Joseph McDermott and Peter Burke
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9789888208081
- eISBN:
- 9789888313617
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888208081.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
This particular book seeks to have experts on East Asian and European book history explore issues of mutual interest, to the benefit the main concerns and other issues of book history at the opposite ...
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This particular book seeks to have experts on East Asian and European book history explore issues of mutual interest, to the benefit the main concerns and other issues of book history at the opposite ends of Eurasia. Here the editors concentrate on the book cultures of the two regions of Eurasia, East Asia and Western Europe, which in pre-modern times made the most of publishing books. Just as the most influential Western scholars of the European book have relished researching how the book has shaped the history of European countries other than just their own, so do we now wish to analyze the development of book production, distribution, and consumption of these regions from a consciously comparative perspective. Our hope is that our findings will cast new light on the history of books and book culture within each of these regions.Less
This particular book seeks to have experts on East Asian and European book history explore issues of mutual interest, to the benefit the main concerns and other issues of book history at the opposite ends of Eurasia. Here the editors concentrate on the book cultures of the two regions of Eurasia, East Asia and Western Europe, which in pre-modern times made the most of publishing books. Just as the most influential Western scholars of the European book have relished researching how the book has shaped the history of European countries other than just their own, so do we now wish to analyze the development of book production, distribution, and consumption of these regions from a consciously comparative perspective. Our hope is that our findings will cast new light on the history of books and book culture within each of these regions.
David McKitterick
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9789888208081
- eISBN:
- 9789888313617
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888208081.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
McKitterick identifies the pitfalls encountered by historians of the Western book in classifying, counting, and identifying the materials they use in their research and thereby offers clear advice ...
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McKitterick identifies the pitfalls encountered by historians of the Western book in classifying, counting, and identifying the materials they use in their research and thereby offers clear advice for East Asian bibliographers on European practices to avoid as well as to follow. McDermott identifies a distinctive feature of Chinese and Japanese book production, private non-commercial publishing, and shows how its popularity in East Asia complicates efforts to transfer to its book history the conventional Western historical narratives that identify the rise of printing with the rise of capitalism and the linkage of market expansion with the public expression of private opinion on public matters.Less
McKitterick identifies the pitfalls encountered by historians of the Western book in classifying, counting, and identifying the materials they use in their research and thereby offers clear advice for East Asian bibliographers on European practices to avoid as well as to follow. McDermott identifies a distinctive feature of Chinese and Japanese book production, private non-commercial publishing, and shows how its popularity in East Asia complicates efforts to transfer to its book history the conventional Western historical narratives that identify the rise of printing with the rise of capitalism and the linkage of market expansion with the public expression of private opinion on public matters.
James Raven
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9789888208081
- eISBN:
- 9789888313617
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888208081.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
James Raven’s essay is concerned with the transmission of books in Europe and its colonies in the period between Gutenberg’s invention of the hand press and the nineteenth century introduction of the ...
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James Raven’s essay is concerned with the transmission of books in Europe and its colonies in the period between Gutenberg’s invention of the hand press and the nineteenth century introduction of the steam press. Besides telling a story of market expansion for publishing, he examines the geographical and social range of distribution and considers whether publications circulated within a ‘closed’ or an ‘open’ circuit and whether the sellers remained at home or travelled with the books.Less
James Raven’s essay is concerned with the transmission of books in Europe and its colonies in the period between Gutenberg’s invention of the hand press and the nineteenth century introduction of the steam press. Besides telling a story of market expansion for publishing, he examines the geographical and social range of distribution and considers whether publications circulated within a ‘closed’ or an ‘open’ circuit and whether the sellers remained at home or travelled with the books.
Cynthia Brokaw
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9789888208081
- eISBN:
- 9789888313617
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888208081.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
Brokaw draws upon her field research in China to give an exceptionally rich account of the production practices in ordinary book publishing outfits in market towns and villages in key production ...
