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Keagan Brewer (Macquarie University), 'The Voynich Manuscript and the Secrets of Women'
Abstract:
The mysterious Voynich manuscript has long attracted attention and speculation among historians and the public. Written in a code that is presently unreadable, and covered with illustrations of plants, naked women, stars, and fluids, the manuscript offers a large variety of clues to its origins and subject matter. Carbon dating offers a date range of 1404–1438 with 95% probability for the death of the parchment animals, and illustrative evidence ties the manuscript to the southern German or northern Italian cultural areas. Some illustrations, particularly from Quire 13, depict women pointing objects towards their vaginas. On this basis, we investigate cultural attitudes relating to the medieval textual genre of ‘women’s secrets’ and propose that the largest illustration, a complex foldout known as the ‘Rosettes’, represents a contemporary medical understanding of the processes of sex and conception.
Biography:
Keagan Brewer’s research considers the complex intersections between belief, behaviour, and emotions in medieval Western Europe. Within this framework, his research has traversed the crusades, atheism and religious scepticism, marvels, the Voynich manuscript, and the legend of Prester John. He enjoys editing and translating texts, and has published several volumes in Routledge’s Crusade Texts in Translation series. His current work considers the emotions associated with atheism among medieval Europeans and (separately) the late-medieval genre of ‘women’s secrets’.