The visual text: Bibliographic codes as pragmatic markers on a manuscript page
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Date
2016
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Adam Mickiewicz University
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Abstract
This paper explores the dynamics of the textual-visual interface of a medieval manuscript page
within the frameworks of historical pragmatics and pragmaphilological approaches to the study of
historical texts. Whilst the former focuses on the contexts in which historical utterances, manifested
as texts, occur (Jacobs & Jucker 1995: 11), the latter involves a context-based perspective in the
study of individual historical texts (Jucker 2000: 91). Combining the two approaches allows for a
more comprehensive study of the “visual text” (cf. Machan 2011) than has been possible for
paleographic, codicological, or linguistic analyses of medieval manuscripts. The present paper
adopts the “pragmatics-on-the-page” approach (cf. Carroll et al. 2013, Peikola et al. 2014) in its
analysis of bibliographic codes in British Library Royal MS 18 D II, which contains the texts of
Lydgate’s Troy Book and Siege of Thebes. Such visual elements of the manuscript page as mise en
page, ink colour, as well as type and size of script will be examined as pragmatic markers,
functioning on three levels of meaning: textual, interactional, and metalinguistic (cf. Erman 2001,
Carroll et al. 2013), and providing (visual) contexts for interpreting the linguistic message of the text.
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Sponsor
This paper is based on the author’s post-doctoral project “Latin abbreviations in Middle English literary manuscripts: evolution of forms and functions” (UMO-2012/05/B/HS2/03996), supported by Polish National Science Centre.
Keywords
visual pragmatics, Middle English manuscript, pragmatics of the page, mise en page
Citation
Studia Anglica Posnaniensia, vol. 51.3(2016), pp. 37-44