The Lost Literature of Medieval England

Wilson, R. M.

doi:10.4324/9780429203879

Cited by 12 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…The (material) loss of documents can entail the (immaterial) loss of works: A work becomes "lost" when none of the copies that once preserved it is known to have survived (13). A theoretical distinction must be made between documents that have been destroyed and those that have not been recovered yet, for example, because of inadequate cataloging; sources in the latter category might still reemerge.…”

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confidence: 99%

Forgotten books: The application of unseen species models to the survival of culture

Kestemont

Karsdorp

Bruijn

et al. 2022

Science

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The study of ancient cultures is hindered by the incomplete survival of material artifacts, so we commonly underestimate the diversity of cultural production in historic societies. To correct this survivorship bias, we applied unseen species models from ecology to gauge the loss of narratives from medieval Europe, such as the romances about King Arthur. The estimates obtained are compatible with the scant historic evidence. In addition to events such as library fires, we identified the original evenness of cultural populations as an overlooked factor in these assemblages’ stability in the face of immaterial loss. We link the elevated evenness in island literatures to analogous accounts of ecological and cultural diversity in insular communities. These analyses call for a wider application of these methods across the heritage sciences.

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confidence: 99%

Forgotten books: The application of unseen species models to the survival of culture

Kestemont

Karsdorp

Bruijn

et al. 2022

Science

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“…The space of all possible values is usually called the phase space in physics and other mathematical sciences, and a representation of the value taken by a given 1 This order of magnitude is a very rough estimate based on human population and our own assumptions: the medieval population of countries such as France or Italy was in the 10 7 range; we estimate that the maximum saturation of this market for a given book would be reached if around 1% of the population were to own a copy. 2 Historical and philological knowledge of loss rates is very scarce and elusive, but can still be approached from various angles, such as the collection of data from ancient library catalogues, inventories, wills, as well as allusions and intertextuality [37,38,39]. Buringh [39] provides estimates for the Latin West, with a geometric mean of loss around -25% per century, with variations from -11% in the 9th to -32% in the 14th and 15th centuries (with local variations between medieval institutions from -3% to -71% per century).…”

Section: Phase Diagrams Obtained Through Computer Simulationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lost Manuscripts and Extinct Texts: A Dynamic Model of Cultural Transmission

Camps¹,

Randon‐Furling²

2022

Preprint

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How did written works evolve, disappear or survive down through the ages? In this paper, we propose a unified, formal framework for two fundamental questions in the study of the transmission of texts: how much was lost or preserved from all works of the past, and why do their genealogies (their "phylogenetic trees") present the very peculiar shapes that we observe or, more precisely, reconstruct? We argue here that these questions share similarities to those encountered in evolutionary biology, and can be described in terms of "genetic" drift and "natural" selection. Through agent-based models, we show that such properties as have been observed by philologists since the 1800s can be simulated, and confronted to data gathered for ancient and medieval texts across Europe, in order to obtain plausible estimations of the number of works and manuscripts that existed and were lost.

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“…7, col. -1969ch. 3.1.3, col. 1949-1952 of recapitulation: a renewal of everything and fulfilment in Christ what "Adam began and interrupted" (Simon 1992: 420; see chapter 18).…”

Section: Lower Tiers Of Sacralitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Theater and the Sacred in the Middle Ages

Dąbrówka¹,

Kocur²

2019

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The Publication is funded by Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Poland as a part of the National Programme for the Development of the Humanities. This publication reflects the views only of the authors, and the Ministry cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.Cover Ilustration: Excerpt from Roman ivory relief "Women at Christ's tomb and the ascension", the so-called "Reidersche Tafel". Inv.-Nr. 157 MA, Foto Nr. D27841.

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The Lost Literature of Medieval England

Cited by 12 publications

References 0 publications

Forgotten books: The application of unseen species models to the survival of culture

Forgotten books: The application of unseen species models to the survival of culture

Lost Manuscripts and Extinct Texts: A Dynamic Model of Cultural Transmission

Theater and the Sacred in the Middle Ages

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