I am sure we are all familiar with the illuminated marginalia in medieval manuscripts, especially those from the thirteenth century onwards. The bizarre world they create of knights fighting giant snails of rabbits, doing the comeuppance to a whole of a variety of opponents, grotesque creatures that are strangely deformed, to a variety of risqué subjects are a delight, and frequently used in book illustrations, on postcards from great library bookshops and so on. The Internet disseminates them far and wide.
We are amused, and quite probably bemused by them, not being sure what their meaning is, and perhaps being inclined to dismiss them as ‘doodles’.
Substack has an interesting piece which starting from the ‘doodle’ idea sets out to demolish that really implausible idea and to show that the marginal illuminations do relate to the text within the margins - and that is an important point - and should be understood as a commentary or aide memoire for the reader.
The article from Weird Medieval Guys makes a good case for taking the humour of these illustrations seriously, and thereby enriching our understanding of what we are looking at.
The illustrated article is well worth reading and can be accessed at How to interpret medieval marginalia 101
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