Stefano Resconi, Repurposing Literary Romance Texts in Medieval Manuscripts. Beyond the Author, Abingdon-New York, Routledge, 2025, 118 pp. (Young Feltrinelli Prize in the Moral Sciences), ISBN: 978-1-032-74382-0 (Hardback), 978-1-003-46900-1 (eBook); DOI 10.4324/9781003469001
Transcribing a text within a Medieval manuscript was often not a culturally and ideologically neutral act. The lack of direct control by the authors over the circulation of their works allowed scribes to employ particularly refined strategies aimed at assigning new functions and meanings to these texts, which might appear very different from the original to the readers. This could be achieved in various ways, such as manipulating the configuration of the manuscript, creating or emphasising textual connections within organised collections, exploiting paratexts, or making more significant alterations to the text itself.
This volume provides an overview of the primary ways in which textual repurposing and the consequent guiding of the reader are achieved within the manuscript tradition of Medieval Romance literary texts. Each method is described and exemplified through detailed analysis of particularly significant cases, which not only offer interesting insights into the perception of authorship in this literary context but also reveal unexpected ways through which manuscript compilers revitalise and enhance the communication of the works they handle.
CONTENTS:
Preface
1. Added texts and authorship
1.1 Historical-philological typologies of literary Romance ‘traces’. 1.2 Integrative functions of added texts. 1.3 Added texts as macrotextual units. 1.4 Authors at work in added texts
2. Miscellaneous manuscripts: project-based repurposing and strategies to guide the reader
2.1 Guiding the reader: miscellanies and multifunctional texts. 2.2 Mise en recueil and project-based repurposing. 2.3 The betrayed poet: lyrical texts in non-lyrical manuscripts
3. Manipulating textual morphology
3.1 Types of quotations (with emphasis on passages in letters). 3.2 Selective de-contextualisation and anthologisation. 3.3 Interpolation, incorporation, omission