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Brokaw draws upon her field research in China to give an exceptionally rich account of the production practices in ordinary book publishing outfits in market towns and villages in key production sites of south China in late imperial times. She pays particular attention to publishing technology, noting that printing with moveable type, which had been tried in China, was ‘not cost effective’ and that woodblock printing had ‘certain economic advantages over European-style letter-press printing’, since it did not require investment in expensive machinery or the need to estimate in advance the number of copies of a text that would be bought.Less
Brokaw draws upon her field research in China to give an exceptionally rich account of the production practices in ordinary book publishing outfits in market towns and villages in key production sites of south China in late imperial times. She pays particular attention to publishing technology, noting that printing with moveable type, which had been tried in China, was ‘not cost effective’ and that woodblock printing had ‘certain economic advantages over European-style letter-press printing’, since it did not require investment in expensive machinery or the need to estimate in advance the number of copies of a text that would be bought.
Joseph McDermott
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9789888208081
- eISBN:
- 9789888313617
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888208081.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
McDermott identifies a distinctive feature of Chinese and Japanese book production, private non-commercial publishing, and shows how its popularity in East Asia complicates efforts to transfer to its ...
More
McDermott identifies a distinctive feature of Chinese and Japanese book production, private non-commercial publishing, and shows how its popularity in East Asia complicates efforts to transfer to its book history the conventional Western historical narratives that identify the rise of printing with the rise of capitalism and the linkage of market expansion with the public expression of private opinion on public matters.Less
McDermott identifies a distinctive feature of Chinese and Japanese book production, private non-commercial publishing, and shows how its popularity in East Asia complicates efforts to transfer to its book history the conventional Western historical narratives that identify the rise of printing with the rise of capitalism and the linkage of market expansion with the public expression of private opinion on public matters.
Peter Burke and Joseph McDermott
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9789888208081
- eISBN:
- 9789888313617
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888208081.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
The essay by Burke and McDermott is concerned with the production, indeed the proliferation of reference books (defined as books intended to be consulted, rather than read from cover to cover) in ...
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The essay by Burke and McDermott is concerned with the production, indeed the proliferation of reference books (defined as books intended to be consulted, rather than read from cover to cover) in both Europe and China. He discusses general reference books such as encyclopaedias, large and small, and calls attention to the increasing number of different kinds of ‘how to do it’ books in both East Asia and Europe in the early modern period, and also to the relative lack of interest in China in the production of dictionaries or translations. The differences between these two traditions of reference works are linked to the types of elite careers available in these societies. Tokugawa Japan is also discussed, if only to highlight how distinctive the Chinese tradition of reference books and encyclopaedias remained throughout the centuries covered by this book.Less
The essay by Burke and McDermott is concerned with the production, indeed the proliferation of reference books (defined as books intended to be consulted, rather than read from cover to cover) in both Europe and China. He discusses general reference books such as encyclopaedias, large and small, and calls attention to the increasing number of different kinds of ‘how to do it’ books in both East Asia and Europe in the early modern period, and also to the relative lack of interest in China in the production of dictionaries or translations. The differences between these two traditions of reference works are linked to the types of elite careers available in these societies. Tokugawa Japan is also discussed, if only to highlight how distinctive the Chinese tradition of reference books and encyclopaedias remained throughout the centuries covered by this book.
Marilyn Booth
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780748694860
- eISBN:
- 9781474408639
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748694860.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Literature
This book history scrutinizes the production, advertising, contents, compilation and circulation – locally and globally – of an Arabic-language volume of biographies of world women, al-Durr ...
