Written Communication in the Illustrated Epic Poem

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors adjust the dominant view that medieval texts are principally unstable by pointing out examples of systems of textual stabilization, such as that represented by acrostics identifying the author, and also critically questioned the deep-rooted conception of the supposedly illiterate author by examining an image of Wolfram that is characterized by references to literacy.

Abstract: In recent years, analyses of medieval literary works by literary scholars have set in motion a wide variety of research on orality and literacy in the period between late antiquity and the modern era.1 New findings have emerged particularly within the context of the medieval culture of writing studies on the long-neglected genre of the Latin figural poem, for example, have moved previously neglected artistic scriptographic practices into medieval scholarship’s field of vision, causing scholars to regard medieval scriptography in a different light.2 In a recent study on the forms of writing in the vernacular epic, I attempted to adjust the dominant view that medieval texts are principally unstable by pointing out examples of systems of textual stabilization, such as that represented by acrostics identifying the author. This study also critically questioned the deep-rooted conception of the supposedly illiterate author by examining an image of Wolfram that is characterized by references to literacy and also cited numerous examples of reading and writing knights and noble ladies in the courtly epic, thereby calling into question the established view of an illiterate laity. Similarly, the study reexamined the idea that people in the Middle Ages never read silently but rather always aloud or in a low voice and that the works of the epic poets were conveyed to the public only through performance at court.3