Search Results

The Sense of an Audience

Lucy Newlyn

in Reading, Writing, and Romanticism: The Anxiety of Reception

Early 19th-century England marks the rise of the reader in a number of distinctive ways. For Chee Dimmock, one of the outstanding characteristics of modernity is that an apparent universalisation of ... More

Early 19th-century England marks the rise of the reader in a number of distinctive ways. For Chee Dimmock, one of the outstanding characteristics of modernity is that an apparent universalisation of reading practices is accompanied by an increasing activity — and thus by a widening gap between the common reader and the expert. This, too, was a feature of modernity apprehended by English writers at the turn of the 18th century, when increasing literacy created a mass-reading audience, but when the rise of professional criticism registered the emergence of a new race of specialist readers. The mutual pressures exerted on writers and their critics, which mounted under the increasingly competitive conditions of periodical culture in the early 19th century were further intensified by this dual consciousness.Less

‘A Poet Reading’

William May

in Stevie Smith and Authorship

This chapter explores Smith's own reading practice to help explain her playful and often hostile relationship with tradition. It focuses on her troubled relationship with her sister, an English ... More

This chapter explores Smith's own reading practice to help explain her playful and often hostile relationship with tradition. It focuses on her troubled relationship with her sister, an English literature scholar, and considers its impact on both her attitudes to reading and her literary tastes. It traces this sibling antagonism through to her 1920s reading notebooks and eventually to her own book reviews, which often served as defensive gestures towards her projected reading public. It concludes by noting Smith's deliberate concealment of her own literary influences in essays, interviews, and public appearances.Less

Prologue: What’s in a Name?

Chris Stamatakis

in Sir Thomas Wyatt and the Rhetoric of Rewriting: 'Turning the Word'

This introductory chapter studies the idea of verbal turning in Wyatt’s writing—both as a theme within his texts, and as rescriptive traces that colour the material condition of those texts. Wyatt ... More

This introductory chapter studies the idea of verbal turning in Wyatt’s writing—both as a theme within his texts, and as rescriptive traces that colour the material condition of those texts. Wyatt theorises two key principles of verbal transformation: ‘misreporting’ and ‘difference’. Even slight or innocuous acts of rescription—whether by Wyatt’s own hand or by his scribes, compilers and readers—can markedly transform meaning. This textual mutability not only frustrates biographical identifications, but also forces us to understand Wyatt’s authorship through the scriptive interventions of copyists and editors, as his verse is multifariously handled during its transmission and reception. Consideration is made of the different material textualities that characterise Wyatt’s manuscript volumes, and of the fascination with answer poetry in these collections. The chapter also examines the interplay of copying and copia (verbal abundance) and the importance of collational reading practices in the early sixteenth century.Less

How Readers Read Their Augustines

Arnoud S. Q. Visser

in Reading Augustine in the Reformation: The Flexibility of Intellectual Authority in Europe, 1500-1620

This chapter examines book ownership and reading practices of individual readers of Augustine in sixteenth-century Europe. Case studies of private libraries in England and monastic collections in ... More

This chapter examines book ownership and reading practices of individual readers of Augustine in sixteenth-century Europe. Case studies of private libraries in England and monastic collections in Italy reveal the reality of Augustine's dissemination to be far messier than a chronological account of the printing history would suggest. Manuscript reading marks in individual copies confirm the lively variety of ways in which Augustine was read, ranging from pragmatic underlining to emotional responses. These individual reading styles enabled readers to use the same texts for different ends, as is shown in a case study of three formative English theologians, Thomas Cranmer, Peter Martyr Vermigli and William Laud. Their techniques of classifying or historicizing quotations illuminate how readers, regardless of the aims of authors and editors, often pursued their own approach to Augustine in search of confirmation of their religious perspective.Less

Constructing New Reading Publics in Late Ming China

Anne E. McLaren

in Printing and Book Culture in Late Imperial China

This chapter examines the emergence of new reading publics in China during the late Ming Dynasty. It traces the shifting constructions of readers, authors, and editors; the broadening of reading ... More

