Publisher's Synopsis
With the triumph of the codex, medieval literature became more deeply hermeneutic in character. A vast range of texts, in various languages and genres, were not only copied with the commentaries and glosses of ancient tradition, but also underwent continuous reworking and transformation. Indeed, the very act of transcribing texts into a manuscript was often an incentive to rewrite them. This practice resulted in a bewildering number of textual versions that lived alongside their originals, and sometimes displaced them, but were nevertheless fundamental to their transmission and interpretation, often resulting in complex textual layers. All of them, from commentaries on biblical books, hymns, or sequences to texts for liturgical use with many local versions, from model sermon collections to florilegia and encyclopaedic works, came to encompass multiple paratextual and intermedial forms, be it in the guise of other texts or images or music, all with their own histories of transmission.
