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Handling Medieval Literature

Coming in at 774 pages, this is a big enchiridion. By the end of Elaine Treharne’s “Prologue: Speaking of the Medieval,” however, the physical bulk seems less noticeable. This is because “Speaking of the Medieval,” itself an excellent essay on medieval literature, is written to light the way ahead. And as one finds, the prologue models the particular combination of clarity and depth strived for in each of the following thirtyfive chapters, which are grouped into five chapters each and organized within seven parts. Part I, “Literary Production,” begins with A. S. G. Edwards’s exemplary short introduction to medieval textuality. The history of the scribal transmission of texts — from early monastic scriptoria through later commercial scriptoria to amateur collectorscribes and early print — is inseparable from that of the literature itself. Material, cultural, ideological, and technological developments in this history are taken up, in relation to specific texts, in this part’s subsequent chapters. Part II, logically, treats literary consumption. Who was reading (or listening to) these texts? Who was paying for these manuscripts? How did they use them and keep them? Indicating why such questions are important and how they are investigated, these chapters