G. O. Hutchinson
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199279418
- eISBN:
- 9780191707322
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199279418.003.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
The history of structuring and reading books is surveyed in the Greek 3rd century and the Latin 1st century BC. Many illustrations of papyri are given. Papyri are seen to show ways of reading that ...
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The history of structuring and reading books is surveyed in the Greek 3rd century and the Latin 1st century BC. Many illustrations of papyri are given. Papyri are seen to show ways of reading that relate juxtaposed items and pursue sequences; the composition of the interconnected book is linked with readers' private active creation of personal collections (anthologies). Intense and scholarly modes of reading are available, and attested by marginalia and abundant commentaries, etc. The differences in reading Greek, older Latin, and contemporary Latin poetry are shown. The environments and circumstances of reading in the late Republic are explored (including libraries).Less
The history of structuring and reading books is surveyed in the Greek 3rd century and the Latin 1st century BC. Many illustrations of papyri are given. Papyri are seen to show ways of reading that relate juxtaposed items and pursue sequences; the composition of the interconnected book is linked with readers' private active creation of personal collections (anthologies). Intense and scholarly modes of reading are available, and attested by marginalia and abundant commentaries, etc. The differences in reading Greek, older Latin, and contemporary Latin poetry are shown. The environments and circumstances of reading in the late Republic are explored (including libraries).
Sarah Winter
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780823233526
- eISBN:
- 9780823241132
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823233526.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
The Introduction reviews the critical controversies after Dickens's death about his representative Englishness and influence on readers. It defines the book's focus on theories of serial memory in ...
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The Introduction reviews the critical controversies after Dickens's death about his representative Englishness and influence on readers. It defines the book's focus on theories of serial memory in Enlightenment psychology, nineteenth-century pedagogy, and accounts by Victorian literary critics about the effects of reading serial fiction. The book argues that Dickens's serial novels taught shared reading practices based in associationist theories of memory that transformed Dickens's popularity into an inclusive and participatory cultural politics and ultimately a mission for literature within democratic education. The “pleasures of memory” involve the common experience of memory's coherence through novel reading and the shared reception of popular serial genres.Less
The Introduction reviews the critical controversies after Dickens's death about his representative Englishness and influence on readers. It defines the book's focus on theories of serial memory in Enlightenment psychology, nineteenth-century pedagogy, and accounts by Victorian literary critics about the effects of reading serial fiction. The book argues that Dickens's serial novels taught shared reading practices based in associationist theories of memory that transformed Dickens's popularity into an inclusive and participatory cultural politics and ultimately a mission for literature within democratic education. The “pleasures of memory” involve the common experience of memory's coherence through novel reading and the shared reception of popular serial genres.
Lauren Shohet
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199295890
- eISBN:
- 9780191594311
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199295890.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
In seventeenth‐century England, masques inhabited two media, their dramatic occasions consistently delivered into a public culture of reading. This chapter details masques' material circulation in ...
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In seventeenth‐century England, masques inhabited two media, their dramatic occasions consistently delivered into a public culture of reading. This chapter details masques' material circulation in print culture: print and scribal reproduction, provenance, annotations, rights and reprints, marketing as sheet music. While bibliographic attention is crucial, it offers a starting point rather than a terminus for exploring masques' (or any texts') position in their culture. The chapter explores ways that scriptors address readers in the prefaces and margins, drawing examples from masques of Jonson, Campion, Daniel, Chapman, Shirley, William Browne, Thomas Jordan, Middleton/Rowley, and Heywood. It analyzes the hermeneutics of reading in two seventeenth‐century accounts: legal documents surrounding the prosecution of William Prynne, and an essay on the book trade by Newcastle bookseller William London, testing Habermas's theories of the public sphere against these early modern accounts.Less
In seventeenth‐century England, masques inhabited two media, their dramatic occasions consistently delivered into a public culture of reading. This chapter details masques' material circulation in print culture: print and scribal reproduction, provenance, annotations, rights and reprints, marketing as sheet music. While bibliographic attention is crucial, it offers a starting point rather than a terminus for exploring masques' (or any texts') position in their culture. The chapter explores ways that scriptors address readers in the prefaces and margins, drawing examples from masques of Jonson, Campion, Daniel, Chapman, Shirley, William Browne, Thomas Jordan, Middleton/Rowley, and Heywood. It analyzes the hermeneutics of reading in two seventeenth‐century accounts: legal documents surrounding the prosecution of William Prynne, and an essay on the book trade by Newcastle bookseller William London, testing Habermas's theories of the public sphere against these early modern accounts.
