Exhibit G: Handwriting & Transcription

Gothic Book Hand

This manuscript is written in the Gothic book hand, which consists of three distinct forms: Praescissa, Quadrata, and Semi-Quadrata, with Praescissa being the highest grade of Gothic and Semi-Quadrata being the lowest. The difference between these three forms is that, one, Praescissa does not use what we refer to as “serifs” at the bottom of letters like the other two forms do. Instead, for letters like “n,” the minims are flat at the bottom. In Quadrata, the foot of each minim has a diamond-shaped serif at the bottom while in Semi-Quadrata, they are only used sometimes. Below, if you look closely at the bottom of each minim in the letter “m,” you will notice a diamond-shape, which is a type of serif used in this book hand.

Transcription

After transcribing this, I noticed a few things. One, the ninth line of text has what is called sub punctuation (the three dots that appear below the baseline under each letter) to indicate that the text has been corrected. Secondly, the last line I transcribed lacked a punctus. I though this was unusual because every other stanza ends with a punctus except for this one. This led me to the conclusion that it may have been either forgotten or damaged.

Modern Version

I decided to make a museum blog in which I am the tour guide through the Egerton manuscript of Dante’s Divine Comedy. The reason I decided to do this was because Dante’s journey through the three realms of the dead is a lot like a tour through museum exhibits. His tour guides are the poet Virgil and Beatrice. As he travels through each realm, the tour guides introduce him to the various things that make up each realm. These are often depicted in the illustrations and Dante seems to me like he observes these things like someone in a museum would. So, I decided to be a tour guide for The Egerton Museum of the Divine Comedy that made a blog to teach potential visitors about the manuscript and what to expect when visiting the museum. I did this by splitting my discussion units (blog posts) into museum exhibits.