PLAYING IN THE MARGINS: MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE MARGINALIA

Abstract

This study explores the differences and similarities (in content, intent, purpose and effect) in Renaissance and medieval marginalia, exploring at what point the marginalia cease to be, by definition, "marginal" and instead become, through their various interactions with texts they surround, integral and indispensable to the work itself. Attention is paid to the historical contexts in which the marginalia were written or, as in the case of medieval marginal images studied, depicted. The primary argument of the study is that the marginalia of both periods play with their parent texts through multiple framings and layers, and that these games were intentional on the part of the authors and/or artists who had set out deliberately to create sub-texts within others' (or sometimes their own) works. The study also examines the history of marginalia throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance, as well as the reasons behind its use's demise in the immediate subsequent centuries. An in-depth analysis of the marginalia in one work—Sir Thomas More's Utopia—demonstrates how this practice "played out" in this particular, and heavily marginated, text. Attention is also paid to Utopia's prefatory and post-script materials, which in turn add another layer of play—doing to the text as a whole what the marginalia did to the page.