 | Rereading Middle English Romance: Manuscript Layout, Decoration, and the Rhetoric of Composite Structure Subjects: Romances English -- Manuscripts; Romances English -- Illustrations; Illumination of books and manuscripts Medieval -- Englnd; Illumination of books and manuscripts English; Manuscripts English (Middle); Romances English -- History and criticism; Focusing on features of layout and decoration in manuscripts containing Middle English romances, Murray Evans discusses how these details signal generic and structural relationships among texts. Using a computer-assisted survey to tabulate and quantify features of decoration and presentation in fifteen manuscript collections, including the "Auchinleck" MS and Cambridge University Library MS Ff.2.38, he demonstrates that romances are decorated more generously than other kinds of texts. |
