SphinYote said:
Thanks so much for your replies.
Unfortunately, I should have made something clear in the first post, this is for a paper assignment, and we're not supposed to use web sites.
I feel kind of bad that I didn't specify that and you went to so much trouble to write everything. But thank you.
This is one of the things I'm so frusterated with. I know that a lot of the information online offers in English what is probably contained in the non-english sources. Unfortunately I'm barred from using it, given the general academic attitude towards the internet (not to say that the attitude isn't unfounded, but in some cases, possibly like this one, I suspect it may be taken too far...unfortunately I haven't come across enough offline written documents in English to be able to confirm what's written online, even).
Again thanks though,
I may email the people who run the sites to see if they can give me further guidance in this.
SphinYote
History - anyway, if written "scholarly in books" or "somehow wild in internet" - stays always fiction. Even if the researcher is totally honest, any attempt only tries to realize for the reader insight possibilities about certain objects... in this case something called "Mantegna Tarocchi", although likely neither a "really Tarocchi" nor "from Mantegna".
The "general academic attitude" is another fiction, it creates the idea of "special quality", a safety mark ... in other words, a very special illusion.
The "general academic attitude" was born long before internet. If it rejects "internet", it rejects new technologies, new ways of research and new ways of communication. If you follow this "attitude", you actually work - now in 2005 - like an idiot.
When book printing was manifested in 15th century, also old ways of "science" existed. The new technology was also rejected by comtemporaries. When texts hadn't colourful illuminations, they were "worthless". This specific arrogance for instance was expressed by one of the colorful figures of renaissance, Federico Montefeltro, who built up a nice library in Urbino (which now is object to research in many ways ...
).
Nonetheless Montefeltro and those others couldn't stop the new methodes of book printing and their resistance is now just a curious story told in "yesterday it happened".
In playing card research your attitude is especially funny. This isn't really "science" ... this is an attempt of various "single persons" of the past, to get insinght of an object, which interested them. They collected information, they made some conclusions, they manifested them in some printed media. Their communication took occasionally centuries and decades, before a message reached the really relevant and answering reader.
In recent times (the past 30,40 years) these research interests had found some relevant "operational base" in the IPCS, the International Playing Card Society.
On the base of the membership in this group one of the leading heads, Sir Michael Dummett, in reality a reknown professor for philosophy, manifested somehow Tarot history as science or academical study (of course somehow also only an illusion, actually its just a good book, "Game of Tarot" - from Ferrara to Salt Lake City) around 1980, accompanied by another work with more popular acception, the Tarot Encyclopedias of Stuart Kaplan.
The proceedings in the IPCS are "slow and ineffective", considering the technical possibilities of today.
As an example: Franco Pratesi published 1989 some relevant data to the - by us called - Michelino deck, which corrected earlier assumptions to some data. This article was printed in the IPCS-paper and reached about 500 members (from which by far not all have specific eyes on early Tarot history, but various other playing card interests). So Franco Pratesi's article didn't reach much active minds.
When we started to work about the Michelino deck, that was about 2003, we found to the whole case a short internet page, not very remarkable. And elsewhere the whole case was more or less forgotten.
This was the result and the work of your "general academic attitude". The historical progress of yesterday.
Meanwhile we've made various progresses to the theme and you find them at
http://trionfi.com/0/b
It contained 3 or 4 times more material than the original articles of Franco Pratesi, inclusive a translation of the relevant documents.
This was possible to arrange within 3 years with "Internet Tools", and, btw., considering the whole production of Trionfi.com, it is only a side stream of our development, and only one small progress beside many others, which were done in this time. And the article was read meanwhile by a few thousands readers ... surely not all very competent readers, but anyway, people have the chance to be informed if they desire.
Your "general academic attitude" ... you can forget about it, it's simply not on the height of research and all, what we see, it has disqualified as "too slow" and not operating in a dynamical progress as Internet offers.
As far the Mantegna Tarocchi is concerned ... what do you want, "real information" to it, or is it just your desire to get yourself a name inside this temple of yesterday, accepted by all these "general academic attitudes" .... and in this case you've to accept, that we - ... we define us just as as researchers by heart and passion ... - just smile about your fine differences.
Our object are "good informations" and "right conclusions" ... if we hear about them in a pub talking to somebody, in private internet communication, in internet forums or in serious old books, that doesn't matter too much.
It's relevant, if it is "good information and if it's "right conclusion", and it's irrelevant, if "nonsense" appears in books or internet documents ... it's still nonsense.
