Peripatetic Readers and a Dancing Maiden: Marginal Multigraphic Discourse in a Medieval Latin Multiple-Text Manuscript

Abstract

Triggered by an encounter with a drawing of a foot among the pointing hands that scholars usually take for granted in medieval manuscripts, this contribution analyses the layers of pictorial and written paracontent in a scholarly manuscript from the second half of the thirteenth century, Schlatt, Eisenbibliothek, MSS 20. In the rubricators’ and illuminators’ contributions, a playful discourse unfolds that reflects on contemporary concepts of reading and shapes the way that later users read the contents and left their mark on the manuscript.