Rant of the Day: Manuscript Catalogues

[highlyeccentric]

My somewhat obsessive friend MrsBacon, who has spent much of the last couple of months chasing down crusader letters by haphazard chains of catalogue searches, word of mouth, the history of french libraries after the Revolution, and midnight telephone calls to confused non-english speaking librarians who just might have something in a 'little box' downstairs, assures me that I am blessed in my choice of field, because the English generally and Anglo-Saxonists in particular are obsessed with cataloguing and record-keeping, and that I should be overjoyed to have access to big fat manuscript catalogues and so forth.

Nevertheless, having finally laid hands on Helmut Gneuss' Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, i found it immensely frustrating. It didn't take much to discover that 'Cotton Nero' wouldn't be in the list, and that it would be found headed by its location. After peering at the index for some time, wondering why 'British Library' doesn't appear before 'Cambridge University Library', i noticed the neat little comma: 'Cambridge, University Library'. Deft use of the index took me through the various manuscripts containing "Wulfstan, Archbishop of York: homilies" and brought me at last to 'London, British Library, Cotton Nero A.i". So far so good- all inconveniences at the feet of my own incompetence.

Gneuss turns out to contain a very short paragraph and no more information than I could have rattled off from the top of my head, save for the size of the MS itself. Perhaps useful for cross-referencing across manuscripts, it was quite disapointing for my current purposes. (What are they? I'm not sure... )

Next i turned to Neil Ker's Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon, which DID contain useful- if barely comprehensible- information, several pages of it. This, however, took me another half an hour to find, as I stared at the gap between Lincoln, Cathedral 298 no. 2 and London, British Museum, Additional 9381, wondering where the British Library had got to. I checked at the other end of British Museum, and L had not been mysteriously moved to after M. To the indexes i returned, and sifted through manuscripts containing the handwriting of Wulfstan- which was at least a vaugely relevant tour- only to end up at London, British Museum, Cotton Nero A.i.

Why has no one told me that the British Museum and the British Library are the same thing? Furthermore, how does one figure out which to refer to?

Comments

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

The British Library was housed in the British Museum until 1997, when the new St Pancras building opened. In current work, you should cite all books belonging to the British Library as London, British Library... but if you're looking at older reference works, check under British Museum as well as under British Library.

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

aha, that explains much!

thank you :D

[daiskmeliadorn.livejournal.com]

it was quite disapointing for my current purposes. (What are they? I'm not sure... )

story of my life these days...

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

peversely, i find that encouraging :D

[daiskmeliadorn.livejournal.com]

conceivably, it could be encouraging if i go on to finish this bastard and turn it into something half-decent, i suppose...

if the whole thing collapses into a pit of indecipherable despair i imagine that would be less encouraging for both of us.

did i mention i saw my supervisor this morning? :P

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

well *I* find it encouraging, because if you're fuddling along not knowing what you're doing then it's ok for me to have no idea, being as i am several months behind you in the thesis process ;).

oh dear. is that a good saw-my-supervisor or a bad saw-my-supervisor?

[daiskmeliadorn.livejournal.com]

it's probably a bit of both i guess. she started off by buttering me up ("this could really be turned into a great journal article! you're really breaking new ground!") and then proceeded to tell me to do a zillion things except the one thing i want to do - look into the theoretical implications of what i've found. which is what she seems to do every. single. time.

she's all "historical context" and "rearrange your structure so it's chronological" and so on and so forth. these are good things to do, and i can see that what she wants me to do would all help make a better thesis (particularly one that's more in line with a pretty strict interpretation of what the discipline of history is all about).

but the thing is, she doesn't seem to support what i want to do with my thesis at all. she doesn't exactly oppose it, but she never gives me a chance to do any of that stuff, because she's always emphasising other stuff.

it's just depressing because i was starting to think, "yay! i've done heaps of the grunt work now, i can finally get to actually interpreting stuff in a new and useful way!" and it feels like she's pulling me away from that again.

it's possible she just trusts me to be able to do that stuff, because obviously i am pretty into it, and she feels that she needs to be reinforcing the bits that i tend to neglect. but i'd really appreciate a little encouragement to do what i enjoy :(

sorry. ranting. thanks for asking though.

