Working Group W: Agency
Based on the insight that manuscripts also represent a component of social practices and therefore have a performative role, Working Group W (“Agency”) focuses on the intrinsic potential of manuscripts as agents and their impact – assumed to be direct, especially in the context of magical practices – which is examined within the framework of different historical knowledge practices and social configurations and with regard to their various physical manifestations . The impact that a manuscript has can be intended by the producer right from the outset and implanted in the production process. However, it can also assume new and very different forms, particularly as cultural preconceptions shift in the course of time. As is the case with other things, too, the impact of manuscripts is always conveyed by social and cultural ascriptions.
The Working Group is entering new territory in this sense since the potential of manuscripts as agents has been a marginal topic at best in previous manuscript research, if it has been a topic at all. Theoretical discussions in the field of cultural anthropology have provided an extensive supply of terminology and practices which will be used by Group W. The aspirations of the group are not to enhance these approaches with their own variants, but to implement them as an initial example that will benefit the field of manuscript research as a whole.
A06
The Changing Praxis of the 19th-century Malay Manuscript Economy
The advent of lithographic printing and the ongoing monetization of the indigenous society in the Malay world in the course of the 19th century had profound implications for the manuscript culture and the attitude of people towards manuscripts, their production and consumption. This research continues to map and investigate such changes by mining paratexts found in the manuscripts of a 19th-century lending library collection. It is hypothesized that manuscripts spawned new interactive networks of human agents and affected the reading habits of the recipients, thereby crossing ethnic and religious boundaries in a colonial cosmopolitan context.
Principal Investigator: Jan van der Putten
Research Associate: Siti Nurliyana Binte Taha
B05
The usage of Qur’an manuscripts as objects within Islamic-Arabic culture: The example of miniature and roll Qur’ans
It is well known that manuscripts of the Qur’an were not only used for reading and reciting but that apotropaic, curative and other effects were ascribed to them. This becomes evident from the manuscripts themselves and from pre-modern literary Arabic sources as well as from modern European travelogues. The sub-project will investigate these usages by focussing on miniature Qur’ans and Qur’ans written on rolls whose outward appearance shows that they were not primarily produced for reading or reciting. Both types are already attested to since early Abbasid times. Their function will be examined on the basis of manuscripts preserved in several libraries and of their treatment in Arabic literature. In addition to the apotropaic and curative effects, the more general context of Arabic miniature books („pocket books“) and of manuscript rolls with non-Qur’anic content will have to be taken into consideration: potentially, Qur’an manuscripts may have been designed to have multiple functions.
Principal Investigator: Tilman Seidensticker
Reserarch Associate: Cornelius Berthold
B07
Collecting, Extinguishing, Rewriting and Restaging Cultural Identity and History: Cultural Encyclopaedias on New Spain
This project examines three cultural encyclopaedias from New Spain (present-day Mexico), which have hitherto been interpreted as the result of missionaries collecting, recording and archiving pre-Hispanic knowledge. If, however, one takes the burning of pre-Hispanic manuscripts into account, which also took place at the time these were compiled, the multiple-text manuscripts the missionaries wrote and illustrated appear in a rather different light. The powerful effect which manuscripts like these encyclopaedias had on the processes of rewriting and restaging indigenous knowledge at that time is a key focus of this study.
Principal Investigator: Margit Kern
Research Associate: Anna Boroffka
B08
Magia Figurata: The Visual Effect of Jewish Magical Manuscripts of the Early Modern Era
The research project entitled “Magia Figurata” intends to analyse, describe and categorise the physical and visual characteristics of early modern manuscripts containing Jewish magical texts. It thereby aims at achieving a better understanding of physical and visual aspects of the production and use of these magical manuscripts. The project will also illustrate how magical manuscripts shaped or even created reality due to the inherent authority they were claimed to possess.
Principal Investigator: Giuseppe Veltri
Research Associate: Michael Kohs
B10
Narrating Theatre: The Reality and Context of Japanese Nō Manuscripts between the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period
This research project examines Japanese manuscripts from the transitional period between the Middle Ages and the early modern period (c. 1550–1650) containing texts and paintings relating to plays staged at Japan’s Nō theatres. The aim of the project is to reconstruct the cultural knowledge these manuscripts impart through their texts and pictures and consequently to enable statements to be made about their reception. Features of these works that have only been analysed individually to date such as their format, layout, writing and iconography, will be examined in more detail. This approach will allow us to uncover the cultural practices made possible by the unusual combination of media in these manuscripts: text / picture / theatre.
Principal Investigator: Jörg B. Quenzer
Research Associate: Berenice Möller
C10
For Readers and Collectors: Publishing Copies of Works on Demand in Peking between the Late 18th and the Early 20th Century
Between the late 18th and early 20th century, there were a number of publishing companies in Beijing that copied arias from operas, folk ballads and other short literary texts at their customers’ request and sold them from catalogues displayed at temple fairs. This research project explores how it was possible for a business model based on manuscripts to survive for more than a hundred years in an age of book-printing and lithography. It will examine how the manuscripts were produced and who bought them for what purpose.
Principal Investigator: Michael Friedrich
Research Associate: Zhenzhen LU