Materialities of the Manuscript: Codex and Court Culture in Fourteenth–Century Paris

Resistance to digital technology in manuscript study stems in large part from what detractors perceive as a loss of contact with the material artifact. For them, the digital image represents an illegitimate substitution for “the real thing.” In two movements, this article first suggests why such a term radically misunderstands both the relationship of digital image to manuscript, and also the nature of the manuscript’s performance of the work it represents. A second movement illustrates the performative propensity of manuscript technology—under the impetus of the sudden accumulation of vernacular adaptations of classical works fostered by Charles V in the 1370s—to influence court culture.