Review of Erik Kwakkel, Books before print (ARC Humanities Press, 2018) (original) (raw)

2019, Script & Print 43:3

Books before Print is part of a relatively new series entitled Medieval Media and Culture, published by ARC Humanities Press, the publishing arm of CARMEN The Worldwide Medieval Network, in conjunction with Amsterdam University Press. This series seeks to highlight "ways in which individuals interacted with written, visual, dramatic, and material media in medieval and early modern culture[,] ... to illuminate and contextualize particular aspects of medieval culture through in-depth, insightful examination, and in so doing, to shed light on the ways in which the social may be revealed through the cultural." This volume is a flawed but still valuable example of the benefits of this approach. It presents, in a clear and accessible fashion, a detailed and well-illustrated introduction to the production and use of books in medieval Europe, one which unites attention to the materiality of books, as a subject in its own right, with the social and cultural information that can be gleaned from a close study of that materiality. While it presents a highly readable and engaging history, it has several unfortunate blind spots, as will be discussed below. As he states in his preface, Kwakkel intends the volume as an "introductory tool" for undergraduate students new to book history, graduates wishing to deepen their knowledge through case studies, and general readers interested in medieval book culture (p. xix). Kwakkel