Jaarboek voor Nederlandse Boekgeschiedenis. Jaargang 6

Geschreven gedrukt gedigitaliseerd. Elf eeuwen boekcultuur in de lage landen

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Summaries/résumé

Marco Mostert, De Vijf boeken der historiën van Rodulfus Glaber. Eindtijdverwachtingen in de eerste helft van de elfde eeuw
[De Vijf boeken der historiën van Rodulfus Glaber. Expectations of the End of time in the first half of the eleventh century]

The genesis of ‘the Five books of the histories of Rodulfus Glaber’ († 1045 or 1046) is characterised by several identifiable stages. This is hardly exceptional for scholarly texts from the early Middle Ages. Exceptionally, we still possess the autograph of the text (MS Paris, BN: lat. 10912). The text can be shown to have been written in four stages (see p. 23, cols. 4-6). The autograph shows perceptible changes in the author's hand after the intervals between these stages (col. 3 (R)). A fair copy of part of the work was commissioned by Rodulfus from a professional scribe (col. 3 (K)). The Histories have been used from Jules Michelet onwards as a source for reconstructing the mental universe of the intellectuals around 1000 AD. Rodulfus' scholarly career can be pieced together from the sparse autobiographical remarks in the Histories and in the Life by William of Volpiano, his abbot at Dijon. His use of libraries, and the ways he must have taken notes, can be imagined by comparison with the literate habits of contemporary intellectuals. The autograph of the Histories is typical of scholarly manuscripts of the time; the text itself, left unfinished at the death of its author, did not meet with much interest before the first half of the nineteenth century. From then on, the organisation of his world history around the two millennia of the Incarnation and the Passion, and his interpretation of natural phenomena as ‘signs’ of God's plan for the history of mankind, have inspired an exaggerated view of his contemporaries' alleged fear of the End of time.

J.P. Gumbert, Het kapittelboek van de Utrechtse Mariakerk. Een van de weinige overgeleverde Noord-Nederlandse codices uit de twaalfde eeuw
[The liber capituli of the Utrecht Maria Church. A rare twelfth-century North Netherlandic codex]

The twelfth century is a time of prosperity for the Medieval book, in quantity, in quality and in diversity. But in the Northern Netherlands little of that wealth remains. As far as local products are concerned, there are just a few books from the Benedictine abbey of Egmond, and even fewer from the Chapter of St Mary in Utrecht; and they show the conservative style, in script and decoration, of the German Empire, not the modern ‘pregothic’ style of France and England.

MS The Hague, Museum Meermanno-Westreenianum: 10 B 17 is a typical example in its conservative technique, but it is of particular interest because of its nature and history. It is a liber capituli, the book that was read from at the daily meeting of the Chapter of St Mary of Utrecht. It contains (in four distinct but closely related sections) short ‘Annals of St Mary’, a Martyrologium of Usuardus (in a version with many English saints added), the Aix-la-Chapelle Rule of Canons, and some minor texts. One section is precisely datable to 1138/1139; the

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others must be contemporary; all are from the Chapter of St Mary. The Rule of Canons is notable for its extremely stately script.

After the twelfth century some two dozen texts were entered in blank spaces, all related to the day-to-day life of the Canons. Scholarship has so far failed to produce an adequate account of this interesting book.

Hans Kienhorst, De Wrake van Ragisel-fragmenten. Lay-out en opkomst van het literaire handschrift in de dertiende eeuw
[Fragments of the Wrake van Ragisel. Layout and rise of the literary manuscript in the thirteenth century]

The oldest fragments of the chivalric poem Die wrake van Ragisel are the remains of a voluminous manuscript in three columns, which collected a number of Middle Dutch literary texts. This codex was probably written about 1275. The few Middle Dutch manuscripts and fragments that have come down to us from the thirteenth century show that at that time in the Southern Netherlands a new type of layout was already characteristic for the production and reproduction of rhymed texts in the vernacular. From about 1200 till 1260-1270 the tradition is limited to a few fragments that can be located in the eastern regions. The layout of these fragments is quite different from that of the manuscripts that were produced in the second half of the century. The change in layout can be connected with an increasingly widespread commercial production of Middle Dutch literature from the sixties and seventies onward to the beginning of the fourteenth century.

Jos A.A.M. Biemans, Het chirurgijnsboek van Jan van Aalter. Over schaalvergroting en nieuwe toepassingen bij de productie en vormgeving van het handgeschreven boek in de veertiende eeuw
[The surgeon's book of Jan van Aalter. On increase and innovation in the production and design of the fourteenth-century manuscript book]

During the fourteenth century the production of books in the Low Countries reveals a watershed between the South and the North. The Southern Netherlands at the beginning of the century witness a remarkable increase in the production of manuscripts, compared to the preceding century. In the Northern Netherlands hardly any traces of book production may be found before 1350, due to political, economic and cultural circumstances.

