PJ Zaborowski

Note: This post was originally written for a class during my first year as a PhD student, way back in 2019.

Books have been an essential part of my life for as long as I can remember. In preschool, before I had figured out that whole reading thing, I would spend Arts and Crafts time creating books of my own with drawings in the place of words. My mother still has a couple of these; the drawings are, admittedly, quite terrible and any semblance of narrative cohesion has been lost to the ages (if it ever existed). One day, whilst running around the preschool classroom, contrary to the objections of the weary and worn-down teachers, I slipped and smacked my head against a table and split my forehead open. Fortunately, the teachers knew exactly what to do to keep me calm as they attempted to staunch the bleeding: sit me at the table and let me craft another book. And I was perfectly content to do just that, with a rag of some sort being pressed against my head as I drew and explained my stories, until my somewhat frantic parents showed up and announced that I would have to go to the hospital to get stitches. At which point I transformed into a tiny tornado of fists and feet–all aimed at my poor father’s shins, thighs, and umm other low-hanging fruit. I fought like a warrior-poet from antiquity and eventually earned the freedom to continue working on my book at home while my father assured my mother that I would be just fine with a few butterfly bandages in place of stitches. Unfortunately, my father was about as good of a medic as I was an artist/runner, and I ended up with a Harry Potter-esque scar emblazoned upon my forehead. Sadly, there are no surviving copies of the book I was working on that fateful day–probably a biohazard with all the blood upon it. 

Not surprisingly, my fascination with books and other forms of written media only increased once I figured out how to read–a skill I learned from my grandfather’s lap with the morning newspaper. During the summer I would listen to Detroit Tigers’ baseball games on the local radio with him and, since I had to go to bed long before the games had ended, he would make me stumble through reading the story of the game in the sports section, helping me sound out the words I didn’t know. Much to grandfather’s chagrin however, learning to read was not a huge boon to my early academic career. In elementary school I would load up on books from the scholastic book fair with money I had scrounged up from helping neighbors with chores and odd-jobs. While I was supposed to be sleeping, I would sneak into the closet, which had an old flickering light fixture and read in there for as long as I could manage. This often led to the occasional in-class nap and a resulting afternoon spent smacking chalkboard erasers together and contemplating my transgressions in a cloud of penitent chalk dust. Eventually, I decided to get the most bang for my buck at the book fair and purchased my first copy of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. These books were the beginning of my downfall. When my grandmother went to rouse me from bed one morning and found me instead passed out on the closet floor using The Return of the King as a pillow, the proverbial jig was up. The flickering light bulb disappeared forever, but the love for books has remained bright and strong ever since.

Along the way, from The Crucible to Crime and Punishment, to the first encounters with Faulkner and Woolf, books have been an omnipresent force in my life. Yet, it wasn’t until I found myself at a PhD program in the heart of corn country that I ever gave the book itself–and not the text it contains–a second thought. I was exposed to the brave new world of book studies by an enthusiastic professor whose name will be omitted from this blog post in an effort to protect their innocence (ok, not really, if you’re reading this you should head over to his online home:  http://www.adamghooks.net/ ). I don’t remember exactly when the first time the idea of book studies came up in conversation, but it seems likely that the subject was initially broached during one of the numerous times I pestered him during office hours. I was a bit skeptical about the idea of studying a book itself, but as a medievalist-in-training the thought of getting to play with texts twice as old as the United States was rather intriguing, so I figured I should play along. 

My exposure to book studies increased tenfold when I attended the 2019 MLA Conference. I was attending as a volunteer worker, and my initial plan was simply to attend every possible medieval panel. I had recently switched specializations from Faulkner to Chaucer (so to speak), and my plan was to treat the conference as a buffet and filling my plate with all the different work being done in the field as a means of playing catch up. And I did this, to the best of my ability, by attending thirteen medieval panels/roundtables and a couple of wine hours. Yet, despite my best efforts, book studies managed to wriggle its way into my schedule. While attending a panel in which one of my favorite undergrad professors was presenting, I had the great pleasure to witness a presentation by Megan L. Cook. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find the particular notebook in which my notes from the talk were hastily scribbled down, but I believe the gist of her argument centered around how the illuminations in a particular manuscript changed the way in which readers read the text–acting to almost divide the text into smaller sections which pertained to a certain subject. I’m certain my professor had opined on the relationship between book and reader before, but getting a second opinion on the subject really cemented my interest. I decided that I would make room for a couple of book studies sessions on the final day of the conference. The first was a panel in which I was completely out of my depth for the most part. There was much talk of lacunae and various other things I didn’t know and was too afraid to ask about at that point. The second, however, was a round-table discussion which was significantly more palatable for a novice like myself. Two things stood out from this panel. The first was a five minute opening statement by one of the presenters which was a rather critical examination of the current state of book studies. It was surprisingly enlightening. The second was when my aforementioned professor mentioned something along the lines of being interested in telling stories, whether they’re true or not (my bad paraphrasing). For some reason, perhaps conference fatigue or the Chicago street food I had consumed for lunch, something clicked in this moment: books don’t just contain stories, they can tell stories. And while I don’t suspect I’ll ever be in the camp which thinks those stories are as important as the literature itself, I have begun to see the value of these stories.

