Microliteratures

Microliteratures is an innovative examination of writings done in the margins of medieval manuscripts and early modern books. Not always as formal as glosses, sometimes feverish and abbreviated, these marginal writings or, "microliteratures," are the product of readers thinking with the text at the center of the page. Jesús R. Velasco argues that microliteratures are not private annotations but, rather, a humanistic activity performed in the public sphere. These marginal engagements with texts are made public to future readers of the same book.

Surveying the microliteratures of a wide range of medieval and early modern Iberian genres―legal, religious, chivalric, and political texts―Velasco finds that in the shared space and time of reading, microliterary actions and artifacts are also models of public humanities work that connects texts to contemporary issues. Microliteratures emerge from this ambitious book as a way of understanding the self as a reflective and politically engaged reader in conversation with past, present, and future readers as contemporaries.

Jesús R. Velasco is the Augustus R. Street Professor of Spanish and Portuguese and Comparative Literature at Yale University. He is the author of Dead Voice and Order and Chivalry.

Consuelo Lopez-Morillas is Professor Emerita of Spanish and Portuguese at Indiana University Bloomington.