MARGINAL ANNOTATION IN MEDIEVAL ROMANCE MANUSCRIPTS

Nicole Eddy
text, is belied by the complexity of the choices made by annotators in deciding what
aspects of the text require annotation. Annotators seem to have viewed note-making as
an educated activity – notes are as likely to be in Latin as in the English or Anglo-
Norman of the texts themselves – and they appealed to a standard form and constellation
of interests in the notes’ content. Notes were not provided as navigational aids to
organize the manuscript, but were designed as guides to the reading of smaller, more
digestible sequences or episodes. Conspicuous in the margins are names, of people,
places and objects. Marvels also form an important aspect of the notes, suggesting both
the centrality of the marvelous in the romance genre, and its importance to the medieval
representation of history.