on method, 1
|
Gabarraje Gabathes Gabazola Gabbanucci Gabbarono Gabberai Gabberesti Gabbiate Gabelkette Gabellang Gabellava Gaditanior |
41349 41350 41351 41352 41353 41354 41355 41356 41364 41365 41366 41391 |
Method(s) ( See also Ideal, Lose. ) New method Old method A new method for By a new method By the old method By what method By this method — As the best method Is the only method Is extracted by the following method — Miasma |
ex McNeill’s Code (1908 Edition)
link to scan of Pennsylvania State University copy
—
My method is to show my sources, pretty fully. I like to think that if there's sufficient mystery in the thing, references and citations won’t dampen it — and might even lend some nuance.
It’s a baroque practice.
Some time back, I drafted (but never completed nor posted) a rumination on (what I called) “social emblematics.” I had stumbled on and was amazed by the many reiterations (and mis-reiterations) of the expression “All the secrets of the world are contained in books. Read at your own risk.” It’s all over the place, in tumblr and flickr and many elsewheres, and is usually attributed to Lemony Snicket. I tracked it down to its first appearance in print ( not in a Lemony Snicket book! ) with Daniel Handler’s help.
These reiterations were typically used as a caption to an image, either original or recycled. I wanted to demonstrate how these new re-usings were not unlike older combinatoric practices, emblem making among them.
I gathered and examined a few examples of the “All the secrets” aphorism, and then moved to the baroque precedent, by reflecting on the relationship to each other of two emblem books:
- George Wither, his A Collection of Emblemes, Ancient and Moderne, whose title continues : “quickened with metricall illustrations, both Morall and Divine: and disposed into Lotteries, that Instructions, and Good Counsell, may bee furthered by an Honest and Pleasant Recreation” (London, 1635);
- and the engravings from Gabriel Rollenhagen (1583-1619) his Nucleus emblematum selectissimorum (1611), that Wither plundered/recycled.
tags:
emblematics; method; miasma; telegraphic codes
Bedford McNeill, McNeill’s Code (1908)