Mainly on the basis of a tract volume with primarily medical and astrological texts several aspects of the manuscripts of this period can be discussed, both traditional and new phenomena, such as the manufacture in phases of many of these handwritten books, the introduction of a new book hand (the cursiva), the production of books by professional scribes (mostly commissioned by people of some wealth), as well as the existence of home-made books for private use, and finally the appearance of features in manuscripts added to make certain textual information more accessible to the user.

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J.W.E. Klein, Boekgeschiedenis en de uitvinding van de boekdrukkunst, een ‘gulden legende’. Handschrift en druk in de vijftiende eeuw
[Book history and the invention of printing, a ‘golden legend’. Manuscript and print in the fifteenth century]

The fifteenth-century book appears to be rooted inextricably in the previous centuries. There have been certain developments in the production of manuscripts since the eleventh-twelfth centuries which can be seen as heralds of the invention of printing. Already from the twelfth century onwards simple economic laws of supply and demand made it necessary to think out strategies for organizing the production in more efficient ways. One of the major moments in book history has been the rise of the personal, informal ‘DIY-book’, which had an emancipatory effect on the book and book ownership. Its impact in fact opened the way for the invention of book-printing halfway through the fifteenth century.

In the second half of the fifteenth century there was no sense of a principal difference between a handwritten and a printed book. A manuscript was the same as a printed book. The difference one feels exists between manuscripts and incunables is misleading. We are dealing with two manifestations of the same object. The sales strategies, therefore, did not differ and did not need to change. The infrastructure for selling books was in existence long before printing was invented.

The title-page developed out of the first page, which functioned as flyleaf. There has been a functional shift, therefore, from flyleaf to title-page. Initially the economic-commercial aspect of the title-page had nothing to do with this development.

August den Hollander, Dat oude ende dat nieuwe testament (1526). Jacob van Liesvelt en de nieuwe markt voor bijbels in de zestiende eeuw
[Dat oude ende dat nieuwe testament (1526). Jacob van Liesvelt and the new Bible market in the sixteenth century]

In 1526 the famous Antwerp printer Jacob van Liesvelt printed a Bible in the Dutch language. This Bible, published under the title Dat oude ende dat nieuwe testament, was the first complete Bible (both Old and New Testament) in Dutch. With the publication of this Bible, Liesvelt was one of the first Dutch printers to recognize and explore the new emerging market for vernacular translations of the Bible in the Netherlands. This new market resulted from a change in the religious experience in the Netherlands at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Everything that had been held to be a mediating authority between God and human beings was subjected to criticism. In contrast, the Bible was considered to bring the believer into contact with God without recourse to any sort of mediation. This also explains the large number of (new) Dutch Bible translations that were published in the first half of the sixteenth century. Since the text of the Vulgate was considered obscure, a demand for new Bible translations arose. This new type of Bible had to meet two conditions. First, a Bible had to offer a complete text. Second, a Bible had to offer a ‘pure’ text that had been translated directly from the Hebrew and Greek, the languages in which God had spoken to the authors of the Bible. Therefore, Liesvelt chose to publish a Dutch translation of Luther's Bible, which was indeed based on the Hebrew and Greek.

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As soon as Liesvelt got hold of editions of parts of Luther's Bible, he incorporated them directly into his Dutch editions. The Liesvelt Bible was in use and reissued for more than a century and can be considered representative of Dutch Bible translations in the sixteenth century.

Paul Dijstelberge, Donc je suis. Een filosoof en zijn boek in de zeventiende eeuw [Donc je suis. Un philosophe et son livre au dix-septième siècle]

Le Discours de la méthode, écrit par le mathématicien-philosophe français René Descartes et publié en 1637 par l'imprimeur-libraire de Leiden Jean Maire, est sans doute une des oeuvres les plus importantes du dix-septième siècle. Son intérêt ne saurait même être surestimé. Dans l'article présent on se propose de raconter la genèse de l'oeuvre, où certains aspects de la culture du livre passent la revue: la relation entre l'auteur et l'éditeur, les privilèges en vigueur à l'époque aux Pays-Bas et en France, ainsi que quelques détails de la présentation du livre. La conclusion sera que René Descartes était un homme exceptionnel, non seulement en tant que philosophe, mais aussi en tant qu' écrivain.

Arianne Baggerman, Het boek dat andere boeken overbodig zou maken. De mislukte lancering van een achttiende-eeuwse Nederlandse encyclopedie
[The book to eclipse all books. The failed introduction of an eighteenth-century Dutch encyclopedia]