Katrin Ettenhuber
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199609109
- eISBN:
- 9780191729553
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199609109.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
The Introduction situates Donne on Augustine in its main disciplinary contexts: the history of religion and the history of reading. The chapter argues for the importance of attending to the ...
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The Introduction situates Donne on Augustine in its main disciplinary contexts: the history of religion and the history of reading. The chapter argues for the importance of attending to the theological heritage of early modern thought: Renaissance culture saw not only a revival of the classics, but was heavily indebted to the patristic tradition. Among the Fathers, Augustine's influence was paramount, but his doctrinal legacy could be construed in multiple and complex ways. For the preacher and poet John Donne, Augustine's most significant contribution lay in his theory of interpretation. Reading, to Augustine, was more than a simple scholarly technique: it offered an intellectual method, spiritual discipline, and even a form of philosophy. Donne's engagement with Augustinian models of interpretation calls attention to a neglected aspect of Renaissance reading culture, and uncovers a tradition of theological reading that has been obscured, to some extent, by the current scholarly focus on humanist reading practices.Less
The Introduction situates Donne on Augustine in its main disciplinary contexts: the history of religion and the history of reading. The chapter argues for the importance of attending to the theological heritage of early modern thought: Renaissance culture saw not only a revival of the classics, but was heavily indebted to the patristic tradition. Among the Fathers, Augustine's influence was paramount, but his doctrinal legacy could be construed in multiple and complex ways. For the preacher and poet John Donne, Augustine's most significant contribution lay in his theory of interpretation. Reading, to Augustine, was more than a simple scholarly technique: it offered an intellectual method, spiritual discipline, and even a form of philosophy. Donne's engagement with Augustinian models of interpretation calls attention to a neglected aspect of Renaissance reading culture, and uncovers a tradition of theological reading that has been obscured, to some extent, by the current scholarly focus on humanist reading practices.
Arnoud S. Q. Visser
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199765935
- eISBN:
- 9780199895168
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199765935.003.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
This chapter introduces the reader to Augustine of Hippo and his varied reception in the long sixteenth century. It explains the aims, scope, and organization of the book and situates its main ...
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This chapter introduces the reader to Augustine of Hippo and his varied reception in the long sixteenth century. It explains the aims, scope, and organization of the book and situates its main arguments in the context of recent research in the fields of Reformation history (including the confessionalization paradigm, the concept of Augustinianism and recent studies of the reception of the Church fathers), Renaissance Humanism, and the history of reading.Less
This chapter introduces the reader to Augustine of Hippo and his varied reception in the long sixteenth century. It explains the aims, scope, and organization of the book and situates its main arguments in the context of recent research in the fields of Reformation history (including the confessionalization paradigm, the concept of Augustinianism and recent studies of the reception of the Church fathers), Renaissance Humanism, and the history of reading.
Elaine Leong
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226583495
- eISBN:
- 9780226583525
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226583525.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
By the 1650s, the London booksellers’ shelves were packed with printed recipe collections. With titles like A Choice Manual of Rare and Select Secrets (1653), The Marrow of Physicke, or A Learned ...
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By the 1650s, the London booksellers’ shelves were packed with printed recipe collections. With titles like A Choice Manual of Rare and Select Secrets (1653), The Marrow of Physicke, or A Learned Discourse of the Severall Parts of a Mans Body (1640), or simply A Pretious Treasury, these books offered English readers hundreds upon hundreds of recipes. This chapter explores the intersections, commonalities, and differences between the manuscript and printed recipe collections of the period. Through analyzing traces of reading and writing, it emphasizes the significant crossovers between these two media. The media of communication, it contends, crucially shaped the kinds of knowledge transferred.Less
By the 1650s, the London booksellers’ shelves were packed with printed recipe collections. With titles like A Choice Manual of Rare and Select Secrets (1653), The Marrow of Physicke, or A Learned Discourse of the Severall Parts of a Mans Body (1640), or simply A Pretious Treasury, these books offered English readers hundreds upon hundreds of recipes. This chapter explores the intersections, commonalities, and differences between the manuscript and printed recipe collections of the period. Through analyzing traces of reading and writing, it emphasizes the significant crossovers between these two media. The media of communication, it contends, crucially shaped the kinds of knowledge transferred.
