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MARGINAL ANNOTATION IN MEDIEVAL ROMANCE MANUSCRIPTS

MARGINAL ANNOTATION IN MEDIEVAL ROMANCE MANUSCRIPTS

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<strong>MARG<strong>IN</strong>AL</strong> <strong>ANNOTATION</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>MEDIEVAL</strong> <strong>ROMANCE</strong> <strong>MANUSCRIPTS</strong>:<br />

UNDERSTAND<strong>IN</strong>G THE CONTEMPORARY RECEPTION OF THE GENRE<br />

Abstract<br />

by<br />

Nicole Eddy<br />

The extra-textual apparatus of a manuscript is an important aspect of the<br />

presentation and organization of the text itself. Marginal annotation is a vital part of this<br />

apparatus: written by both scribes and readers, in Latin and England’s two vernaculars<br />

(French and English). In laying out their manuscripts, book producers offer direction to<br />

subsequent readers as to the aspects of the text worthy of particular notice. Those<br />

readers, in contributing their own notes, both immortalized their reading of the text and<br />

adapted it for future readers by supplying apparatus they considered to be wanting.<br />

Marginal notes in the romance, therefore, illuminate the genre, defining the most<br />

important, most noteworthy aspects, and helping to define our expectations both of the<br />

normative in romances’ organizational apparatus, and of romance notes as a dependent<br />

genre.<br />

Romances were not typically annotated, but when they were, the annotators have<br />

sought their model in the somewhat richer tradition of Brut chronicle annotation. The<br />

apparent straightforwardness of romance notes, often summarizing or even quoting the

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