Cities and suburbs, real and imaginary.

Monday, April 7, 2008

i miss illuminated manuscripts.

how come we don't illuminate our manuscripts anymore?

Curse you Gutenberg and your technological advance that ended a gorgeous era of graphic novelization!

I'm reading The Travels of Marco Polo in one hand, and googling all the zany images that belong in the margins because bored monks were drawing what *should* have been in the manuscript but weren't listed.

Someone should do a big scholarly concordance of the manuscript illuminations of the Travels of Marco Polo, the Bible, Consolation of Philosophy, Roman de la Rose, and Chaucer, and put it up on the internet for free so us scholarly types can research things.

I'm too busy. Can you do it for me? Does anyone know an unemployed Medievalist with a strong information technology background and unlimited funds with which to create a ginormous, graphics-heavy website?

Keep me updated.

5 comments:

K.C. Shaw said...

My mom used to do illuminated manuscripts, but so many people wanted them that eventually she was illuminating all the time and doing nothing else. So she quit doing them at all. Stupid greedy people.

Alina said...

Unemployed medievalist here.

J m mcdermott said...

Go forth, Alina, and make the illuminated manuscript concordance!

By God's Wounds, the world needs this!

(Or, get a fantastic job instead... Which also helps me because then you'll have more money to buy my books.)

I noticed that Cat Valente is doing illuminated short stories for in-between novel cash. I'd pick some up if I wasn't a broke novelist, myself.

http://www.catherynnemvalente.com/omikuji/

Alina said...

At the rate my submissions to publishers are going, I might just need to get a real job.

Pony English said...

They make me think of candy.