In the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, the Latin prose romance "Dialogus Salomonis et Marcolfi" was taken as the basis for a number of vernacular adaptations. The subject matter was translated and interpreted in a variety of different genres. In terms of transmission and textual history, a second narrative strain, deriving from the courtship epic "Salman und Morolf" is loosely connected with the first. The volume describes the way this group of works has been handed down to us and interprets the general tendencies underlying the various adaptations. A series of literary testimonies from the 6th to the 20th century shows the topicality of the Marcolf theme through the ages. The volume also contains a scholarly edition of one of the manuscript forms (1469) of the vernacular prose romance.

The compass of the volume extends both to single-leaf broadsides from letter-presses and printed forms produced in the 15th and early 16th centuries. The perspectives on this new textual and pictorial medium presented in the 16 articles range from literary studies, history of book-printing and communication, history and art history to research on incunabula. The result is a rich panoply of insights on single-leaf broadsides as testimonies of change and continuity in social communication during the transition to the modern age.