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This book history scrutinizes the production, advertising, contents, compilation and circulation – locally and globally – of an Arabic-language volume of biographies of world women, al-Durr al-manthur fi tabaqat rabbat al-khudur. The analysis of this volume of over 500 folio-size pages views it as an early work of Arab feminist history within the prolific career of Zaynab Fawwaz (c1850-1914), a Lebanese immigrant to Egypt and early feminist writer there. The study considers how Fawwaz drew on the venerable tradition of biography writing in Arabic but also turned to contemporary sources (magazines, an encyclopedia, world histories); how she centred Arab subjects and Islamic history but included women from across the world and from ancient eras right up to the fin-de-siècle; how she incorporated a quiet celebration of Shi‘i women (of which she was one), especially from the early Islamic period; how the work suggests a collective and cooperative female intellectual presence in the 1890s Arab capitals, and also responds to works on women’s history by her male contemporaries; and how Fawwaz’s writing became implicated in the project for a Women’s Library at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago.Less
This book history scrutinizes the production, advertising, contents, compilation and circulation – locally and globally – of an Arabic-language volume of biographies of world women, al-Durr al-manthur fi tabaqat rabbat al-khudur. The analysis of this volume of over 500 folio-size pages views it as an early work of Arab feminist history within the prolific career of Zaynab Fawwaz (c1850-1914), a Lebanese immigrant to Egypt and early feminist writer there. The study considers how Fawwaz drew on the venerable tradition of biography writing in Arabic but also turned to contemporary sources (magazines, an encyclopedia, world histories); how she centred Arab subjects and Islamic history but included women from across the world and from ancient eras right up to the fin-de-siècle; how she incorporated a quiet celebration of Shi‘i women (of which she was one), especially from the early Islamic period; how the work suggests a collective and cooperative female intellectual presence in the 1890s Arab capitals, and also responds to works on women’s history by her male contemporaries; and how Fawwaz’s writing became implicated in the project for a Women’s Library at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
Joseph P. McDermott and Peter Burke (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9789888208081
- eISBN:
- 9789888313617
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888208081.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
This volume provides the first comparative survey of the relations between the two most active book worlds in Eurasia between 1450 and 1850. Prominent scholars in book history explore different ...
More
This volume provides the first comparative survey of the relations between the two most active book worlds in Eurasia between 1450 and 1850. Prominent scholars in book history explore different approaches to publishing, printing, and book culture. They discuss the extent of technology transfer and book distribution between the two regions and show how much book historians of East Asia and Europe can learn from one another by raising new questions, exploring remarkable similarities and differences in these regions’ production, distribution, and consumption of books. The chapters in turn show different ways of writing transnational comparative history. Whereas recent problems confronting research on European books can instruct researchers on East Asian book production, so can the privileged role of noncommercial publications in the East Asian textual record highlight for historians of the European book the singular contribution of commercial printing and market demands to the making of the European printed record. Likewise, although production growth was accompanied in both regions by a wider distribution of books, woodblock technology’s simplicity and mobility allowed for a shift in China of its production and distribution sites farther down the hierarchy of urban sites than was common in Europe. And, the different demands and consumption practices within these two regions’ expanding markets led to different genre preferences and uses as well as to the growth of distinctive female readerships. A substantial introduction pulls the work together and the volume ends with an essay that considers how these historical developments shape the present book worlds of Eurasia.Less
This volume provides the first comparative survey of the relations between the two most active book worlds in Eurasia between 1450 and 1850. Prominent scholars in book history explore different approaches to publishing, printing, and book culture. They discuss the extent of technology transfer and book distribution between the two regions and show how much book historians of East Asia and Europe can learn from one another by raising new questions, exploring remarkable similarities and differences in these regions’ production, distribution, and consumption of books. The chapters in turn show different ways of writing transnational comparative history. Whereas recent problems confronting research on European books can instruct researchers on East Asian book production, so can the privileged role of noncommercial publications in the East Asian textual record highlight for historians of the European book the singular contribution of commercial printing and market demands to the making of the European printed record. Likewise, although production growth was accompanied in both regions by a wider distribution of books, woodblock technology’s simplicity and mobility allowed for a shift in China of its production and distribution sites farther down the hierarchy of urban sites than was common in Europe. And, the different demands and consumption practices within these two regions’ expanding markets led to different genre preferences and uses as well as to the growth of distinctive female readerships. A substantial introduction pulls the work together and the volume ends with an essay that considers how these historical developments shape the present book worlds of Eurasia.
Peter Kornicki
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9789888208081
- eISBN:
- 9789888313617
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888208081.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
Peter Kornicki discusses consumption, examining both books for women and women readers in early modern East Asia, including Korea, Japan and Vietnam as well as China. He compares the rise of printing ...
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Peter Kornicki discusses consumption, examining both books for women and women readers in early modern East Asia, including Korea, Japan and Vietnam as well as China. He compares the rise of printing in the vernacular and the proliferation of conduct books for women in East Asia with similar trends in Europe, but also notes important differences, notably the ‘lack of anxiety about women’s literacy’ in East Asia and the greater emphasis on religious messages in the West.Less
Peter Kornicki discusses consumption, examining both books for women and women readers in early modern East Asia, including Korea, Japan and Vietnam as well as China. He compares the rise of printing in the vernacular and the proliferation of conduct books for women in East Asia with similar trends in Europe, but also notes important differences, notably the ‘lack of anxiety about women’s literacy’ in East Asia and the greater emphasis on religious messages in the West.
