Like most objects, books are confined to the space they occupy, obedient as they are to the laws of nature. That is to say, unlike the Incredible Hulk, they do not normally expand beyond the limits of their own physicality. This post will challenge your beliefs if you agree with this statement. It draws attention to types of medieval books that do expand beyond their physical limits: with a flick of the finger or a gesture of the hand the dimensions of these special objects increased dramatically, up to ten times their original size. As if defying the laws of nature, this miraculous expansion increased the available writing space in objects that were principally designed to be small and portable. The examples in this post suggest that this given of “doing more with less” was an important drive behind the clever design of expandable books.
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