"Taylor contributes new insights to material philology and makes a brilliant demonstration of its concerns."—Stephen Nichols, The Johns Hopkins University

Essays exploring the great religious and devotional works of the Middle Ages in their manuscript and other contexts.

This book situates the medieval manuscript within its cultural contexts, with chapters by experts in bibliographical and theoretical approaches to manuscript study.

Perceptions of Medieval Manuscripts takes as its starting point an understanding that a medieval book is a whole object at every point of its long history. As such, medieval books can be studied most profitably in a holistic manner as objects-in-the-world. This means readers might profitably account for all aspects of the manuscript in their observations, from the main texts that dominate the codex to the marginal notes, glosses, names, and interventions made through time. This holistic approach allows us to tell the story of the book's life from the moment of its production to its use, collection, breaking-up, and digitization--all aspects of what can be termed 'dynamic architextuality'. The ten chapters include detailed readings of texts that explain the processes of manuscript manufacture and writing, taking in invisible components of the book that show the joy and delight clearly felt by producers and consumers. Chapters investigate the filling of manuscripts' blank spaces, presenting some texts never examined before, and assessing how books were conceived and understood to function. Manuscripts' heft and solidness can be seen, too, in the depictions of miniature books in medieval illustrations. Early manuscripts thus become archives and witnesses to individual and collective memories, best read as 'relics of existence', as Maurice Merleau-Ponty describes things. As such, it is urgent that practices fragmenting the manuscript through book-breaking or digital display are understood in the context of the book's wholeness. Readers of this study will find chapters on multiple aspects of medieval bookness in the distant past, the present, and in the assurance of the future continuity of this most fascinating of cultural artefacts.

Examines manuscripts of Langland, Chaucer, Gower, Nicholas Love and Arthurian tales, alongside other devotional works and archival evidence. Professor Kathryn Kerby-Fulton's scholarship has transformed the study of medieval manuscripts and readers, particularly in the areas of devotional literature, professional scribal production and clerical writing. The essays collected here celebrate and reflect her influence and practice of giving careful attention to material contexts and archival sources when reading literature produced in late medieval England. They offer new interpretations of scribal practices, professional readers' activities, documentary evidence and challenging material and cultural contexts. They also reconsider scholarly practices and assumptions, while demonstrating how manuscript and archival studies can energize scholarship on such varied topics as authority, reader reception, modern editorial perspectives, gender and religious activities.

Reading Ovid in Medieval Wales provides the first complete edition and discussion of the earliest surviving fragment of Ovid's Ars amatoria, or The Art of Love, glossed mainly in Latin but also in Old Welsh. This study discusses the significance of the manuscript for classical studies and how it was absorbed into the classical Ovidian tradition.

Annotations in modern books are a phenomenon that often causes disapproval: we are not supposed to draw, doodle, underline, or highlight in our books. In many medieval manuscripts, however, the pages are filled with annotations around the text and in-between the lines. In some cases, a 'white space' around the text is even laid out to contain extra text, pricked and ruled for the purpose. Just as footnotes are an approved and standard part of the modern academic book, so the flyleaves, margins, and interlinear spaces of many medieval manuscripts are an invitation to add extra text. This volume focuses on annotation in the early medieval period. In treating manuscripts as mirrors of the medieval minds who created them - reflecting their interests, their choices, their practices - the essays explore a number of key topics. Are there certain genres in which the making of annotations seems to be more appropriate or common than in others? Are there genres in which annotating is 'not done'? Are there certain monastic centres in which annotating practices flourish, and from which they spread? The volume thus investigates whether early medieval annotators used specific techniques, perhaps identifiable with their scribal communities or schools. It explores what annotators actually sought to accomplish with their annotations, and how the techniques of annotating developed over time and per region.