Table of Chapters, Paragraph 1

table. Tables of chapters were becoming common in manuscripts and books as chapter headings began to appear in long narratives. Tables accompanied many French texts of the period, and Caxton translated Blanchardyn and Eglantine’s from his source. When he created chapters in Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, he included a table of contents in his volume. His prologue to the first edition of The Game and Playe of the Chesse (translated from French of Jean de Vignay) explains that the chapters of the book are written at its beginning so that “ye may see more playnly the mater wherof the book treteth” (ed. Crotch, Prologues and Epilogues, p. 12). All are examples of the striving for clarity and textual cohesion characteristic of curial prose style, discussed in the introduction to this volume.↩back to note source