MARGINAL ANNOTATION IN MEDIEVAL ROMANCE MANUSCRIPTS

similarly vexed term that can refer both to the joining together of disparate plot elements
into a beautiful (bele) arrangement, or, through the Latin cognate iunctura, can be more
closely associated with a “breaking,” arrangement by division. 27 Vinaver, in identifying
Chrétien as a key founder of the romance genre, then presumably sees the generic
innovation as a formal one, separate from the matière and san of Arthurian subject matter
or courtly/chivalric ideology, and sited instead in the conjointure. If such is the attitude
of romance’s father in the description of his own generic progeny, it may behoove us to
examine this form more closely, and Vinaver does so descriptively, with all the benefits
of modern hindsight.
The beginnings of a medieval literary theory of romance, therefore, can be
launched from romance authors’ own self-reflective words. Even more than this,
however, we might return ad fontes not for analysis of the texts themselves as evidence of
the generic impetus behind them, but in order to study more carefully the contemporary
reception of these texts. There is much to be learned in the way authors constructed texts,
but illuminating too is the manner in which readers dissected them.
The Codicology of Romance: Examining the Manuscript Evidence
Over the course of the last few decades, there has been a surge in the number of
medievalists engaging directly with manuscript studies, plumbing the manuscript record
for any clues about textual production and reception. These studies have take a number
Jean-Marie Fritz, Lettres Gothiques 4526 [Paris: Livre de Poche, 1992], lines 13–14; Chrétien de Troyes,
Arthurian Romances, 37).
27 Douglas Kelly, The Art of Medieval French Romance (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin
Press, 1992), 15–31.
11