-
Textual Identity and the Problem of Convention: Recovering the Title of Dresden Oc 66
- Textual Cultures: Texts, Contexts, Interpretation
- Indiana University Press
- Volume 1, Number 2, Autumn 2006
- pp. 143-151
- 10.2979/tex.2006.1.2.143
- Article
- Additional Information
Designating a title for anepigraphal manuscripts requires editors and readers to choose between what they deem to be the work’s main subject and the conventional names that have been used to refer to it over its history. The problem may be complicated by competing manuscript editions of a text that excerpt or present a fragment, skewing the estimation of topic by abridgment. Dresden Oc 66, a fourteenth-century Old French allegory of love, reason, and chess, presents precisely this problem, raising questions of what a title is and does in a medieval work.