The Aesthetics of Fragments: Reading Pastedowns in Context or, Late Medieval Bookbinders, Readers, and their Choices

Abstract

Fragments become material and visual signifiers in their own right when worked into bindings as pastedowns. The potential of pastedowns – musical or otherwise – to create meanings in the perception of users attuned to such messages is investigated through four case studies. Understood emphatically as metatexts, pastedowns, by virtue of their material, visual and semantic qualities, not only may reflect binders’ and patrons’ aesthetic strategies and intentions but also have the potential to contribute in subtle ways to the construction of institutional or collective memories and identities.