This chapter examines the emergence of new reading publics in China during the late Ming Dynasty. It traces the shifting constructions of readers, authors, and editors; the broadening of reading practices during this period; and the emergence of an apologia for vernacular print. The chapter discusses the paradigms underlying notions of readers; authors and reading practices, beginning with the standards set by the Neo-Confucian thinker Zhu Xi; and argues that the expanding lexicon for authoring and reading texts was based on a set of suppositions seeking to legitimize vernacular print. It also describes the editorial practices of Yu Xiangdou, who was perhaps the first to write commentary aimed specifically at readers with low educational and literacy levels.Less

Sponsoring Literacy in Appalachia

Samantha NeCamp

in Literacy in the Mountains: Community, Newspapers, and Writing in Appalachia

Using Deborah Brandt’s theory of literacy sponsorship, this chapter examines newspaper editors’ efforts to cultivate an imagined community of readers. It illustrates the ways in which the editors ... More

Using Deborah Brandt’s theory of literacy sponsorship, this chapter examines newspaper editors’ efforts to cultivate an imagined community of readers. It illustrates the ways in which the editors taught, modeled, and regulated literacy via discussions of appropriate reading and writing practices. It also argues that advertisements for texts of all kinds debunk the idea of a textless Appalachia and discusses what the editors’ choices of advertisements suggest about how they imagined their audiences.Less

Introduction

Melanie V. Dawson and Meredith L. Goldsmith

in American Literary History and the Turn toward Modernity

Across the period from 1880 to 1930, the processes of rethinking the past can be read as a historical gesture as significant as the consideration of wholly new works of art, resulting in a period of ... More

Across the period from 1880 to 1930, the processes of rethinking the past can be read as a historical gesture as significant as the consideration of wholly new works of art, resulting in a period of experimentation, negotiation, hybridity, and historical dualities. Despite pressures to valorize the modern and thus separate literary eras at the century’s dividing mark, authors from the turn of the century, or the T-20 period, explore their historical legacies as well as anticipatory inscriptions of the new. Calling for a reading practice that encourages both forward and backward glancing, essays collected in this volume attest to the irreducibility of the century’s turn, which can be read as an era of historical complexity rather than as a period shaped by a decisive teleological march into new intellectual territory. Exploring the permeable boundaries and elastic categories of a literary history rich in multiple investments, essays here stress American literature’s navigation of moving boundaries that encompass not only temporal markers but intersecting literary and cultural traditions.Less

Reading and the construction of common places

Geoff Baker

in Reading and Politics in Early Modern England: The Mental World of a Seventeenth-century Catholic Gentleman

This chapter considers how William Blundell constructed his commonplace books Adversaria and Historica. It evaluates the extent to which these commonplace books support the argument that by the end ... More

This chapter considers how William Blundell constructed his commonplace books Adversaria and Historica. It evaluates the extent to which these commonplace books support the argument that by the end of the seventeenth century commonplace authors abandoned the forms expounded in printed guides on structuring commonplace books and exerted autonomy over the style that they employed. It suggests that Blundell did not stick stringently to established methods of commonplacing and he designed a method that suited his purposes and accorded with his reading practice.Less

Early Modern Englishwomen and Modes of Bible-Reading

Femke Molekamp

in Women and the Bible in Early Modern England: Religious Reading and Writing

This chapter details the structures and materiality of female Bible-reading practices. It examines accounts and examples of diverse modes of female Bible-reading in female autobiographical writing, ... More

This chapter details the structures and materiality of female Bible-reading practices. It examines accounts and examples of diverse modes of female Bible-reading in female autobiographical writing, commonplace books and other religious texts, as well as in exemplary literature directed at women. It shows that women engaged in both linear and non-linear modes of using the Bible. Using these traces of reading, the chapter locates sets of female hermeneutics: for example typological and providential methods of reading and writing. The chapter outlines which books of the Bible women read most intensively and how these reading habits affected female literary production.Less

