Drollery is a site devoted to medieval literature, with particular attention to the texts that survive in manuscript and the images that live in their margins.

The word drollery originally referred to the small, often humorous or grotesque drawings found in the margins of medieval books: hybrids, animals out of place, clerical satire, and other playful interruptions of the page, similar to the related term marginalia. The modern sense of the word (something whimsical or oddly amusing) grew from the same root.

This site is an attempt to reimagine drollery in a modern light. Primary texts are in the Folio : original, often medieval, texts, with context, notes, thoughts, and translation where useful. The marginalia section holds the images, notes, observations, and related sources collected along the way while gathering and studying those texts, material that illuminates, echoes, or simply belongs beside the primary works.

The project is deliberately limited. It is not a comprehensive medieval studies resource, nor a personal blog. It exists to give careful attention to particular texts and the visual and literary world that surrounds them. If for some reason you are interested in my blog (you probably shouldn’t be) you can find that at Die Trying .