Conversations Between Medieval Texts and Digital Editions: The Remediation of Harley 4205

While the knightly and kingly images of the British Library’s MS Harley 4205 are visually intriguing, there has been little research dedicated to this manuscript. These figures and their textual counterparts reveal a tension central to this manuscript between its repetitious features and identifying markers. While there are many repetitious elements of Harley 4205, these features do not indicate a static work; rather, the features of Harley 4205 display a dialogue with other materials and its audience. Harley 4205 will be approached as a case study, to explore the relationship between manuscript presentation, content, and form in the communication of information to its reader. Further, Harley 4205’s remediation as a digital facsimile increases accessibility to the book. Considerations of how digitization both benefits and limits interacting with this manuscript will bring digital and medieval understanding of text into dialogue, a potentially beneficial relationship for both. An appreciation of the effects of digital remediation on medieval texts can be significant, for digital editions make medieval works that would otherwise be difficult, if not impossible, to access increasingly available to a wider audience