Arnoud S. Q. Visser
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199765935
- eISBN:
- 9780199895168
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199765935.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
This book explores the reception of Augustine of Hippo in the European Reformations. In this religious revolution Augustine was a highly contested authority, with different parties assimilating his ...
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This book explores the reception of Augustine of Hippo in the European Reformations. In this religious revolution Augustine was a highly contested authority, with different parties assimilating his thought in contrasting ways. This flexible reception raises fundamental questions about the significance of Augustine's thought in the Reformation period. It can also illuminate the relationship between religious change and the new intellectual culture of Renaissance humanism, with its famous claim to return to the classical sources. Based on a variety of printed and manuscript sources, this study seeks to break new ground on three levels. It systematically grounds the reception of ideas in the history of reading and the material culture of books and manuscripts. Second, it is not restricted to particular confessional parties or geographic boundaries, but offers a cross-confessional account of Augustine's appropriation in early modern Europe. Third, on a conceptual level, this book contributes to a more advanced understanding of the nature of intellectual authority in the early modern period. The book is organized around the production, circulation and consumption of Augustine's works. It studies the impact of print, humanist scholarship and confessional divisions on Augustine's reception. It examines how editors managed patristic knowledge through search tools and anthologies. It illuminates how individual readers used their copies, and how they applied their knowledge in public debates. All this shows that the emerging confessional pressures did not just restrict, but also promote intellectual life. It furthermore reveals that humanism, despite its claim to return to the sources, continued to facilitate selective, purposeful reading styles.Less
This book explores the reception of Augustine of Hippo in the European Reformations. In this religious revolution Augustine was a highly contested authority, with different parties assimilating his thought in contrasting ways. This flexible reception raises fundamental questions about the significance of Augustine's thought in the Reformation period. It can also illuminate the relationship between religious change and the new intellectual culture of Renaissance humanism, with its famous claim to return to the classical sources. Based on a variety of printed and manuscript sources, this study seeks to break new ground on three levels. It systematically grounds the reception of ideas in the history of reading and the material culture of books and manuscripts. Second, it is not restricted to particular confessional parties or geographic boundaries, but offers a cross-confessional account of Augustine's appropriation in early modern Europe. Third, on a conceptual level, this book contributes to a more advanced understanding of the nature of intellectual authority in the early modern period. The book is organized around the production, circulation and consumption of Augustine's works. It studies the impact of print, humanist scholarship and confessional divisions on Augustine's reception. It examines how editors managed patristic knowledge through search tools and anthologies. It illuminates how individual readers used their copies, and how they applied their knowledge in public debates. All this shows that the emerging confessional pressures did not just restrict, but also promote intellectual life. It furthermore reveals that humanism, despite its claim to return to the sources, continued to facilitate selective, purposeful reading styles.
Karin Littau
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780748676118
- eISBN:
- 9780748695096
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748676118.003.0005
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter, written by Karin Littau, addresses the media-transitional period of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries to show how aestho-physiological experiments in reading were linked ...