Diderot's Encyclopédie ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (published in Paris in 38 volumes from 1750 onwards) is undoubtedly the most famous book of the eighteenth century. This encyclopedia in the vernacular was revolutionary because it was the first book of reference in which reason instead of religion was the ordering agent. Thanks to the research of Robert Darnton we know a lot about the distribution of this monument of the Enlightenment in Western Europe, including the Dutch Republic. No less well studied is the distribution of its Swiss counterpart with a Calvinist character: F.B. de Félice's Encyclopedie d'Yverdon. Surprisingly little, how ever, is known about the endeavours of Dutch publishers to explore the market for a Dutch encyclopedia. The article studies the initiative taken in 1786 by the Amsterdam bookseller Willem Holtrop to publish an original forty-volume Dutch language encyclopedia for which he wanted to hire many Dutch scholars and engravers. His prospectus was read by De Felice, who wrote Holtrop a long letter explaining that his project had no chance to succeed: the number of Dutch readers would be too small to find enough buyers, and it would also be impossible to find enough Dutch authors and engravers to finish a project of such a large scale. De Félice did another proposal: he would himself become the editor and the plates of his own encyclopedia would be used again. He never received an answer to this proposal. Despite a huge advertising campaign in newspapers and journals Holtrops project never materialized. It was not until well into the nineteenth century that the Dutch market was ready for such a work of reference.

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Lisa Kuitert, Ons Voorgeslacht van W.J. Hofdijk, een negentiende-eeuwse prachteditie [Ons Voorgeslacht by W.J. Hofdijk. Specimen of a nineteenth-century luxury edition]

The luxury edition was the publisher's answer to the democratisation of books and reading. Books became cheap, but not everyone wanted cheap books. For the nouveau riche and those who wanted to be considered as such, books were a way of showing wealth and civilization. Luxury editions, mostly of large formats and often in several volumes, illustrated and with decorated bindings, served this purpose rather well. The article focuses on one of these editions, Ons Voorgeslacht by W.J. Hofdijk, a nationalistic book about the history of the Dutch. This book is considered as a typical nineteenth-century phenomenon, both for its content and for the form in which it was published.

Nel van Dijk, Een onverbiddelijke bestseller! De promotie van literair werk in de twintigste eeuw
[An implacable bestseller! The promotion of literature in the twentieth century]

The promotion of literature is a phenomenon that is typical of the twentieth century and that involves several institutions: bookstores, publishers, literary criticism, the government, and of course also authors themselves. We are dealing with a collective project; the institutions involved are dependent on each other. However hard an author may try to raise publicity for his work, when reviewers in dailies and weeklies neglect his work, chances are high that it will never reach the reading public. Furthermore, the promotion of literature is never disinterested. It is not only about passing on literature to the public and getting as many people as possible to read, it is also about money, recognition, status, and publicity. I Jan Cremer is the title of a Jan Cremer's debut, written in 1964 at the age of 23. This book marks a watershed in the twentieth century, because of the extent and nature of the promotional activities accompanying it. The way Cremer himself took charge of the publicity around his work was unlike anything done before in this area. In addition to the case of I Jan Cremer, this article highlights several other examples of book promotion in the twentieth century.

Leen Breure, De eenentwintigste eeuw: het boek als metafoor
[The twentyfirst century: book as a metaphor]

With the advance of the new electronic media, a paperless culture has been often predicted, but, in spite of the predominant role of Internet and digital documents, the Western world seems still to hold on to the conventional printed book. So far, the book has co-existed with its new counterparts and, as we may expect, it will continue to do so in the next century.

However, this conclusion is not fully satisfactory when we look at the rapid growth of the Internet and the penetrating power of the new media. This development lets us suppose that the printed word will have to face increasing competition. If well integrated, voice, sound, pictures, animations and video-clips are enriching elements in the presentation of written information, creating a more direct experience of the subject matter than the written text itself can provide. In addition, digital books offer much more personalised ways of access to their con-

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tents: following hyperlinks and searching on key words make reading less linear and more selective.

To get a taste of the Book of the twentyfirst Century the structure of the Dutch edition of Microsoft's encyclopedia Encarta is shortly described. Encarta is a good example of a digital book that utilises the new possibilities of multi-media and user interaction to some extent, but, of course, it is not to be considered as a profile of the book technology of the next century.

We expect that this technology will have its roots in the past. The ‘New Book’ has a history of about fifty years. Hypertext as a concept was first described by Vannevar Bush in 1945, further developed and enriched by Ted Nelson in the sixties, and recently popularised by Tim Berners-Lee in the form of World Wide Web. Looking back at the ideas and successes of these men, one must conclude that requirements and techniques seem to be more persistent and reliable in predictions than medium and technology.

Therefore, the book of the next century eludes description in a physical sense. Conceptually, it will represent the next stage in a development started in the recent past. It will certainly be a hyperbook, but based on a richer hypertext model than the current World Wide Web, and much more visual than the books we are used to now. It may consist of different, well-integrated levels, each serving a distinct functionality: for example, a full text layer suitable for printing, and an interactive layer with animations and facilities for querying underlying databases. The semantics of the text will be made recognisable for the software by systematic coding, e.g. through sgml or xml. Writing such a book will require, next to conventional stylistic qualities, new skills in visual design and in planning user interaction. We shall still call this product a ‘book’, although in view of its complex digital architecture (which may be quite different from the structure of its printed ancestor), the term will be used metaphorically.