Contrasts

Philip Hardie

in Classical Constructions: Papers in Memory of Don Fowler, Classicist and Epicurean

This chapter explores the history of a certain kind of literary criticism, with a view to raising questions about the origins, uses, and legitimacy of opposition and contrast as ways of constructing ... More

This chapter explores the history of a certain kind of literary criticism, with a view to raising questions about the origins, uses, and legitimacy of opposition and contrast as ways of constructing reading practices. The contrast is that between two authors, Virgil and Ovid.Less

The Reader and World Crime Fiction: The (Private) Eye of the Beholder

Stewart King

in Criminal Moves: Modes of Mobility in Crime Fiction

This chapter reflects on the tension between national-focused and more worldly readings of crime fiction. It treats crime fiction as a form of world literature and examines new ways of conceiving ... More

This chapter reflects on the tension between national-focused and more worldly readings of crime fiction. It treats crime fiction as a form of world literature and examines new ways of conceiving relationships between crime writers, readers and texts that eschew the common categorization of a universal British-American tradition, on the one hand, and, on the other, localized national traditions. Following Jorge Luis Borges, the chapter argues that the transnationality of the crime genre does not reside exclusively within the text, but rather emerges through the interaction of the reader and the text. What emerges is a transnational and trans-historical reading practice that respects the local but also allows for innovative connections and new paradigms to be forged when texts are read beyond the national context.Less

A Leap of Faith into Moses: Freud’s Invitation to Evenly Suspended Attention

Yael Segalovitz

in Freud and Monotheism: Moses and the Violent Origins of Religion

This chapter argues that Moses and Monotheism invites its readers to approach it in a state of “evenly-suspended attention,” the mindset that Freud recommends his colleagues practice in the ... More

This chapter argues that Moses and Monotheism invites its readers to approach it in a state of “evenly-suspended attention,” the mindset that Freud recommends his colleagues practice in the therapeutic scene. This method of reading is contrasted with the prominent one in the discipline of literature, namely, close reading. Developed by the Anglo-American New Critics around the time of Moses’ publication, close reading depends on what Freud terms “deliberate attention.” This chapter further demonstrates that reading Moses in a state of evenly-suspended attention is understood by Freud to require an act of faith in one’s unconscious or internal alterity. It concludes with a call for a reevaluation of what a Freudian or psychoanalytic reading is typically understood to mean in the humanities. That is, while Freud is conventionally thought of as the optimal close reader, Moses suggests otherwise.Less

Marking

in Interacting with Print: Elements of Reading in the Era of Print Saturation

This chapter considers bookmarking as involving a wider range of interactions, moving beyond reading to the social lives of books more generally and the marks left as a result of interactions by ... More

This chapter considers bookmarking as involving a wider range of interactions, moving beyond reading to the social lives of books more generally and the marks left as a result of interactions by their everyday users. Many people see such traces and modifications as defacement, but recent scholarship considers the evidentiary value of marks in books, especially marginalia, and what they might tell us about the reading practices of the past. As such, the chapter first emphasizes marking as a materially determined phenomenon, one that has much to tell us about the domestic and social roles of book objects during this period. Second, it considers some examples of the ways that printed books in this period call forth certain kinds of conventional marking practices: not readers' personal reactions but a kind of “fill in the blanks” augmentation or completion of the printed text. Finally, the chapter examines some instances of nineteenth-century bookmarking that emphasize the social, domestic, and commemorative functions of the inscribed codex.Less

Introduction

Geoff Baker

in Reading and Politics in Early Modern England: The Mental World of a Seventeenth-century Catholic Gentleman

This introductory chapter discusses the theme of this volume, which is about the activities and mental world of William Blundell, a seventeenth-century Catholic gentleman in Lancashire, England. The ... More

