Opening the Medieval Folding Almanac

Abstract

Folding almanacs provided their medieval users with densely-packed information about scientific practices, medical treatments, astrological movements, and religious feast days. Their contents are mirrored by an equally compact materiality, one based on folded panels rather than side-bound pages. This article pays special attention to one such manuscript—London, British Library MS Harley 937—in its argument that the genre is far more complex and provocative than has previously been imagined. Harley 937, written in the vernacular and including an adaptation of Chaucer’s Treatise on the Astrolabe, represents an object deeply concerned with the connection between form and access. It mediates this connection through an emphasis on material and conceptual expansion, one enabled by the form of the fold and the myriad didactic potentialities afforded by the act of unfolding meaning. Taking as its foundation Gilles Deleuze’s formulation of the fold as “endlessly furling and unfurling in every direction,” this article contends that, far from being a straightforward referential tool, the medieval folding almanac instead facilitates a restless, embodied negotiation of the space between readers, writers, and their objects.

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