Oral Culture in Ms. Fr. 640

Hana Ghoneima

Making and Knowing Project, Fall 2021

BnF Ms. Fr. 640 stands at the intersection of a pivotal moment in history, in which craftspeople who were previously illiterate began recording their procedures and trade in writing.¹ Within this context, Ms. Fr. 640 is an illuminating document not only for its content on craft techniques, but for the historical milestones and trends it embodies. One of those is oral culture, and its intersection with the written one. Oral culture is defined as a form of communication in which knowledge is transmitted orally from one person to another. According to the historian Jan Vansina, within oral culture “there must be transmission by word of mouth over at least a generation.”² Importantly, oral culture can be interpreted as “Any situation in which people speak generates messages, some of which may be repeated and hence start a process of transmission,” and it includes both the process of oral transmission itself as well as its products.³ Similarly, oral culture can also be thought of as “a reconstruction of the past from oral sources…which will throw light on the particular aspect of social life under study.”⁴ As such, oral culture is understood as the shared transmission of vernacular experience, and is an important tool for the study of historical eras in which masses were largely illiterate and access to written work limited.

Despite the seeming contrast between oral and written sources, there is significant scholarly interest in the importance of handwritten and printed knowledge within oral culture. In fact, oral culture cannot be evaluated independently of written tradition, and the intersection of the two sheds light on topics such as authenticity and representation. According to Susan Stewart, “when oral forms are transformed into ‘evidence’ and ‘artefacts,’ they acquire all the characteristics of fragmentation, symbolic meaning, and literariness that are most valued by the literary culture.”⁵ In this light, studying the written material of BnF Ms. Fr. 640 is an important tool for understanding the oral transmission of craft knowledge and production techniques passed over generations.

As such, the purpose of this project is to locate traces of oral culture that are dispersed throughout Ms. Fr. 640. For the purpose of this project, oral culture was defined as any instance in which the author-practitioner referenced or implied that the knowledge he is writing of has been acquired from another person or place via hearing or something that is said. An example of this is in fol. 36v: “One says that in Lorraine & in Flanders well-made glass is made of fern ashes & pebbles…” Distinct here is his specific reference to having acquired this knowledge through other people’s talk. This is in contrast to instances in which he cites books or references written knowledge, such as in fol. 162r, in which he explains information about the Phoenecians acquired from Herodotus’ Clio. Below, I will lay out the methodology and results of different approaches I took to evaluating this issue.

References to “Say” and “Said”

Using the search functionality of Oxygen XML Editor, I compiled lists of all the times the author-practitioner used the words “say,” “said,” “hear,” or “heard” throughout the English translation of the Ms. Fr. 640. Then, I manually went through each entry on the list and cross-referenced them with their locations in the manuscript to check for instances where the author-practitioner is specifically referencing knowledge that is said/heard by another person. For example, on fol. 21v, he writes that “Some say that one should remove…” and in fol. 43v he writes that “It is said that pulverized talc…” These instances show direct examples where the author-practitioner is writing down things that he heard from elsewhere, including facts, techniques, and opinions of others. With the word “say,” of the 103 total times the word was used, 32% (n=33) specifically reference something that another person said and that the author-practitioner is now recording (Fig. 1). The word “said” was used 198 times, of which 8.6% (n=17) specifically reference something which another person said (Fig. 2). However, there were no instances of this with the words “hear” and “heard.”

Fig 1. Percentage of entries using the word “say” which reference oral transmission (‘yes’) versus those which do not (‘no’).

Fig 2. Percentage of entries using the word “said” which reference oral transmission (‘yes’) versus those which do not (‘no’).

• For a look at all collected data involving the word “say,” please refer to the following spreadsheet.

• For a list of all instances of oral transmission of knowledge using the word “say,” please refer to Appendix 1 .

• For a look at all collected data involving the word “said,” please refer to the following spreadsheet.

• For a list of all instances of oral transmission of knowledge using the word “say,” please refer to Appendix 2.

