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The Dynamics of Text and Framing Phenomena: Historical approaches to paratext and metadiscourse in English
Edited by Matti Peikola and Birte Bös
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 317] 2020
► pp. 91–114

Chapter 4
Threshold-switching

Paratextual functions of scribal colophons in Old and Middle English manuscripts

| University of Birmingham

This chapter offers a new, material analysis of medieval scribal colophons, the brief writings that scribes added to manuscript texts. Gérard Genette saw the scribal colophon as the ancestor of ‘paratext’, the ‘threshold’ (‘seuil’) to the printed text. Contributing to current modification of paratext theory, this chapter considers what Genette’s model reveals about manuscript culture. It proposes that the scribal colophon turns the spotlight on the graphic properties of the scribe’s work rather than simply or predominantly serving as a threshold to reading the text. The chapter proposes that threshold-switching, a term in digital electronics for a process that causes oscillation between one state and another, may be a more appropriate metaphor than the threshold for this important function of the medieval scribal colophon. The colophon is evidence that, as in digital media today, in manuscript culture writing was not regarded simply as a transparent medium that one looked through to access the meaning beyond.

Keywords: colophon, scribe, medieval, manuscript, paratext
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2. Approaches to paratexts in medieval manuscripts
  • 3. Genette’s framework: Applications and adaptations
  • 4.Genette’s model and medieval scribal colophons
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • Primary sources
  • Secondary sources
Published online: 18 November 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.317.04sca
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Manuscripts

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Corpus Christi College, MS 140

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Trinity College, MS B.14.39

University Library, MS Ff.1.5

Glasgow

University Library, Hunter MS 197

London

British Library, Additional MS 29729

British Library, Arundel MS 57

British Library, Cotton Nero MS D. iv

British Library, Cotton Otho MS C.i(1)

British Library, Cotton Vitellius MS E.xviii

British Library, Harley MS 1205

British Library, Lansdowne MS 348

British Library, Royal MS 17 A.xxvii

Wellcome Collection, MS 405

Manchester

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New York

Pierpont Morgan Library, Glazier MS 39

Oxford

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Bodleian Library, MS. Gough Liturg. 19

Bodleian Library, MS Junius 121

Bodleian Library, MS Rawl. Poet. 138

Philadelphia

University of Pennsylvania Library, MS Codex 196

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