COMPULSORY FIGURES

At competitions, a few of these figures were selected for each skater to perform so that judges could compare like to like.[...]figures became "compulsory," as against the so-called free skating that took place later in the competition and is all that most people now imagine when they think of the sport: jumps and spins, music and costumes.Even when not intentionally duplicitous, it remains the case that "in forme of speche is change," as Geoffrey Chaucer both reminds us and performs for us in his quote-unquote Middle (that is, linguistically transitional) English poetry.32 This same sense of mutability informs St. Jerome's decision to use figura to designate the unstable, impermanent world of 1 Corinthians 7:31: "praeterit … figura huius mundi" (the present form of this world is passing away) (see 37-38).Because it anticipates the establishment of a world without end at the Second Coming, this verse returns us to the eschatological sense of figure that we saw earlier in Pearl's description of the Heavenly Jerusalem.A second, usually implied benefit is that, with many researchers able to consult manuscripts virtually rather than in person, there will be less wear and tear on these precious and often fragile objects, making them easier to preserve for future generations.[...]we have, or so it would seem, the best of both worlds: increased access and increased preservation, goals that historically have been in tension with one another.[...]viewers were often baffled or enraged to see superb free skaters lose to those who had built up a large lead in the figures.