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

erm, this might seem like a silly question- but have you asked her where she sees the theory as standing, in terms of your thesis? does she know the angle you want to take- and if she's not a THEORY person herself, can you convince her that you can do it systematically and without fluffifying the whole thing?

[daiskmeliadorn.livejournal.com]

yeah... as i rode home i thought i should really ask her what the deal is with this. probably a good idea. usually i just grumble to myself and figure that once i've done this, she'll be happy, and i'll be free to develop it in the way i want to.
i wonder if that's another way in which i'm kind of passive-aggressive. have been trying to work out how to overcome that. i think it means confronting things more openly rather than trying to accommodate them but actually being bitter about it.

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

*nods* i understand the impulse though. 'm not looking forward to figuring out how working with Dan works, so to speak... i don't *TRUST* him like i trust Awesome. Quite frankly i don't trust dan to remember my NAME from week to week :P

i want to march in to him and say 'this is what i'm doing and how', for fear that he'll sidle me sideways into something less adventurous and more boring... but i don't KNOW what i'm doing (really) or how (at all).

[daiskmeliadorn.livejournal.com]

yeah! i hear you! i hope he understands what you try to say you're doing and how, and can actually help you be more clear on what *you* want :)

ahhh supervisors.

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

and also- no need to aplogise for ranting :)

[daiskmeliadorn.livejournal.com]

thanks :)
also lately i think i am paranoid about actually sharing any of the things i'm feeling shitty about with people for fear of selfishly dominating the conversation with my own crap. which i'm sure i do, sometimes, but apparently sometimes people do actually care how i'm going, strangely...

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

WEIRD! people care about you! shock horror!

not me, of course. I'm just cynically gathering information on the trials of thesifying wot lie ahead of me. Therefore, you should feel no qualms about ranting, in the interests of preparing me for my doom.

*hugs*

[daiskmeliadorn.livejournal.com]

hehe, thanks dude. you sound pretty organised to me - you've got a topic, primary sources... the rest is easy! :)

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

i have such a flippy topic though... i wants a QUESTION, dammit! i feel like i'm trying to contain an excitable kitten or something... it won't sit still and it's hard to tell how many legs it's got.

[daiskmeliadorn.livejournal.com]

haha i still don't have a question!

well, i thought i had one last week, but apparently i don't anymore.

what is your topic? all i really know is it's about that dude?

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

it is indeed about that Dude, and that dude's manuscript... At Awesome's suggestion i've narrowed in on Cotton Nero A.i, which is a version of Wulfstan's 'handbook', containing a handful of his sermons, assorted law codes he wrote, parts of TWO versions of the 'institutes of polity', his work on the principles of government and social order, plus assorted latin works by other authors- canon law, penitential, some sermons by Abbo of St Germain, and some other stuff i can't remember. This manuscript was in his possession, has his scribbled notes and changes in the text, and was probably pulled apart, re-ordered and supplemented by him or by others under his direction some time after it was first compiled.

it's a transitional manuscript, particularly as concerns the Institutes, and his most famous sermon, the Sermo Lupi ad Anglos. so hopefully i'll be able to say something about the development of his political thought/theological thought over time... i need a new word, though. it's not political AND theological thought; he doesn't go in for much in the way of exclusively theological thought at all... i'm wondering if i can use the term 'socio-theological' or something similar. He's all about creating a whole, holy Christian society... *frowns* yeah. so i want to look at that. but that's not really a QUESTION. hmph.

[daiskmeliadorn.livejournal.com]

what sort of things have other people done about your Dude?

[daiskmeliadorn.livejournal.com]

as in, what other aspects of him are interesting, or something.