Joseph McDermott and Peter Burke
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9789888208081
- eISBN:
- 9789888313617
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888208081.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
For important secondary scholarship on specific topics the footnotes in each essay provide expert guidance. But, as readers of these essays may wish to pursue broader book history interests, a list ...
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For important secondary scholarship on specific topics the footnotes in each essay provide expert guidance. But, as readers of these essays may wish to pursue broader book history interests, a list of some of the seminal studies that have over the past half-century made book history so vital a field of scholarship in the West and East Asia may prove of interest.Less
For important secondary scholarship on specific topics the footnotes in each essay provide expert guidance. But, as readers of these essays may wish to pursue broader book history interests, a list of some of the seminal studies that have over the past half-century made book history so vital a field of scholarship in the West and East Asia may prove of interest.
Jay Satterfield
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781496812308
- eISBN:
- 9781496812346
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496812308.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
The chapter discusses William Faulkner’s relationship to Random House from the merger of Smith & Haas with Random House in 1936 to just before he won the Nobel Prize. The first half of this period ...
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The chapter discusses William Faulkner’s relationship to Random House from the merger of Smith & Haas with Random House in 1936 to just before he won the Nobel Prize. The first half of this period was a prolific time in Faulkner’s career but the second half was a phase of low productivity and artistic struggle. When Faulkner came to Random House in 1936, he had the potential to bring new prestige to the relatively young Random House imprint. But the energetic young publishers he had joined had much to offer Faulkner as well. The chapter discusses the skillful and timely marketing strategies Random House employed to re-establish the “Faulkner” brand—a brand that would later help to cement Faulkner’s place in the American Literary canon.Less
The chapter discusses William Faulkner’s relationship to Random House from the merger of Smith & Haas with Random House in 1936 to just before he won the Nobel Prize. The first half of this period was a prolific time in Faulkner’s career but the second half was a phase of low productivity and artistic struggle. When Faulkner came to Random House in 1936, he had the potential to bring new prestige to the relatively young Random House imprint. But the energetic young publishers he had joined had much to offer Faulkner as well. The chapter discusses the skillful and timely marketing strategies Random House employed to re-establish the “Faulkner” brand—a brand that would later help to cement Faulkner’s place in the American Literary canon.
Jay Watson, Jaime Harker, and James G. Jr. Thomas (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781496812308
- eISBN:
- 9781496812346
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496812308.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
William Faulkner’s first ventures into print culture began far from the world of highbrow publishing with which he is typically associated—the world of New York publishing houses, little magazines, ...
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William Faulkner’s first ventures into print culture began far from the world of highbrow publishing with which he is typically associated—the world of New York publishing houses, little magazines, and literary prizes—though they would come to encompass that world as well. This collection explores Faulkner’s multifaceted engagements, as writer and reader, with the US and international print cultures of his era, along with the ways in which these cultures have mediated his relationship with a variety of twentieth- and twenty-first-century audiences.
The essays gathered here address the place of Faulkner and his writings in the creation, design, publishing, marketing, reception, and collecting of books, in the culture of twentieth-century magazines, journals, newspapers, and other periodicals (from pulp to avant-garde), in the history of modern readers and readerships, and in the construction and cultural politics of literary authorship. Six contributors focus on Faulkner’s sensational 1931 novel Sanctuary as a case study illustrating the author’s multifaceted relationship to the print ecology of his time, tracing the novel’s path from the wellsprings of Faulkner’s artistic vision to the novel’s reception among reviewers, tastemakers, intellectuals, and other readers of the early 1930s.
Faulkner’s midcentury critical rebranding as a strictly highbrow modernist, disdainful of the market and impervious to literary trends or the corruption of commerce, has buried the much more interesting complexity of his ongoing engagements with print culture and its engagements with him. This collection will spur critical interest in the intersection of Faulkner’s writing career and the unrespectable, experimental, and audacious realities of interwar and Cold War print culture.Less
William Faulkner’s first ventures into print culture began far from the world of highbrow publishing with which he is typically associated—the world of New York publishing houses, little magazines, and literary prizes—though they would come to encompass that world as well. This collection explores Faulkner’s multifaceted engagements, as writer and reader, with the US and international print cultures of his era, along with the ways in which these cultures have mediated his relationship with a variety of twentieth- and twenty-first-century audiences.