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This chapter, written by Karin Littau, addresses the media-transitional period of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries to show how aestho-physiological experiments in reading were linked to a variety of motion picture technologies. On the one hand such technologies were used to measure reading speeds; on the other, they profoundly affected how readers began to perceive the printed word: no longer as static marks on the page but giving ‘the impression of movement’, which in turn was conceived ‘in proportion’ to how it ‘moved’ the reader. By focusing on experiments by Vernon Lee, Gertrude Stein, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and her story ‘The Yellow Wall-Paper’ (itself an experiment in phantasmagoric reading), Littau shows how reading during this period bore the traces of cinematicity; to the extent that in the 1930s ‘movie-minded’ writers like Robert Carlton Brown proposed ‘reading machines’, which would bring outmoded reading practices into line with modern cinema-viewing.Less
This chapter, written by Karin Littau, addresses the media-transitional period of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries to show how aestho-physiological experiments in reading were linked to a variety of motion picture technologies. On the one hand such technologies were used to measure reading speeds; on the other, they profoundly affected how readers began to perceive the printed word: no longer as static marks on the page but giving ‘the impression of movement’, which in turn was conceived ‘in proportion’ to how it ‘moved’ the reader. By focusing on experiments by Vernon Lee, Gertrude Stein, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and her story ‘The Yellow Wall-Paper’ (itself an experiment in phantasmagoric reading), Littau shows how reading during this period bore the traces of cinematicity; to the extent that in the 1930s ‘movie-minded’ writers like Robert Carlton Brown proposed ‘reading machines’, which would bring outmoded reading practices into line with modern cinema-viewing.
Alexander Bevilacqua and Frederic Clark
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226601175
- eISBN:
- 9780226601342
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226601342.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, History of Ideas
Interview with Anthony Grafton, Henry Putnam University Professor of History at Princeton University. Topics include intellectual history; historiography; history of scholarship; historical ...
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Interview with Anthony Grafton, Henry Putnam University Professor of History at Princeton University. Topics include intellectual history; historiography; history of scholarship; historical chronology; Joseph Scaliger; and the history of reading.Less
Interview with Anthony Grafton, Henry Putnam University Professor of History at Princeton University. Topics include intellectual history; historiography; history of scholarship; historical chronology; Joseph Scaliger; and the history of reading.
Sean D. Moore
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- April 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780198836377
- eISBN:
- 9780191873621
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198836377.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 18th Century and Early American Literature
This Introduction shows how this book contributes to the emerging field of postcolonial book history and cultural historiography. By demonstrating its relevance to the capitalism and slavery thesis, ...
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This Introduction shows how this book contributes to the emerging field of postcolonial book history and cultural historiography. By demonstrating its relevance to the capitalism and slavery thesis, it shows how books, too, were industrial goods capitalized by slave labor. It explains that early American proprietary subscription libraries were centers for revolutionary leadership development, and one location where colonials imbibed British political thought. In challenging the civic republicanism thesis of Caroline Robbins, J. G. A. Pocock, and Bernard Bailyn it argues that ownership of slaves was the proprietorship formative of the virtue of the republican citizen and that C. B. MacPherson’s theory of possessive individualism more accurately describes their citizenship. It maps the networks through which colonials purchased books, and gives a history of early American reading. The most popular genres among early Americans are documented, and anti-slavery is shown to be both a product of revolutionary thinking and an inspiration for it.Less
This Introduction shows how this book contributes to the emerging field of postcolonial book history and cultural historiography. By demonstrating its relevance to the capitalism and slavery thesis, it shows how books, too, were industrial goods capitalized by slave labor. It explains that early American proprietary subscription libraries were centers for revolutionary leadership development, and one location where colonials imbibed British political thought. In challenging the civic republicanism thesis of Caroline Robbins, J. G. A. Pocock, and Bernard Bailyn it argues that ownership of slaves was the proprietorship formative of the virtue of the republican citizen and that C. B. MacPherson’s theory of possessive individualism more accurately describes their citizenship. It maps the networks through which colonials purchased books, and gives a history of early American reading. The most popular genres among early Americans are documented, and anti-slavery is shown to be both a product of revolutionary thinking and an inspiration for it.
Geoff Baker
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719080241
- eISBN:
- 9781781701799
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719080241.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History
This book examines the activities of William Blundell, a seventeenth-century Catholic gentleman, and using the approaches of the history of reading provides a detailed analysis of his mindset. ...
