Repurposing the book as a message: Italian lyric manuscripts in prison

Abstract

AbstractMany manuscripts copied in various prisons have been identified. In the late Middle Ages, prisoners were allowed not only to compose new texts, but also to be employed as scribes. The present article focuses on three manuscripts produced in prison in the fifteenth century which pair Dante and Petrarch's lyric poems with the poetry of others and of the scribes themselves. These manuscripts combine lyric collections with personal works – lyric poems, letters, drawings – penned by those who made them, resulting in individual literary organisms. By exploring three case studies of Italian lyric manuscripts produced by incarcerated scribes, the article defines a ‘genre of book’ which combined personal interventions with lyric poetry of major authors, in a complex editorial process that made of the codex a new text in itself. They illuminate the ways in which the practice of assembling lyric poetry by major authors (chiefly Dante and Petrarch) combined with personal touches, was used by readers and compilers to craft a variety of identities; but most importantly, the ways in which the codex may become a performative event, as well as a site of memory and, when sent outside of prison, a message taking the form of the book.