Orally Transmitted Knowledge Across Professions and Places

To investigate the presence of oral culture through a different lens, I went through the profession (“pro”) and place (“pl”) tags within Ms. Fr. 640. These editorial tags are encoded within the digital manuscript to describe certain words, phrases, and features of the text.⁶ The “pro” tag denotes instances where the author-practitioner references another recognized trade, such as a painter, while the “pl” tag highlights specific places that are mentioned in the text, such as France. In my initial search within the manuscript, I found that there were several instances where the author-practitioner references things he has heard or is aware that another profession or people from another place do. For example, in fol. 29v, he says: “Apothecaries say that anything which does not adhere to …” denoting that he is writing down something which he heard from apothecaries, while in fol. 136v he explains that “Some say that German tokens are …” As such, using Oxygen, I compiled a list of all the “pro” and “pl” tags within the manuscript. This resulted in a list of 366 “pro” tags and 266 “pl” tags. I manually went through each tag and sorted the list of results according to whether the author was actually referencing the way something is done or just casually referring to a place/profession. For example, a ‘yes’ would be the author-practitioner’s description of how glass is made in France while a ’no’ would be Venice turpentine, which is not actually referencing the place but is the given name of the material. Below are the initial graphs showing percentages of the number of tags actually referencing another place or profession in the context of how something is done versus tags that are not. Within the profession tag, 50.1% (n=183) specifically reference transmittable knowledge regarding the way another profession does something, while 49.9% (n=182) do not (Fig. 3). Within the place tag, 27.8% (n=74) referenced the author-practitioner’s knowledge regarding the way something is done in another location, while 72.2% (n=192) do not. Entries labeled ‘no’ are usually general discussions of the profession/place or other miscellaneous uses (Fig. 4).

Fig 3. Percentage of entries tagged with “pro” which show evidence of oral transmission of knowledge (‘yes’) versus those which do not (‘no’).

Fig 4. Percentage of entries tagged with “pl” which show evidence of oral transmission of knowledge (‘yes’) versus those which do not (‘no’).

These results give an initial look at the presence of oral culture within the manuscript. Within these tags, the author-practitioner mentions techniques and recipes done in other places or by other professions. Often, he specifically includes that he heard this information, making it clear that it’s orally transmitted, while other times he is more ambiguous about where he acquired the information from. As such, one limitation of this textual analysis is that contextual examination of the surrounding text has to be done to best interpret the author-practitioner’s meaning and determine the source of the information he is writing of. Nevertheless, in all of these instances, he is describing a technique done by another profession or place and physically recording this information into a literary form, and thus contributing to the trend of transcribing the practices of his field that have scarcely been recorded before. Further, none of the instances where he is less explicit about hearing the information include a citation or reference to another text or written work, making it likely that he is transcribing knowledge that he acquired not from another text but rather through the transmission of knowledge via oral methods or experience.⁷

Within the tags that were categorized as ‘yes’ for indicating a specific reference to how something is done in another place or profession, I broke down the categories according to the specific place/profession mentioned (Fig. 5-6).

Fig 5. Breakdown of all places mentioned which included reference of oral transmission of knowledge.

Fig 6. Breakdown of all professions mentioned which included reference of oral transmission of knowledge. For a description of all the profession categories, please refer to Appendix 4.

• For a look at all collected data involving the tag “pro” please refer to the following spreadsheet.

• For a list of all instances of oral transmission of knowledge using the tag “pro,” please refer to Appendix 3.

• For a description of all the profession categories, please refer to Appendix 4.

• For a look at all collected data involving the tag “pl,” please refer to the following spreadsheet.

• For a list of all instances of oral transmission of knowledge using the tag “pl,” please refer to Appendix 5.

