Abstract

In medieval Greek manuscripts, scribes often compared their completion of the transcription of a codex to a ship reaching a harbor. Scholars have noted that this nautical imagery shaped how poets conceptualized their work as authors, but the harbor metaphor also carried over to metaliterary and ekphrastic passages theorizing the affect of images and the built environment. Thus, a technical metaphor born to describe the physical labor of book-making was adapted to elucidate the intellectual labor of book-writing, image-making, and building. The present study discusses the harbor metaphor via the concept of “terminality,” an impulse towards closure that inscribed the content of an object (logos, eikôn) or space (chora) within an experiential horizon. The terminus offers an opportunity to appreciate the often-overlooked importance of the letters themselves (the graphai) in the world before print. The graphê, quite simply, traced the contours of how other media were understood and perceived, providing assurance that literature and art were as well-regulated as the practice of scribal transcription.

摘要

在中世纪的希腊手稿中，抄写员经常将他们完成手抄本的抄写比作一艘到达港口的船。学者们注意到，这种航海意象塑造了诗人如何将他们的作品概念化为作者，但海港隐喻也延续到元文学和 ekphrastic 段落中，这些段落将图像和建筑环境的影响理论化。因此，为描述书籍制作的体力劳动而诞生的技术隐喻被改编为阐明书籍写作、图像制作和建筑的智力劳动。本研究通过“终端性”的概念讨论海港隐喻，这是一种封闭的冲动，它记录了一个物体的内容（标志，eikôn）或空间（chora）) 在经验范围内。总站提供了一个机会，让我们有机会在印刷之前欣赏字母本身（graphai）在世界上经常被忽视的重要性。graphê很简单，描绘了其他媒体如何被理解和感知的轮廓，从而确保文学和艺术与抄写的做法一样受到良好的规范。