Imaginary Worlds in Medieval Books Exploring the Manuscript Matrix [Hardcover]

This book presents a series of narratives that reflect the compelling and sometimes dangerous allure of the world of books - and the world in books - in late-medieval Britain. It envisions the confines of medieval manuscripts as virtual worlds: realms that readers call forth through imaginative interactions with books' material features.The Medieval Manuscript Matrix: A Storied Realm Into the Manuscript Matrix: Middle Letters for People of a Middle Sort 'Straunge' Letters and Strange Loops in Bodleian Library MS Arch. Selden. B.24 Pulp Fictions and Torn Hearts: Love Stories in Paper in Middle English Verse Love Epistles John's Page: A Confessio amantis [librorum] in Pierpont Morgan Library MS M.126 A Life in Books: Scribal Habits and Habitats The Medieval Manuscript Matrix and the World Wide Web

Rust's rich account underlines the central medieval-text principle; that just everything is an image of drawing or writing; and drawing and writing an image of anything at all. But Rust's own central interpretative ideas - middle letters, double literacy, manuscript matrix, codicology exert a calm control over her cornucopia of examples and ideas, with great ingenuity of both explanation and interpretation. What more one could ask for it would be hard to imagine. - John Powell Ward, Honorary Research Fellow, University of Wales, Swansea; Author of The Spell of the Song

'By demonstrating the complex dimensions of the medieval manuscript matrix, Rust elucidates a performative mode of reading text and image together and against one another that will transform the way we think about artistic practices in the Middle Ages. It is a major achievement.' - Stephen G. Nichols, James M. Beall Professor of French & Humanities Chair, Department of German & Romance Languages & Literatures Co-Director, Centre Louis Marin d'?tudes pluridisciplinaires, Johns Hopkins University

This fine book makes a considerable contribution to our grl³,