The essays gathered here address the place of Faulkner and his writings in the creation, design, publishing, marketing, reception, and collecting of books, in the culture of twentieth-century magazines, journals, newspapers, and other periodicals (from pulp to avant-garde), in the history of modern readers and readerships, and in the construction and cultural politics of literary authorship. Six contributors focus on Faulkner’s sensational 1931 novel Sanctuary as a case study illustrating the author’s multifaceted relationship to the print ecology of his time, tracing the novel’s path from the wellsprings of Faulkner’s artistic vision to the novel’s reception among reviewers, tastemakers, intellectuals, and other readers of the early 1930s.
Faulkner’s midcentury critical rebranding as a strictly highbrow modernist, disdainful of the market and impervious to literary trends or the corruption of commerce, has buried the much more interesting complexity of his ongoing engagements with print culture and its engagements with him. This collection will spur critical interest in the intersection of Faulkner’s writing career and the unrespectable, experimental, and audacious realities of interwar and Cold War print culture.
Lise Jaillant
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474417242
- eISBN:
- 9781474434560
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474417242.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
The introduction summarises recent scholarship on (1) literary modernism in the marketplace; (2) book history and print culture studies, including the study of publishers’ series. The guiding thread ...
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The introduction summarises recent scholarship on (1) literary modernism in the marketplace; (2) book history and print culture studies, including the study of publishers’ series. The guiding thread of the argument developed in the book is introduced here: that European publishers’ series made modernist texts available to a mainstream readership – including many non-English native speakers in Continental Europe and elsewhere.Less
The introduction summarises recent scholarship on (1) literary modernism in the marketplace; (2) book history and print culture studies, including the study of publishers’ series. The guiding thread of the argument developed in the book is introduced here: that European publishers’ series made modernist texts available to a mainstream readership – including many non-English native speakers in Continental Europe and elsewhere.
Peter J. Kalliney
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199977970
- eISBN:
- 9780199346189
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199977970.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism, Criticism/Theory
Transatlantic Modernism and the Emergence of Postcolonial Literature is a study of midcentury literary institutions integral to the formation of both modernism and postcolonial writing. ...
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Transatlantic Modernism and the Emergence of Postcolonial Literature is a study of midcentury literary institutions integral to the formation of both modernism and postcolonial writing. Several organizations central to interwar modernism, such as the BBC, influential publishers, and university English departments, became important sites in the emergence of postcolonial literature after the war. How did some of modernism's leading figures of the 1930s, such as T.S. Eliot, Louis MacNeice, and Stephen Spender, come to admire late colonial and early postcolonial literature in the 1950s? Similarly, why did late colonial and early postcolonial writers--including Chinua Achebe, Kamau Brathwaite, Claude McKay, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o--actively seek alliances with metropolitan intellectuals? Peter Kalliney's original archival work on modernist cultural institutions demonstrates that this disparate group of intellectuals had strong professional incentives to treat one another more as fellow literary professionals, and less as political or cultural antagonists. Surprisingly, metropolitan intellectuals and their late colonial counterparts leaned heavily on modernist theories of aesthetic autonomy to facilitate their collaborative ventures. For white, metropolitan writers, TS Eliot's notion of impersonality could help to recruit new audiences and conspirators from colonized regions of the world. For black, colonial writers, aesthetic autonomy could be used to imagine a literary sphere uniquely resistant to the forms of racial prejudice endemic to the colonial system. This strategic collaboration did not last forever, but it left a lasting imprint on the ultimate disposition of modernism and the evolution of postcolonial literature.Less
Transatlantic Modernism and the Emergence of Postcolonial Literature is a study of midcentury literary institutions integral to the formation of both modernism and postcolonial writing. Several organizations central to interwar modernism, such as the BBC, influential publishers, and university English departments, became important sites in the emergence of postcolonial literature after the war. How did some of modernism's leading figures of the 1930s, such as T.S. Eliot, Louis MacNeice, and Stephen Spender, come to admire late colonial and early postcolonial literature in the 1950s? Similarly, why did late colonial and early postcolonial writers--including Chinua Achebe, Kamau Brathwaite, Claude McKay, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o--actively seek alliances with metropolitan intellectuals? Peter Kalliney's original archival work on modernist cultural institutions demonstrates that this disparate group of intellectuals had strong professional incentives to treat one another more as fellow literary professionals, and less as political or cultural antagonists. Surprisingly, metropolitan intellectuals and their late colonial counterparts leaned heavily on modernist theories of aesthetic autonomy to facilitate their collaborative ventures. For white, metropolitan writers, TS Eliot's notion of impersonality could help to recruit new audiences and conspirators from colonized regions of the world. For black, colonial writers, aesthetic autonomy could be used to imagine a literary sphere uniquely resistant to the forms of racial prejudice endemic to the colonial system. This strategic collaboration did not last forever, but it left a lasting imprint on the ultimate disposition of modernism and the evolution of postcolonial literature.
