ABSTRACT
If called upon to imagine the book culture associated with late medieval vernacular poetry, the modern scholar would be forgiven for conjuring a library of lavish codices. Certainly, the manuscripts best known to us today fit comfortably within the profile of formalized, standardized commercial bookmaking. They are deluxe manuscripts copied by professional scribes who employed highly conventionalized techniques of ordinatio and compilatio.1 From the famous anthologies of early Italian lyric (Redi 9 and Banco Rari 217, in particular) to later Italian sources like Chigi 305 and Petrarch’s famous autograph manuscript (Vaticano 3195), from chansonniers transmitting troubadour song to the Machaut manuscripts, these sources all represent carefully planned and carefully executed compiling efforts. Often organized by author and genre and featuring colored ink, enlarged decorated initials, and indices, they are both easy to navigate and clear in their aim to order and historicize the poetic traditions they assemble.2 It is within this familiar material context that Trecento secular polyphony most often finds its home as well. Song texts are monumentalized as a musical tradition in ornate, sophisticated manuscripts like the Squarcialupi Codex and Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, fonds it. 568 (Pit) that project authority and prestige through clear visual references to high medieval book culture.3
