Probably I missed this discussion, but what are you doing with the codex when it’s done?

Jess Ehinger

The honest answer: I don’t know.  I have toyed with the idea of giving it as a present to various people, but this book was quiet selfishly made for myself.

The text from The Book of the Duchess  was selected to induce a catharsis after my boyfriend and I split, so I chose sections that are all about the loss of companionship and rather elegaic, along the lines of how most people interpret BotD.  However, as I’ve been transcribing the poem, I keep thinking back to an article I read while writing on BotD in college which argued that the poem wasn’t an elegy, but a celebration of death, endings, and transitions to new things.  So, that’s how I’ve come to view the text for myself, and I’m not sure that if I gave it away it would mean as much to the recipient as it means to me, right now.

So, probably it will go on my bookshelf at home, or perhaps I will frame it laying open to a favored page, like they do with other display manuscripts.