Eva Mroczek
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- June 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780190279837
- eISBN:
- 9780190279851
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190279837.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, Biblical Studies
Through a case study of psalms, this chapter shows how the Bible sets the agenda for the study of early Jewish literature, and how removing biblical lenses reveals a new picture of the literary ...
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Through a case study of psalms, this chapter shows how the Bible sets the agenda for the study of early Jewish literature, and how removing biblical lenses reveals a new picture of the literary imagination. Conventional wisdom has it that the book of Psalms was the most popular book among the Dead Sea Scrolls and enjoyed great authority in early Judaism. But this is a mirage: the material and literary evidence suggests there is no such thing as the “book of Psalms” in early Judaism. Instead, diverse manuscripts preserve psalmic texts, in various genres, orders, and numbers, revealing practices of collection that cannot always be placed on a linear timeline of “the making of the Bible.” The psalms are not conceptualized as a “book” before the New Testament and rabbinic texts. Instead, they are imagined as an open genre, a heavenly archive only partially reflected in the extant texts. New metaphors suggested by theoretical work in book history—including efforts to describe the unbound textual world of the digital—can help reconceptualize a literary landscape not organized around books, but imagined in terms of overlapping clusters, mosaics of fragments, and expanding archives.Less
Through a case study of psalms, this chapter shows how the Bible sets the agenda for the study of early Jewish literature, and how removing biblical lenses reveals a new picture of the literary imagination. Conventional wisdom has it that the book of Psalms was the most popular book among the Dead Sea Scrolls and enjoyed great authority in early Judaism. But this is a mirage: the material and literary evidence suggests there is no such thing as the “book of Psalms” in early Judaism. Instead, diverse manuscripts preserve psalmic texts, in various genres, orders, and numbers, revealing practices of collection that cannot always be placed on a linear timeline of “the making of the Bible.” The psalms are not conceptualized as a “book” before the New Testament and rabbinic texts. Instead, they are imagined as an open genre, a heavenly archive only partially reflected in the extant texts. New metaphors suggested by theoretical work in book history—including efforts to describe the unbound textual world of the digital—can help reconceptualize a literary landscape not organized around books, but imagined in terms of overlapping clusters, mosaics of fragments, and expanding archives.
Lisa Brooks
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780300196733
- eISBN:
- 9780300231113
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300196733.003.0004
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Native American Studies
This chapter recovers the history of the Harvard Indian College and highlights the multiple cultural, literary, and oral traditions that intersected in colonial Cambridge, Massachusetts. It includes ...