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This book examines the activities of William Blundell, a seventeenth-century Catholic gentleman, and using the approaches of the history of reading provides a detailed analysis of his mindset. Blundell was neither the passive victim nor the entirely loyal subject that he and others have claimed. He actively defended his family from the penal laws and used the relative freedom that this gave him to patronise other Catholics. In his locality, Blundell ensured that the township of Little Crosby was populated almost entirely by his co-religionists, on a national level he constructed and circulated arguments supporting the removal of the penal laws, and on an international level he worked as an agent for the Poor Clares of Rouen. That he cannot be defined solely by his victimhood is further supported by his commonplace notes. Not only did Blundell rewrite the histories of recent civil conflicts to show that Protestants were prone to rebellion and Catholics to loyalty, but we also find a different perspective on his religious beliefs. His commonplaces suggest an underlying tension with aspects of Catholicism that is manifest throughout his notes on his practical engagement with the world, in which it is clear that he was wrestling with the various aspects of his identity. This examination of Blundell's political and cultural worlds complicates generalisations about early modern religious identities.Less
This book examines the activities of William Blundell, a seventeenth-century Catholic gentleman, and using the approaches of the history of reading provides a detailed analysis of his mindset. Blundell was neither the passive victim nor the entirely loyal subject that he and others have claimed. He actively defended his family from the penal laws and used the relative freedom that this gave him to patronise other Catholics. In his locality, Blundell ensured that the township of Little Crosby was populated almost entirely by his co-religionists, on a national level he constructed and circulated arguments supporting the removal of the penal laws, and on an international level he worked as an agent for the Poor Clares of Rouen. That he cannot be defined solely by his victimhood is further supported by his commonplace notes. Not only did Blundell rewrite the histories of recent civil conflicts to show that Protestants were prone to rebellion and Catholics to loyalty, but we also find a different perspective on his religious beliefs. His commonplaces suggest an underlying tension with aspects of Catholicism that is manifest throughout his notes on his practical engagement with the world, in which it is clear that he was wrestling with the various aspects of his identity. This examination of Blundell's political and cultural worlds complicates generalisations about early modern religious identities.
Warren Boutcher
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780198739661
- eISBN:
- 9780191831126
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198739661.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
The ‘Epilogue’ (2.7) picks up the discussion from the ‘Prologue’ (1.1) and extends it across a broader canvas in the history of the book and of reading. It asks how the case studies in previous ...
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The ‘Epilogue’ (2.7) picks up the discussion from the ‘Prologue’ (1.1) and extends it across a broader canvas in the history of the book and of reading. It asks how the case studies in previous chapters (including Pierre de L’Estoile), and new ones in this chapter of Bishop Camus, Pierre Charron, and Pierre Bayle, might revise the sketch of the Essais offered in Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis. I argue that the fundamental issue at stake in the early modern making and transmission of the Essais is the issue that is explicitly raised by Marie de Gournay in her preface of 1595, and, in a different style and context, by Charron’s use of Montaigne in De la sagesse (1601, 1604): how best to preserve and regulate the well-born individual’s natural liberté of judgement, their franchise or frankness, through reading and writing, in an age of moral corruption and confessional conflict.Less
The ‘Epilogue’ (2.7) picks up the discussion from the ‘Prologue’ (1.1) and extends it across a broader canvas in the history of the book and of reading. It asks how the case studies in previous chapters (including Pierre de L’Estoile), and new ones in this chapter of Bishop Camus, Pierre Charron, and Pierre Bayle, might revise the sketch of the Essais offered in Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis. I argue that the fundamental issue at stake in the early modern making and transmission of the Essais is the issue that is explicitly raised by Marie de Gournay in her preface of 1595, and, in a different style and context, by Charron’s use of Montaigne in De la sagesse (1601, 1604): how best to preserve and regulate the well-born individual’s natural liberté of judgement, their franchise or frankness, through reading and writing, in an age of moral corruption and confessional conflict.
Sarah Winter
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780823233526
- eISBN:
- 9780823241132
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823233526.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
The Afterword discusses how the interlocking between forms of seriality in associationist theories of memory and the print medium of serial fiction demonstrates an extended historical development of ...
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The Afterword discusses how the interlocking between forms of seriality in associationist theories of memory and the print medium of serial fiction demonstrates an extended historical development of the reciprocal linkage between mode of reception and material form in modern media. This recursiveness in turn articulates a model for understanding how early twenty-first century digital serial media may elicit new virtual and participatory forms of social relation.Less
The Afterword discusses how the interlocking between forms of seriality in associationist theories of memory and the print medium of serial fiction demonstrates an extended historical development of the reciprocal linkage between mode of reception and material form in modern media. This recursiveness in turn articulates a model for understanding how early twenty-first century digital serial media may elicit new virtual and participatory forms of social relation.
