Chapter published in:
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
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.317.04sca
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