Worlds Made Flesh Quotes

“a single manuscript, across a related family of manuscripts, and across members of different manuscript families. It also had to be transferable to interactions between canonical texts and chronicle manuscripts. At the same time, the model had to be specific enough to provide a solid basis of comparison in all these areas. A long search through literary theory, narratology, and cybertheory provided some valuable insights but no completely adequate models. Cybertheory, working as it does with multivocal, nonlinear, and collaborative texts, has much to offer manuscript study, but it has not yet formed a coherent vocabulary for its own sphere. Recombinant genetics, on the other hand, has long had a model to discuss the lateral production of related but unique genomes. Just as the dispersive replication of DNA strands creates a set of replicants, each bearing”
― Lauryn Mayer, Worlds Made Flesh: Chronicle Histories and Medieval Manuscript Culture

“and “does not contain” put the manuscripts on stage without a script. This same dilemma appeared when I attempted to discuss the different readings in my manuscript family. Since I could not rely upon the vocabulary of literary criticism to discuss them, I found myself with a wealth of information that could not be fitted into a legible critical narrative. I would either have to abandon the project, or create a suitable vocabulary and analytical model. The first solution was unthinkable. In two manuscripts of this family, Britain is founded by women who rebel against patriarchal authority in a particularly graphic manner. In others, Guinevere”
― Lauryn Mayer, Worlds Made Flesh: Chronicle Histories and Medieval Manuscript Culture