Jennifer Richards
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- November 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780198809067
- eISBN:
- 9780191884153
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198809067.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
The Introduction argues that the history of Renaissance reading has privileged the silent reader, even though it is acknowledged that oral reading in this period was ubiquitous. It makes a case for ...
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The Introduction argues that the history of Renaissance reading has privileged the silent reader, even though it is acknowledged that oral reading in this period was ubiquitous. It makes a case for the ubiquity of oral reading—and of voice-aware silent reading—in a unique way, by shifting attentiovn from orality to vocality, moving our attention away from the oral/literacy debate introduced by Walter J. Ong in the mid-twentieth century. Making this shift enables us to re-focus on the question of how the physical voice brings meaning to a text. This chapter explores the patchy engagement with the voice in critical work in different disciplines, including music and post-medieval literary studies. It explains this book’s interest in voice qualities like tone and timbre. Finally, it introduces what will become a key argument: that a printed book needs to be understood as an experience as well as an object.Less
The Introduction argues that the history of Renaissance reading has privileged the silent reader, even though it is acknowledged that oral reading in this period was ubiquitous. It makes a case for the ubiquity of oral reading—and of voice-aware silent reading—in a unique way, by shifting attentiovn from orality to vocality, moving our attention away from the oral/literacy debate introduced by Walter J. Ong in the mid-twentieth century. Making this shift enables us to re-focus on the question of how the physical voice brings meaning to a text. This chapter explores the patchy engagement with the voice in critical work in different disciplines, including music and post-medieval literary studies. It explains this book’s interest in voice qualities like tone and timbre. Finally, it introduces what will become a key argument: that a printed book needs to be understood as an experience as well as an object.
Karin Kukkonen
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- February 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190913045
- eISBN:
- 9780190913076
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190913045.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
This chapter investigates how Sarah Fielding develops the kind of writing that leads readers to engage with the novel in a mode of reading that is both immersed and reflective. It traces this project ...
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This chapter investigates how Sarah Fielding develops the kind of writing that leads readers to engage with the novel in a mode of reading that is both immersed and reflective. It traces this project through Fielding’s comments on novel reading in her critical writings, her translation of Xenophon’s Memoirs of Socrates, and her own experimental metafiction in the 1750s (also in collaboration with Jane Collier). Fielding, it is shown, brings novel reading and its immersive qualities into conversation with the debates between the ancients and the moderns and the transhistorical perspectives arising from the mock-heroic mode. Also the theatre, and in particular Fielding’s engagement with Shakespeare, is shown to contribute to her bid to create the kind of novel that can both immerse readers and make them think.Less
This chapter investigates how Sarah Fielding develops the kind of writing that leads readers to engage with the novel in a mode of reading that is both immersed and reflective. It traces this project through Fielding’s comments on novel reading in her critical writings, her translation of Xenophon’s Memoirs of Socrates, and her own experimental metafiction in the 1750s (also in collaboration with Jane Collier). Fielding, it is shown, brings novel reading and its immersive qualities into conversation with the debates between the ancients and the moderns and the transhistorical perspectives arising from the mock-heroic mode. Also the theatre, and in particular Fielding’s engagement with Shakespeare, is shown to contribute to her bid to create the kind of novel that can both immerse readers and make them think.
András Kiséry
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- April 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780198746201
- eISBN:
- 9780191808814
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198746201.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
The marginalia of Gabriel Harvey, a humanist famously eager for a political career, allow us to insert Hamlet in the contexts of late sixteenth-century political education, the discussion about the ...