My major problem with delving further into the realm of book studies was that I was having a hard time finding a book which was willing to give up its story to me. Over the course of several trips to our Special Collections, I examined most of our medieval manuscripts but none of them really spoke to me. Perhaps it was the language barrier, as most of our collection is Latin, with a smattering of Spanish texts–neither a language I wield with anything resembling mastery or even novice-hood. I would find a few interesting tidbits in a Book of Hours–such as beautiful illuminations or the occasional bit of wear here and there. But, for the most part, these were objects of reverence and they had been treated as such. They felt somehow…sterile. 

My luck changed drastically one fateful day, when I made the long sojourn home from corn country and visited the University of Michigan’s Special Collections. By a twist of fate, or kismet, they happened to have a copy of a manuscript which was tangentially related to my research: The Brut Chronicle, a fabulous faux-historical accounting of the roots of Britain containing dragons, giants, wizards, and a king named Arthur. When I saw that this fantastic book was waiting for me in their vault, I set aside my childhood allegiances to the Michigan State Spartans and made my way to Ann Arbor. I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting on that first visit, but it was probably something closer to a long-bearded wizard unfurling a scroll for me than having this somewhat drab looking book set on the table before me in its foam cradle. This was not love at first sight. Or second. 

Yes, I realized that every scratch and bit of wear on that cover was a bit of book history, but at first glance it didn’t appear to be what I’d been searching for at all. It just looked like, well, a book. And not one particularly interested in telling me anything, let alone a story. There were no beautiful illuminations to be found within its beat up binding, but there was a story. 

This brief historical information on the book was helpful, as it told me many things I would have struggled to glean on my own and standing on the backs of giants is a cherished medieval tradition (Thanks St. Augustine). I was quite pleased that this little cutout was doing much of my work for me, particularly the mention of its 135 leaves, and the olive antique morocco binding–I was, at least, able to notice the gilt edges.

The first interesting feature I was able to pick up on by myself was the vellum within the binding itself. I assume that this was the original binding of the book, which is itself paper leaves. I didn’t think to try to determine the source of the vellum, despite having brought along some handy guidebooks. Actually, once I got to the vellum I pretty much forgot about the books I had brought as my focus was now firmly on the manuscript itself. 

I was fascinated by the vellum, most notably its wrinkles at first, but also the writing–most of which I wasn’t able to make out aside from the name which I am fairly certain says “Thomas Marshe”. In fact, I was so interested in the writing itself that I didn’t think to research the name itself until I was writing this blog post itself. Of course, Thomas Marshe is not a particularly rare name, but it is interesting that there was a prominent London stationer by that name during the mid to late 16th century. In fact, Misha Teramura writes that “Thomas Marshe had the exclusive rights for printing Terence in Latin from 1572-1584” (The Terence Editions of Thomas Marshe in The Papers of The Bibliographical Society of America, March 2019). Moreover, a quick google search turned up a title page with Thomas Marshe as the publisher in 1557:

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This is rather interesting, as this title page puts us only 22 years after the date which is scrawled inside the book: 1535.

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Further into the book there is more evidence of Mr. Marshe’s presence:

As I mentioned earlier, my interest in Thomas Marshe’s identity and ownership is new, but it does serve as a nice segue into some of my favorite findings: the text’s miscellaneous handwriting practice, marginalia, and random doodles. This manuscript is a far cry from the reverential religious texts I had examined in Iowa; this text felt alive. I will now present some of these signs of life through a series of images:

The other aspect of the manuscript which really caught my attention was the amount of damage and wear to the text. Some pages exhibit what may be water damage. Others have blots of ink, or appear to have possibly been chewed up a bit. This is a text which has, perhaps, led a hard life. 

Yet, despite all these fascinating textual artifacts, there was one which stood out from the rest: the dragon doodle:

The image of this dragon appears to be drawn in ink, but I hesitate to speculate on any other aspects of it. Was it drawn by a bored scribe? Thomas Marshe or one of the other owners? A mischievous student? I suppose I’ll never truly know. However, it was a bit of a sensation on #MedievalTwitter, perhaps due to the recent and unsatisfying ending of Game of Thrones. Nevertheless, this dragon was by far my most popular tweet of all time–which of course contained a typo:

This sparked a bit of discussion on the dragon doodle. Some were pleased to see what could be a 599 year old dragon doodle. Others were curious and wanting details, suggesting that it may be a tracing of a watermark–I was unable to verify this, although the UofM website says there are no watermarks. Perhaps the most interesting observation came from Stanford Medievalist Elaine Treharne, who noted the similarities between the doodle and the Welsh flag:

Interestingly, in my pursuit of learning this manuscript’s story, I learned a good deal about myself as well. The most obvious of which is that I am not yet equipped to tell that story. I lack the tools and skills needed to do this book justice, so I hope that I will be able to revisit it in the future when I am better equipped. I hadn’t realized the forensic-like investigation it takes to truly uncover the story of a book–at least if you want there to be some kernels of truth in that story. I struggled to read the text itself, and especially the handwriting of its previous owners which would have provided a pleasurable experience to convey. Yet, despite my ignorance, I think that I was still able to get a feel for the character of this book–and it has an abundance of character. I hope that in the future I will better be able to decipher its narrative as well.