Inscribing Knowledge in the Medieval Book: The Power of Paratexts

Description

This collection of essays examines how the paratextual apparatus of medieval manuscripts both inscribes and expresses power relations between the producers and consumers of knowledge in this important period of intellectual history. It seeks to define which paratextual features - annotations, commentaries, corrections, glosses, images, prologues, rubrics, and titles - are common to manuscripts from different branches of medieval knowledge and how they function in any particular discipline. It reveals how these visual expressions of power that organize and compile thought on the written page are consciously applied, negotiated or resisted by authors, scribes, artists, patrons and readers. This collection, which brings together scholars from the history of the book, law, science, medicine, literature, art, philosophy and music, interrogates the role played by paratexts in establishing authority, constructing bodies of knowledge, promoting education, shaping reader response, and preserving or subverting tradition in medieval manuscript culture. Contents List of Figures Editorial Principles Preface and Acknowledgments Introduction • The Editors Part 1: Constructing Bodies of Knowledge 1 Juridical Late Medieval Paratexts and the Growth of European Jurisprudence • Mario Ascheri and Paola Maffei 2 Prefaces in Canon Law Books • Gisela Drossbach 3 “Depingo ut ostendam, depictum ita est expositio:” Diagrams as an Indispensable Complement to the Cosmological Teaching of the Liber Nemroth de astronomia • Isabelle Draelants Part 2: Negotiating Tradition, Creating Practice 4 From Text to Diagram: Giambattista Da Monte and the Practice of Medicine • Concetta Pennuto 5 Immortal Souls and an Angel Intellect: Some Thoughts on the Function and Meaning of Christian Iconography in Medieval Aristotle Textbooks • Hanna Wimmer 6 Writing in the Margin – Drawing in the Margin: Reading Practices of Medieval Jurists • Joanna Frońska 7 Structuring, Stressing, or Recasting Knowledge on the Page? Rubrication in the Manuscript Copies of the Pèlerinage de l’âme by Guillaume de Deguileville • Géraldine Veysseyre Part 3: Framing Knowledge, Empowering Readers 8 From Troy to Aachen: Ancient Rome and the Carolingian Reception of Vergil • Sinéad O’Sullivan 9 Translating Prologues and Prologue Illustration in French Historical Texts • Anne D. Hedeman 10 Paratext and the Politics of Conquest: Questing Knights and Colonial Rule in Le Canarien • Victoria Turner 11 Prologues and Frontispieces in Prose Romance Manuscripts • Rosalind Brown-Grant Part 4: Appropriating Tradition, Expressing Ownership, Embodying the Book 12 Visualizing Pontifical Power: Paratextual Elements in Some French Liturgical Books, Thirteenth–Fifteenth Centuries • Alison Stones 13 Paratext in the Manuscripts of Hartmann Schedel • Outi Merisalo 14 Book Material, Production, and Use from the Point of View of the Paratext • Patrizia Carmassi List of Manuscripts and Early Printed Editions Cited Bibliography Notes on Contributors and Editors Index