The Ranums' Panat Times
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The Ranums' Panat Times
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to opening page of Ranums' Panat Times For more on these newsletters: The handwriting The cast of characters The Fronde Newsletters Bypass this discussion of editorial principles and access the newsletters immediately, year by year:
December 1648 The Fronde Newsletters Note: ms. fr. 25025 contains letters for
1648-1651; Editorial principles The original typescript of mss. fr. 25025-25026 was completed by the late 1970s, on an old manual typewriter! At that time, I made a card file of the "cast of characters," and I carefully checked the typescript with the microfilm. I also went through all seven boxes of typescript, modernizing the capitalization, filling out abbreviated words, adding minimal punctuation and apostrophes, and "homogenizing" the abbreviations I had decided to retain. (For example, Sa Majesté, S.M., and Sa M. were homogenized to "Sa M."; Mr le Prince, M. le Prince, and Monsieur le Prince became "M. le Prince"; and Son Altesse Royale, Son A.R. and S.A.R. became "S.A.R.") I am not sure that I would do things the same today. A few words capitalized, for the denote major characters in the Fronde: "Le Roy," "La Reyne," "la Cour" (that is, the royal court, as distinguished from "la cour," the Parlement), "la Ville" (when the word denotes the city fathers). An explanation of the square brackets: Confusions between "ce" and "se," "qui" and "qu'il," and so forth, that suggest dictation, have been retained. The version in the manuscript is followed by the proposed reading in square brackets. Corrected spellings of a few personal or place names are provided in brackets. There are also a certain number of bracketed words: the tight binding made it impossible to read these words, which had to be deduced on the basis of context and initial letter(s). Since 1980, the boxes have been stacked in a closet, because the sheer bulk of the transcription made publication in book form unlikely. Now, twenty-five years later, I am retyping the abandoned typescript of the 1970s. Since the text has no literary merit, I see no point in reworking the editorial changes I made to the transcription so many years ago. The newsletters Newsletters are grouped by month. Each letter is framed by horizontal lines, at the start and at the end. The beginning of each new folio is shown by a small green number within slashes, e.g: /35v/. From 1648-December 1651, these numbers indicate the folios in ms. fr. 25015; then, in January 1651 (and ms. fr. 25026) the folio numbers once again go back to /1/. As I work through the manuscript, additional months will be added to the list. I have completed and "published" 1648, 1649, and 1650, and the first months of 1651. I will continue typing in the fall of 2005. Since the text has no literary merit, I see no point in reworking the entire transcription to conform to the latest scholarly ideal. Instead, I offer scholars a clean version of the typescript I made back in the 1970s. NOTE: The news dispatched from the provinces can lag one or two weeks behind the main newsletter. You might therefore want to look at the letters for the next month too, or even for the next two months. Also: remember that there is a gap in the newsletters between late January and April 1649 owing to the blockade of Paris. In addition, letters are very scarce for January and February 1650, although the author clearly was not following the Court to Normandy.
Fronde 1648
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