This introductory chapter discusses the theme of this volume, which is about the activities and mental world of William Blundell, a seventeenth-century Catholic gentleman in Lancashire, England. The first part of this book considers the extent to which his public activities corroborate his claims of passive victimhood and the second examines Blundell's reading practices as documented in his commonplace books Adversaria and Historica. This volume also evaluates the extent to which Blundell's reputation was justified by his actions and suggests that he was neither the passive victim nor the entirely loyal subject that he and others have claimed.Less

Introduction: ‘An Author of Commanding Altitude’

Edward Paleit

in War, Liberty, and Caesar: Responses to Lucan's Bellum Ciuile, ca. 1580 - 1650

Starting with an examination of two readings of Lucan in the hitherto little-known play Cinthias Revenge (1613), by the English lawyer and satirist John Stephens, the introduction argues that Lucan’s ... More

Starting with an examination of two readings of Lucan in the hitherto little-known play Cinthias Revenge (1613), by the English lawyer and satirist John Stephens, the introduction argues that Lucan’s sharp rise in popularity during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and the equally pronounced revival of interest in the Bellum Ciuile amongst classics and English scholars over the last thirty years, makes a study of Lucan’s Renaissance reception timely and topical. Drawing on the ‘sociology of reading practices’ outlined by Renaissance scholars such as Anthony Grafton, Lisa Jardine, William Sherman and others, it argues that firstly responses to Lucan must be situated in relation to the reading habits and assumptions of their time, rather than read through modern accounts of his text (especially those structured teleologically around ideas like the epic tradition); but that it is also necessary to recognize the specific dynamics of individual engagements within a narrative of historical conflict and change. It stresses the importance of political experience and structures of feeling alongside political ideology for understanding Lucan’s reception.Less

Scrapbooks and Women’s Reading Practices

Alexis Easley

in New Media and the Rise of the Popular Woman Writer, 1832-1860

In this chapter, my focus shifts from women’s roles as writers to their roles as readers and consumers of the cheap weekly press, 1820–60. I first examine scrapbooks held by John Rylands Library and ... More

In this chapter, my focus shifts from women’s roles as writers to their roles as readers and consumers of the cheap weekly press, 1820–60. I first examine scrapbooks held by John Rylands Library and the Harry Page Collection at Manchester Metropolitan University, which have much to tell us about how middle-class women read: their processes of selecting, copying, arranging, and editing printed scraps in creative ways. I first explore some of the challenges that arise when reading women’s scrapbooks and then demonstrate methodologies that help us begin to unpack their meanings, especially their relationship to the cheap popular press, which served both as a creative inspiration and a source of content. In the next section, I examine a type of content that was particularly ubiquitous in scrapbooks: poetry. The frequent appearance of verse in women’s albums corresponded with the proliferation of poetry in miscellaneous columns and other popular publication formats during the early and mid-Victorian periods. Finally, I examine a remarkable scrapbook from the 1850s that provides an enticing view of the broad range of periodicals and books middle-class women read—and how they used these disparate materials to imbue their leisure time with meaning.Less

Paleontology in Parts

Gowan Dawson

in Show Me the Bone: Reconstructing Prehistoric Monsters in Nineteenth-Century Britain and America

This chapter explores how the law of correlation became inextricably entwined with Victorian Britain’s most distinctive and prevalent mode of publication: serialization. Owen’s celebrated ... More

This chapter explores how the law of correlation became inextricably entwined with Victorian Britain’s most distinctive and prevalent mode of publication: serialization. Owen’s celebrated reconstructions of prehistoric creatures from just fragmentary parts were published sequentially in serial form, and rendered considerably more remarkable and compelling by the suspense and anticipation involved. Owen, at the same time, was particularly enthralled by the dynamics of serial fiction and his literary reading practices shed important light on his Cuvierian paleontological procedures. This connection between correlation and serialization was one that was also recognized by many of the leading serial novelists of the period including William Makepeace Thackeray and Henry James, who adopted metaphors from paleontology to describe their own authorial practices.Less