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The marginalia of Gabriel Harvey, a humanist famously eager for a political career, allow us to insert Hamlet in the contexts of late sixteenth-century political education, the discussion about the reason of state, and the culture of extracting sententiae from literary texts. This culture provides a formal link between tragedies and the focus on aphoristic formulations in Machiavelli’s sixteenth-century reception. To Harvey, reading tragedies meant making distinctions between moral or philosophical considerations and the principles of political action. A note in Harvey’s Chaucer implies a similarity between the utility of Shakespeare’s Lucrece and Hamlet, but it is in tragic drama that the tensions between religious–ethical and political norms and arguments become visible in the conflicting claims they make on dramatic characters and on readers.Less
The marginalia of Gabriel Harvey, a humanist famously eager for a political career, allow us to insert Hamlet in the contexts of late sixteenth-century political education, the discussion about the reason of state, and the culture of extracting sententiae from literary texts. This culture provides a formal link between tragedies and the focus on aphoristic formulations in Machiavelli’s sixteenth-century reception. To Harvey, reading tragedies meant making distinctions between moral or philosophical considerations and the principles of political action. A note in Harvey’s Chaucer implies a similarity between the utility of Shakespeare’s Lucrece and Hamlet, but it is in tragic drama that the tensions between religious–ethical and political norms and arguments become visible in the conflicting claims they make on dramatic characters and on readers.
Kate van Orden
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199360642
- eISBN:
- 9780199360666
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199360642.003.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
This chapter begins with a series of bibliographic basics that define the particular forms in which music was printed, with special attention to partbooks, choirbooks, oblong formats, ...
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This chapter begins with a series of bibliographic basics that define the particular forms in which music was printed, with special attention to partbooks, choirbooks, oblong formats, single-impression typography, and serial publication. Tract volumes (also known as binder’s volumes) are defined and discussed, as well as the challenges these forms present to cataloguers. An introduction to the field of music bibliography and studies of music printing is paired with specific cases from the chanson repertoire, illustrating the rationale for study of the material forms in which music circulated in the sixteenth century. The chapter introduces the book’s methodology, drawn from studies of print culture, book history, and performance-oriented histories of reading.Less
This chapter begins with a series of bibliographic basics that define the particular forms in which music was printed, with special attention to partbooks, choirbooks, oblong formats, single-impression typography, and serial publication. Tract volumes (also known as binder’s volumes) are defined and discussed, as well as the challenges these forms present to cataloguers. An introduction to the field of music bibliography and studies of music printing is paired with specific cases from the chanson repertoire, illustrating the rationale for study of the material forms in which music circulated in the sixteenth century. The chapter introduces the book’s methodology, drawn from studies of print culture, book history, and performance-oriented histories of reading.
Konrad Hirschler
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474408776
- eISBN:
- 9781474418812
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474408776.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Middle East History
The written text was a pervasive feature of cultural practices in the medieval Middle East. At the heart of book circulation stood libraries that experienced a rapid expansion from the twelfth ...
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The written text was a pervasive feature of cultural practices in the medieval Middle East. At the heart of book circulation stood libraries that experienced a rapid expansion from the twelfth century onwards. While the existence of these libraries is well known our knowledge of their content and structure has been very limited as hardly any medieval Arabic catalogues have been preserved. This book discusses the largest and earliest medieval library of the Middle East for which we have documentation – the Ashrafiya library in the very centre of Damascus – and edits its catalogue. This catalogue shows that even book collections attached to Sunni religious institutions could hold rather unexpected titles, such as stories from the 1001 Nights, manuals for traders, medical handbooks, Shiite prayers, love poetry and texts extolling wine consumption. At the same time this library catalogue decisively expands our knowledge of how the books were spatially organised on the bookshelves of such a large medieval library. With over 2,000 entries this catalogue is essential reading for anybody interested in the cultural and intellectual history of Arabic societies. Setting the Ashrafiya catalogue into a comparative perspective with contemporaneous libraries on the British Isles this book opens new perspectives for the study of medieval libraries.Less
The written text was a pervasive feature of cultural practices in the medieval Middle East. At the heart of book circulation stood libraries that experienced a rapid expansion from the twelfth century onwards. While the existence of these libraries is well known our knowledge of their content and structure has been very limited as hardly any medieval Arabic catalogues have been preserved. This book discusses the largest and earliest medieval library of the Middle East for which we have documentation – the Ashrafiya library in the very centre of Damascus – and edits its catalogue. This catalogue shows that even book collections attached to Sunni religious institutions could hold rather unexpected titles, such as stories from the 1001 Nights, manuals for traders, medical handbooks, Shiite prayers, love poetry and texts extolling wine consumption. At the same time this library catalogue decisively expands our knowledge of how the books were spatially organised on the bookshelves of such a large medieval library. With over 2,000 entries this catalogue is essential reading for anybody interested in the cultural and intellectual history of Arabic societies. Setting the Ashrafiya catalogue into a comparative perspective with contemporaneous libraries on the British Isles this book opens new perspectives for the study of medieval libraries.
