Summary:
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A '''lacuna''' is a gap in a [[manuscript]], [[inscription]], text, painting, or a musical work. A manuscript, text, or section suffering from gaps is said to be '''lacunose''' (or '''lacunulose''').
Weathering, decay, and other damage to old manuscripts or inscriptions are often responsible for lacunae—words, sentences, or whole passages that are missing or illegible. [[Palimpsests]] are particularly vulnerable. To reconstruct the original text, the context must be considered. In [[papyrology]] and [[textual criticism]] this may lead to competing reconstructions and interpretations. Published texts that contain lacunae often mark the section where text is missing with a bracketed ellipsis. For example, "This sentence contains 20 words, and […] nouns," or, "Finally, the army arrived at […] and made camp."
==Famous examples==
* A famous [[Old English]] example of a lacuna is in the manuscript [[British Library MS Cotton Vitellius A. xv]], the poem [[Beowulf]]:
::hyrde ich thæt [... ...On]elan cwen. '''(Fitt 1, line 62)'''
:This particular lacuna is always reproduced in editions of the text, but many people have attempted to fill it, notably editors Wyatt-Chambers and Dobbie, among others, who accept the verb "waes" (''was''). Malone (1929) proposed the name [[Yrse]] for the unnamed queen, as that would alliterate with [[Onela]]. This is still hotly debated amongst editors, though.
* Another notable lacuna is the eight-leaves-long [[Great Lacuna]] in the ''[[Codex Regius]]'', the most prominent source for [[Norse mythology]] and early Germanic heroic legends. Parts of it survived in independent manuscripts and in prose form in the ''[[Völsunga saga]]''.
* In [[Minuscule 69|Codex Leicester]] the text skips from [[Acts of the Apostles|Acts]] 10:45 to 14:17 without a break; possibly a scribe rewrote it from a defective manuscript.
== Media ==
The company that carries out a memory-erasing procedure in ''[[Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind]]'' is called Lacuna, Inc., relating to the word's meaning.
==See also==
*[[Unfinished work]]
{{GFDL}}
A '''lacuna''' is a gap in a [[manuscript]], [[inscription]], text, painting, or a musical work. A manuscript, text, or section suffering from gaps is said to be '''lacunose''' (or '''lacunulose''').
Weathering, decay, and other damage to old manuscripts or inscriptions are often responsible for lacunae—words, sentences, or whole passages that are missing or illegible. [[Palimpsests]] are particularly vulnerable. To reconstruct the original text, the context must be considered. In [[papyrology]] and [[textual criticism]] this may lead to competing reconstructions and interpretations. Published texts that contain lacunae often mark the section where text is missing with a bracketed ellipsis. For example, "This sentence contains 20 words, and […] nouns," or, "Finally, the army arrived at […] and made camp."
==Famous examples==
* A famous [[Old English]] example of a lacuna is in the manuscript [[British Library MS Cotton Vitellius A. xv]], the poem [[Beowulf]]:
::hyrde ich thæt [... ...On]elan cwen. '''(Fitt 1, line 62)'''
:This particular lacuna is always reproduced in editions of the text, but many people have attempted to fill it, notably editors Wyatt-Chambers and Dobbie, among others, who accept the verb "waes" (''was''). Malone (1929) proposed the name [[Yrse]] for the unnamed queen, as that would alliterate with [[Onela]]. This is still hotly debated amongst editors, though.
* Another notable lacuna is the eight-leaves-long [[Great Lacuna]] in the ''[[Codex Regius]]'', the most prominent source for [[Norse mythology]] and early Germanic heroic legends. Parts of it survived in independent manuscripts and in prose form in the ''[[Völsunga saga]]''.
* In [[Minuscule 69|Codex Leicester]] the text skips from [[Acts of the Apostles|Acts]] 10:45 to 14:17 without a break; possibly a scribe rewrote it from a defective manuscript.
== Media ==
The company that carries out a memory-erasing procedure in ''[[Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind]]'' is called Lacuna, Inc., relating to the word's meaning.
==See also==
*[[Unfinished work]]
{{GFDL}}