Rare Manuscripts and Wordplay

The wrinkles you won't find on the Kindle.

If you get the opportunity to explore a major academic’s library—like the Library of Congress or the resources at Cornell, William and Mary, and other universities—be sure to take it. You’ll find all kinds of things at risk of disappearing from the digital record.

Every once in a while, I happen upon a report of a hard-to-get book like Joe Lisle’s Play Upon Words from 1828, subtitled “A Delightful Gallimaufry of Visual Wordplay, Corniness, and Puns in Caricature.” It was published in the form of forty aquatint plates, so it doesn’t translate easily to digital formats. And prices range from $1800 to $2400, so I don’t think a physical copy is in my future.

Probably not a big deal. The early works I have seen in this genre are often primitive or untranslatable; the really good jokes tend to get reused. Still, I can’t help but be curious.

Weird Medieval Guys documents The Rutland Psalter, “an 800-year-old prayer book that's decorated with puns.” It’s the first known English manuscript to use the ornate margins we tend to associate with Middle-Ages writing, and the subversive nature of its visual puns has to be seen to be believed.

Atlas Obscura covers more of the weirdness of marginalia, including a bit of wordplay in the form of a drawing of an owl.

One document that’s beyond us all—not because of scarcity or being forgotten, but because we can’t translate it—is the Voynich Manuscript. Yale kept it in their rare book and document library until 2004—well, it’s still there, but now it’s also published online. Theories abound, but no one really knows what its translated meaning is, if indeed it has any.

I don’t have many grand conclusions to offer here. It’s just that every so often, studying a subject leads you up to the boundaries of what’s known. And you end up staring at the shoreline, wondering what may lie on the other side.

Next: Wrinkles in resume writing!