The ethics of reading in manuscript culture : glossing the Libro de buen amor / John Dagenais.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Dagenais, John.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Transmission of texts.

Manuscripts, Medieval.

Ruiz, Juan, approximately 1283-approximately 1350. Libro de buen amor.

Ruiz, Juan.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (303 pages)

Edition:

Core Textbook

Place of Publication:

Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, c1994.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Reexamining the roles played by author, reader, scribe, and text in medieval literary practice, John Dagenais argues that the entire physical manuscript must be the basis of any discussion of how meaning was made. Medievalists, he maintains, have relied too heavily on critical editions that seek to create a single, definitive text reflecting an author's intentions. In reality, manuscripts bear not only authorial texts but also a variety of elements added by scribes and readers: glosses, marginal notes, pointing hands, illuminations, and fragments of other, seemingly unrelated works. Using the surviving manuscripts of the fourteenth-century Libro de buen amor, a work that has been read both as didactic treatise on spiritual love and as a celebration of sensual pleasures, Dagenais shows how consideration of the physical manuscripts and their cultural context can shed new light on interpretive issues that have puzzled modern readers. Dagenais also addresses the theory and practice of reading in the Middle Ages, showing that for medieval readers the text on the manuscript leaf, including the text of the Libro, was primarily rhetorical and ethical in nature. It spoke to them directly, individually, always in the present moment. Exploring the margins of the manuscripts of the Libro and of other Iberian works, Dagenais reveals how medieval readers continually reshaped their texts, both physically and ethically as they read, and argues that the context of medieval manuscript culture forces us to reconsider such comfortable received notions as "text" and "literature" and the theories we have based upon them.

Contents:

Front matter

CONTENTS

ABBREVIATIONS

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION: The Larger Gloss

PART I.

CHAPTER 1. "A Glorious Thyng, Certeyn"

CHAPTER 2. Adaptation and Application

CHAPTER 3. The Ethics of Reading the Book of the Archpriest of Hita

PART II.

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 4. S/Ç: The Manuscripts of the Libro and Their Scribes

CHAPTER 5. At the Margins of the Libro

CHAPTER 6. Reading the Book of the Archpriest of Hita

CONCLUSION: Tolle Lege

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [243]-262) and index.

ISBN:

9786612751813

9781400801480

1400801486

9781282751811

1282751816

9781400821075

140082107X

9781400811335

1400811333

OCLC:

700688500