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This chapter recovers the history of the Harvard Indian College and highlights the multiple cultural, literary, and oral traditions that intersected in colonial Cambridge, Massachusetts. It includes analysis of the missionary schools in which Wawaus, or James Printer, a young Nipmuc scholar, and his Wampanoag, Patucket, and Nipmuc peers were trained alongside English students. Native scholars were trained in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew literatures and participated in the production of the first bilingual works of American literature, including the “John Eliot” bible, printed at the Harvard Indian College, where the first printing press in the colonies was housed. This chapter includes an extensive interpretation of the Latin address of Caleb Cheeshateaumuck, the first Native American graduate of Harvard College. The Harvard Indian College provides a necessary foundation for understanding the complex role of “praying Indians,” or members of Indigenous mission communities, as scribes and scouts during King Philip’s War. The chapter demonstrates that Indigenous scholars were not merely students who received, or were subjected to, colonial education but became significant contributors to a multilingual American literary tradition.Less
This chapter recovers the history of the Harvard Indian College and highlights the multiple cultural, literary, and oral traditions that intersected in colonial Cambridge, Massachusetts. It includes analysis of the missionary schools in which Wawaus, or James Printer, a young Nipmuc scholar, and his Wampanoag, Patucket, and Nipmuc peers were trained alongside English students. Native scholars were trained in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew literatures and participated in the production of the first bilingual works of American literature, including the “John Eliot” bible, printed at the Harvard Indian College, where the first printing press in the colonies was housed. This chapter includes an extensive interpretation of the Latin address of Caleb Cheeshateaumuck, the first Native American graduate of Harvard College. The Harvard Indian College provides a necessary foundation for understanding the complex role of “praying Indians,” or members of Indigenous mission communities, as scribes and scouts during King Philip’s War. The chapter demonstrates that Indigenous scholars were not merely students who received, or were subjected to, colonial education but became significant contributors to a multilingual American literary tradition.
Gail Low
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- June 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780199609932
- eISBN:
- 9780191869761
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780199609932.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature, Prose (inc. letters, diaries)
This chapter discusses Book History. Drawing on the disciplinary fields of ‘analytical bibliography’ and influenced by work in Annales social history, Book History takes as its subject the cultural ...
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This chapter discusses Book History. Drawing on the disciplinary fields of ‘analytical bibliography’ and influenced by work in Annales social history, Book History takes as its subject the cultural history and the sociology of print, and also the impact of print on the ‘thought and behaviour of mankind’ from the Gutenberg press to the present day. As books make the complicated journey from the idea to print in all its variant forms, the connections between publishing, cultural, educational, and literary institutions—and the individuals involved in these—are crucial to understanding how they emerge in print, how they are used, how they circulate, and what they mean. The chapter thus addresses the following areas of importance to the social and material histories of the Anglophone novel to 1950: the ‘glocalized’ geographies of print and trade; newspapers and local literary cultures; colonial editions; libraries, readers and writers; trade and copyright legislation.Less
This chapter discusses Book History. Drawing on the disciplinary fields of ‘analytical bibliography’ and influenced by work in Annales social history, Book History takes as its subject the cultural history and the sociology of print, and also the impact of print on the ‘thought and behaviour of mankind’ from the Gutenberg press to the present day. As books make the complicated journey from the idea to print in all its variant forms, the connections between publishing, cultural, educational, and literary institutions—and the individuals involved in these—are crucial to understanding how they emerge in print, how they are used, how they circulate, and what they mean. The chapter thus addresses the following areas of importance to the social and material histories of the Anglophone novel to 1950: the ‘glocalized’ geographies of print and trade; newspapers and local literary cultures; colonial editions; libraries, readers and writers; trade and copyright legislation.
Lise Jaillant
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474417242
- eISBN:
- 9781474434560
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474417242.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
Cheap Modernism is the first sustained account of cheap series of reprints that transformed literary modernism from a little-read movement into a mainstream phenomenon – in Britain, Continental ...
