Renaissance Margins

An interesting aspect of this book’s page formatting are the thick margins that frame the text. In my research of fine press printing and artist-illustrated books, I discovered a term that characterizes these thick borders surrounding a given text. Printmaker and artist Barry Moser in his afterword to his self-illustrated 1982 edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. He uses the term “Renaissance margins” to describe the thick margins present in this particular text. However, I believe that this term could also be applied to describe the trend in medieval and early Renaissance printmaking, which leaves considerable white space around the text. The function of this is to allow the text/information to be edited, and additional notes could be incorporated into a text to be included in its subsequent editions. Often, medieval and early Renaissance marginalia contained annotations, footnotes–and even illustrations–in the margins.

Check out this Khan Academy article for more information about the Medieval origins of the modern footnote.

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