Rubriche e immagini negli incunaboli della “Danse Macabré” di Parigi

Abstract

This article discusses the rubrics introducing the characters in the incunables of the middle French Danse Macabre. These rubrics are not a part of the original text, but of a paratext added later during the transmission of the originally hybrid work of art, which was based on the fusion of text and image. This study shows that the distribution of the variants in the rubrics is strictly related to the particularities of the dissemination of the Danse Macabre. The rubrics in the printed tradition are compared to those in the extant manuscripts transmitting the same text; text-image relations are also taken into account. In particular, the study of the rubrics allows to see that the influence of the iconographic elements on the text changes significantly with the passage of the Danse Macabre from manuscript to print.