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Cheap Modernism is the first sustained account of cheap series of reprints that transformed literary modernism from a little-read movement into a mainstream phenomenon – in Britain, Continental Europe and elsewhere. Mrs Dalloway or A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man are often presented as difficult books, originally published in small print runs for a handful of readers. But from the mid-1920s, these texts and others were available in cheap format across Europe. Uniform series of reprints such as the Travellers’ Library, the Phoenix Library, Tauchnitz and Albatross sold modernism to a wide audience – thus transforming a little-read “highbrow” movement into a popular phenomenon. The expansion of the readership for modernism was not only vertical (from “high” to “low”) but also spatial – since publishers’ series were distributed within and outside metropolitan centres in Britain, continental Europe and elsewhere. Many non-English native speakers discovered texts by Joyce, Woolf and others in the original language – a fact that has rarely been mentioned in histories of modernism. Drawing on extensive work in neglected archives, Cheap Modernism sheds new light on the complex relationship between modernism and the marketplace.Less
Cheap Modernism is the first sustained account of cheap series of reprints that transformed literary modernism from a little-read movement into a mainstream phenomenon – in Britain, Continental Europe and elsewhere. Mrs Dalloway or A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man are often presented as difficult books, originally published in small print runs for a handful of readers. But from the mid-1920s, these texts and others were available in cheap format across Europe. Uniform series of reprints such as the Travellers’ Library, the Phoenix Library, Tauchnitz and Albatross sold modernism to a wide audience – thus transforming a little-read “highbrow” movement into a popular phenomenon. The expansion of the readership for modernism was not only vertical (from “high” to “low”) but also spatial – since publishers’ series were distributed within and outside metropolitan centres in Britain, continental Europe and elsewhere. Many non-English native speakers discovered texts by Joyce, Woolf and others in the original language – a fact that has rarely been mentioned in histories of modernism. Drawing on extensive work in neglected archives, Cheap Modernism sheds new light on the complex relationship between modernism and the marketplace.
Peter J. Kalliney
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199977970
- eISBN:
- 9780199346189
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199977970.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism, Criticism/Theory
Chapter Six examines Heinemann Educational Book's African Writers Series, the preeminent literary institution of anglophone Africa. Critics have repeatedly asked whether the series is fundamentally ...
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Chapter Six examines Heinemann Educational Book's African Writers Series, the preeminent literary institution of anglophone Africa. Critics have repeatedly asked whether the series is fundamentally imperialist - because of its links to the metropolitan publishing industry - or anti-imperialist - because it gave voice to so many politically engaged writers. This chapter, by contrast, places the series in the context of global changes in English studies. In the US and in metropolitan Britain, the series seemed to be participating in the fragmentation of the discipline: the breakup of Leavis's Great Tradition and the incorporation of minority writers into the canon. In Africa, however, it is possible to read the series as a part of an expansion and consolidation of English language and literary studies. How the series managed this apparent contradiction is the main topic of the chapter.Less
Chapter Six examines Heinemann Educational Book's African Writers Series, the preeminent literary institution of anglophone Africa. Critics have repeatedly asked whether the series is fundamentally imperialist - because of its links to the metropolitan publishing industry - or anti-imperialist - because it gave voice to so many politically engaged writers. This chapter, by contrast, places the series in the context of global changes in English studies. In the US and in metropolitan Britain, the series seemed to be participating in the fragmentation of the discipline: the breakup of Leavis's Great Tradition and the incorporation of minority writers into the canon. In Africa, however, it is possible to read the series as a part of an expansion and consolidation of English language and literary studies. How the series managed this apparent contradiction is the main topic of the chapter.
Peter J. Kalliney
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199977970
- eISBN:
- 9780199346189
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199977970.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism, Criticism/Theory
Chapter Seven examines the evolution of Jean Rhys's long and unusual career. In the 1920s and 30s, Rhys was a typical member of the expatriate artist community of the Left Bank. In the 1940s and 50s, ...
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Chapter Seven examines the evolution of Jean Rhys's long and unusual career. In the 1920s and 30s, Rhys was a typical member of the expatriate artist community of the Left Bank. In the 1940s and 50s, however, she disappeared, staging an improbable comeback in the 1960s, culminating in the release of Wide Sargasso Sea and the republication of her earlier fiction. In those intervening years, however, a number of high-profile Caribbean writers had come to the attention of metropolitan critics and audiences. This chapter situates Rhys's changing depictions of racial difference in this long context, exploring the subtle continuities and equally subtle differences between her interwar fiction and her postcolonial writing.Less
Chapter Seven examines the evolution of Jean Rhys's long and unusual career. In the 1920s and 30s, Rhys was a typical member of the expatriate artist community of the Left Bank. In the 1940s and 50s, however, she disappeared, staging an improbable comeback in the 1960s, culminating in the release of Wide Sargasso Sea and the republication of her earlier fiction. In those intervening years, however, a number of high-profile Caribbean writers had come to the attention of metropolitan critics and audiences. This chapter situates Rhys's changing depictions of racial difference in this long context, exploring the subtle continuities and equally subtle differences between her interwar fiction and her postcolonial writing.