Kathleen Lynch
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781526113894
- eISBN:
- 9781526138897
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526113894.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
The nature of note-taking is a renewed subject of scholarly inquiry – whether in service of humanistic eloquence, Baconian scientific practice, an aid to memory, or an early stage of writing. Messy ...
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The nature of note-taking is a renewed subject of scholarly inquiry – whether in service of humanistic eloquence, Baconian scientific practice, an aid to memory, or an early stage of writing. Messy notebooks give us access to a range of organisational strategies for managing knowledge, many of them improvisational, many evolving out of older humanistic practices. This chapter analyses the surviving evidence of Nehemiah Wallington’s four decades of devotional note-taking. Wallington exemplifies the godly practices of non-elite, lay cultures, but he does so as both an early adopter and a sustained practitioner. Two elements of his observational method emerge in ‘An Extract of severall passages in my life’: a juxtaposition of organizational schemes – one chronological, the other topical – and a habitual commitment to the bound blank book. Collectively and over time, his books constitute a memory palace – with size and colour of covers and pages operating mnemonically. By attending to such texts, we can also achieve a fuller understanding of early modern reading and writing practices.Less
The nature of note-taking is a renewed subject of scholarly inquiry – whether in service of humanistic eloquence, Baconian scientific practice, an aid to memory, or an early stage of writing. Messy notebooks give us access to a range of organisational strategies for managing knowledge, many of them improvisational, many evolving out of older humanistic practices. This chapter analyses the surviving evidence of Nehemiah Wallington’s four decades of devotional note-taking. Wallington exemplifies the godly practices of non-elite, lay cultures, but he does so as both an early adopter and a sustained practitioner. Two elements of his observational method emerge in ‘An Extract of severall passages in my life’: a juxtaposition of organizational schemes – one chronological, the other topical – and a habitual commitment to the bound blank book. Collectively and over time, his books constitute a memory palace – with size and colour of covers and pages operating mnemonically. By attending to such texts, we can also achieve a fuller understanding of early modern reading and writing practices.
S. J. D. Green
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199608416
- eISBN:
- 9780191755422
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199608416.003.0011
- Subject:
- Religion, Church History, History of Christianity
This chapter presents Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree (1871-1954) as a pioneering sociologist of religion and as an observer of declining levels of biblical literacy in Britain. Focusing on the ...
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This chapter presents Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree (1871-1954) as a pioneering sociologist of religion and as an observer of declining levels of biblical literacy in Britain. Focusing on the controversial treatment of religion in English Life and Leisure (1951) by Rowntree and G.S. Lavers, it shows that Rowntree was not just a social scientist but a lifelong believer, a Christian and a Quaker. Rowntree’s religion was profoundly biblical and activist and this made him unusually attentive to the place of the Bible in English culture. Not only did his book offer a statistical description of a ‘basic change’ in English religious life, which consisted in falling church attendance and rising anti-clericalism, but it linked this change to the spread of cheap print, which sapped the popular commitment to the devotional reading of the Scriptures. Rowntree’s originality as a sociologist therefore consisted in tracing a novel relationship between the religious life and the reading habits of the post-war British population.Less
This chapter presents Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree (1871-1954) as a pioneering sociologist of religion and as an observer of declining levels of biblical literacy in Britain. Focusing on the controversial treatment of religion in English Life and Leisure (1951) by Rowntree and G.S. Lavers, it shows that Rowntree was not just a social scientist but a lifelong believer, a Christian and a Quaker. Rowntree’s religion was profoundly biblical and activist and this made him unusually attentive to the place of the Bible in English culture. Not only did his book offer a statistical description of a ‘basic change’ in English religious life, which consisted in falling church attendance and rising anti-clericalism, but it linked this change to the spread of cheap print, which sapped the popular commitment to the devotional reading of the Scriptures. Rowntree’s originality as a sociologist therefore consisted in tracing a novel relationship between the religious life and the reading habits of the post-war British population.
