How did networks of individuals and of institutions contribute to the reading, writing, and circulation of texts in the Middle Ages, and how did various types of texts in turn establish, manifest, and maintain social networks and identities? This book takes a broad approach on texts and networks in the Middle Ages by studying a wide range of text types and text materialities: courtly romances, compilations and multi-text manuscripts, reused book fragments, administrative texts, pilgrim itineraries, inscriptions, devotional graffiti and epigraphic syllogae. Through which networks were these texts, their authors and their readers connected, and how were texts circulated, copied and changed by religious and worldly institutions and their administrative units as well as by particular individuals?
By approaching the material through a geographical and topographical lens by investigating what David Wallace in his 'Europe – a literary history' introduced as 'itineraries', the book will offer a new understanding of the variance and change of the texts in the various medieval 'graphospheres' of both the Nordic countries and Europe.