THIS IS PART X IN A SERIES
There are many ways to approach the book as reader experience. If the author kicks off the book cycle, it is logical to with the reader (Darnton, 1982). For what is a book without its reader; a doorstop maybe?
To give the most basic definition, reader experience is anything and everything that relates to how readers interact with the text they’re reading. Do they read aloud or quietly to themselves? Do they keep a diary about what they read? Or do they highlight, mark, and take notes directly inside the book (Lamb, 2021)?
I covered the general reader experience in more depth in my posts about video games as a new form of reader experience and I discuss some of what readers will learn from the Harry Potter series in the Book as Knowledge post in this series, fanfiction in the Book as Intellectual Property, and the some of the transmedia reader experience is talked about in the Book as Commodity. So today I’m going to tackle an aspect of reader experience that’s particular to one specific book in the series: marginalia.
Ahh oh no, I threw an incredibly academic work at you! Not really. An easy way to remember marginalia is in the word: margin. Marginalia is writing, doodling, etc in the margins of text. It could also include names written inside covers, bookplates, or items put inside a book. Basically it’s anything added to a book by the reader (Lamb, 2021). From what I gather, marginalia is about as old as books and sharing information. An early human would paint on a cave wall and someone else would come along and paint next to it. And so an interactive history was created of how people interpreted the landscape. In a 2013 studies, authors McHatton and May suggest that marginalia makes the margins of a text a transformative space. The authors construct a poem out of the marginalia they find a textbook and discuss its importance in helping the student that wrote it reach understanding about what they were reading. The margins are where learning journeys happen, where you can examine what you know and don’t know, and challenge the status quo of the text in private (McHatton and May, 2013).
Image of marginalia in the Book of Hours at The British Library
If you’re looking for examples of historic marginalia, just search ‘marginalia’ in the digitized manuscript collection at The British Library. In the catalog record for the Book of Hours, use of St. Omer, it’s noted that this volume is known for its unusual marginalia. Things are indeed interestesting {see photo above}. A strange and colorful plant-like border surrounds the grid that is the actual text. Stemming from the border are human-animal hybrid creatures. From this we learn that marginalia can not only help understand a text but also enhance and decorate it.
Librarian notes in Lancelot-Grail (The Prose Vulgate Cycle) at The British Library
Before even reaching the text of Lancelot-Grail (The Prose Vulgate Cycle) at The British Library, the reader encounters notes that expand upon the text of the book {see the two images above}. There are various librarian notes dating from 1894-1965 with details about the book title, catalog numbers and what appear to be notes about related items in the library’s collection. Marginalia can also tell us a story about where the book has been and who it belonged to previously. Which brings us back to Harry Potter.
Image of the fictional marginalia in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Rowling, 2005, p. 189)
I admit, I was a little taken aback that our class module on Marginalia didn’t include fictional marginalia because Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was the first thing that jumped to my mind as I began learning about it. Then I tried to do a project about it and realized it might be with good reason, there aren’t many examples of fictional marginalia out there. I’m not going to give everything away because I’ll still probably do a post about other marginalia represented in fiction but suffice it to say that my classmates and I only came up with 5 examples, the Half-Blood Prince being one of them. Also, many articles and essays about marginalia hone in on a specific book or time period, making it difficult to analyze things more broadly. Marginalia in fiction is often based on many, often nameless examples, not just one thing. So let’s discuss how Harry has his own reader experience within our reader experience.
Note-like marginalia in Jacques Despars, Commentary on Avicenna Canon Medicinae, Book 1, Fen I at The British Library.
Like the notes on the margins of the manuscript image above, this is how Harry encounters his marginalia.
“To his annoyance he saw that the previous owner had scribbled all over the pages, so that the margins were as black as the printed portions…It was really very irritating, having to try to decipher the directions under all the stupid scribbles of the previous owner, who for some reason had taken issue with the order to cut up the sopophorous bean and had written in the alternative instruction…” (Rowling, 2005, p. 189).
Harry is annoyed, and many of us can relate to this feeling, of how poorly the previous owner treated their textbook. But, when cutting the beans prove difficult for Harry, he changes his mind and follows the instructions shown two images above. Suddenly he’s doing better than Hermione! Because someone used the margins of the book to help them understand the text, Harry is able to learn from a student who came many years before him. Harry excels in his Potions classes until…
“‘SECTUMSEMPRA!’ bellowed Harry from the floor, waving his wand wildly.
Blood spurted from Malfoy’s face and chest as though he ha been slashed with an invisible sword” (Rowling, 2005, p.522).
The half-blood prince had not only left things he learned about the potions recipes but also thoughts, musings, and spells such as the one above. A textbook might be an authoritative resource but the marginalia is a reader interpretation and subject to errors and faults, and evil.
I attempted to find other examples of evil marginalia but it doesn’t seem to be a hot topic of scholarly research. So I took to Google, as one does. A search for ‘evil marginalia’ was not as exciting as it sounds. I did find a blog post about humorous and absurd marginalia— there is a skeletal image, but that’s about as evil as it gets. A project at Bryn Mawr goes so far as to describe some marginalia as profane but that’s it. Then, about three pages into the search result I struck gold leaf…kind of {pun intended}. Apparently medieval killer rabbit marginalia is a thing and it was written about by the venerable British Library.
“Vengeful, merciless and brutally violent... yes that’s right, we’re talking about medieval bunnies” (British Library, 2021, first paragraph).
If you’ve seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail, you’ve seen a fictional adaptation of these mediEVIL bunnies. Animals and rabbits were not uncommon in marginalia at the time but in the late 1100s things turned dark. Apparently, book margins were a place where the world could be turned upside down and so, naturally, the normally docile rabbit began to pick up scepters, swords, and bows and unleashed their pent up frustrations on the humans inhabiting the margins with them. The rabbits can also be seen with axes, waging wars against humans and other animals, and…baking cookies (British Library, 2021)? I suppose the moral of the margins is that not all doodles are innocent.
Was the curse in the Half-Blood Prince based on these medieval bunnies? Possibly. We do know that Rowling definitely did her research when it came to historical representations in her novels. The major point that Rowling drives home is that marginalia not only gives the reader a chance to directly engage with a text through note-taking, it also provides a space where readers can interact with each other across time. For better or worse, marginalia enhances and expands upon the reader experience by sharing interpretation that came before.
Title page from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince featuring the textbook belonging to the half-blood prince.
Citations
The British Library. (2021, June 21). Medieval killer rabbits: when bunnies strike back. Medieval Manuscripts Blog. https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2021/06/killer-rabbits.html
Darnton, R. (1982). What is the history of books? Daedalus, Vol. 111.
Lamb, A. (2021). The book as reader experience, course reader for The Book 1450+ at IUPUI.
McHatton, P. A., & May, S. (2013). Moving Margins: Using Marginalia as a Tool for Critical Reflection. International Review of Qualitative Research, 6(1), 143–147. https://doi.org/10.1525/irqr.2013.6.1.143
Rowling, J.K. (2005). Harry Potter and the half-blood prince. Arthur A. Levine Books An Imprint of Scholastic.
*Some citations for web resources are linked directly in the post (in blue).