We stand at the cusp of an exciting moment in digital medieval studies. The advent of ubiquitously available digitized manuscripts alongside platforms that host encoded medieval texts has democratized access to the cultural heritage of the Middle Ages, and gives us the potential for greater understanding of that era. Seen through the lens of late medieval French literature, in particular the Roman de la Rose and the works of Guillaume de Machaut, this book exhorts us to be optimistic about what we can achieve. Challenging the pessimism inherent in views that see our historical situatedness as a barrier to truly understanding the medieval era, Tamsyn Mahoney-Steel argues that digital networks of manuscript images, texts, and annotations, can not only aid us in comprehending medieval literary culture, but are, in fact, complementary to medieval modes of thought and manner in which manuscripts transmitted ideas. Using her teaching of Guillaume de Machaut and her work with the Roman de la Rose Digital Library, Mahoney-Steel envisages a future in which the digital humanities can enable us to build transhistorical relationships with our medieval objects of study.

“This is an exciting manifesto about digital editions in theory and practice though the lens of a scholar who studies medieval music. Tamsyn Mahoney-Steel gives us a masterful analysis on how and why digital editions are powerful means to explore and teach [medieval] texts. She weaves a multi-dimensional argument in favor of the intertextuality of the digital manuscript and its capacity to study both the content and the context—even though less so the materiality—of a text.”—Ece Turnator, Digital Humanities Librarian, MIT

Tamsyn Mahoney-Steel is the Digital Scholarship Specialist for Johns Hopkins University Libraries. She holds a PhD in medieval studies from the University of Exeter and has published on the medieval motet, Linked Open Data, Guillaume de Machaut, and collaborative work in the digital humanities.