Women and Peasants Within the Oral Culture of Ms. Fr. 640

Oral culture was heavily propagated by women and lower-class members of society. In fact, at the time of the manuscript, books and other written documents were still largely connected to the upper and elite classes. As such, women and peasants, many of whom were illiterate, relied on transmission of knowledge through vernacular modes.⁸ At the same time, these groups of people were also highly involved in the handiwork of the time. For example, fields were predominantly worked by the lower classes, and French peasants were hired by merchants to process harvested grains for importation to urban artisans.⁹ As such, it is likely that peasants held wide-ranging knowledge about various skills and practices, many of which would have been transferred through experience and word of mouth. Yet, in Ms. Fr. 640, there are only two explicit references to techniques employed by peasants. On fol. 67r, the author-practitioner mentions that peasants used taffeta to make banners, while on fol. 121v he mentions the type of bowls which peasants eat their soup from.

Similarly, women were highly involved in many of the practices described in Ms. Fr. 640, including gardening and food storage and preparation, meaning they were also very knowledgeable in the cultivation and uses of a variety of plants.¹⁰ Women were also commonly responsible for the creation of medicine, and many of these recipes were collected by the women and traded via networks of oral transmission.¹¹ Yet, despite this, women have very little presence within Ms. Fr. 640, and none of the medicinal recipes included are linked to women. In fact, of the seven mentions of women in the manuscript, only brief references are included to techniques or recipes employed by them. On fol. 58r, the author-practitioner mentions that “ladies, wanting to color their cheeks, grind Florence lake very finely, then fill a little cotton with it, which they next wrap in a little fabric of Cambray which is clear. And thus they pounce the lake on their cheeks & then, with another clean cotton, they soften it.” On fol. 113v, we get a reference that women make starch water, giving us subtle insights into their working lives. Albeit brief, the references to peasants and women serve the dual purpose of confirming the presence of both groups in the production processes of the time, while also highlighting the way in which they were frequently overlooked in the written traditions that were emerging.

Conclusion

Although the author-practitioner does not often describe where he acquired his recipes from, he offers wide-ranging clues to the importance of oral culture to the acquisition of the knowledge he describes. For example, many of the medicinal recipes he recounts include a place of origin. Given that it’s highly unlikely that the author-practitioner visited those places, it is probable that he acquired this information orally from others, such as artisans or travelers.¹² Sometimes, he is more explicit about how he came about his knowledge, and he often states that he learned of a technique or recipe from a place or a specific profession.¹³ For example, when describing a salve for burns in fol. 103r, he details that “A gunpowder maker who had almost completely burnt himself & showed no sign of the burn, taught me this,” further suggesting that the efficacy of this recipe is tied to the vernacular mode and first-hand nature of its acquisition. This method of knowledge gathering is a pattern frequently found throughout the manuscript, and in this way, Ms. Fr. 640 elucidates the ways in which the advent of written texts and recorded recipes made long term changes within the field of artisanal craftsmanship, which had traditionally been passed down through word of mouth and in apprenticeships. The significance of this synergy of the oral with the written is that it is self-perpetuating: the author-practitioner records his knowledge of recipes and then builds upon them with his own experience and experimentation. These documents can then spread to others, who can relate their own experiences to the new written frameworks of craftsmanship and contribute to the further sustenance of the knowledge. Interestingly, while the manuscript provides insight into this oral transmission of recipes, it also serves another function by highlighting gaps in the records of its history, such as the role of women and peasants in the transmission of said recipes.

All in all, the folios contained within Ms. Fr. 640 possess immense value in being the manifestations of real-time circulation of artisanal knowledge and technique. This spread of knowledge, as facilitated by print culture, not only exchanged with older forms of oral traditions, but brought these traditions to the forefront, ushering in a new era for the exchange and recording of work.

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Appendix 1: Instances of oral transmission of knowledge using the word “say”

Appendix 2: Instances of oral transmission of knowledge using the word “said”

Appendix 3: Instances of oral transmission of knowledge using the profession tag

Appendix 4: Descriptions of profession categories

Appendix 5: Instances of oral transmission of knowledge using the place tag