" as in the phrase "an operator's hand" used in telegraphy to indicate how an experienced telegraph operator could identify the person at the other end with whom they were communicating by the pace and timbre of the code. I've particularly heard reference to it by code breakers during wartime. It's much the same sort of information as identifying someone by their voice on the phone or in a distinctive walk as seen at a distance. I've also thought of using this idea in typing as a means of secondary confirmation for identifying someone while they input a password on a keyboard.

      I wonder if that reference predates this sort of similar "hand" use for identifying someone, if this may have come first, or if they're independent of each other?