Books and Collectors 1200-1700. Essays Presented to Andrew Watson, edited by James P. Carley and Colin G.C. Tite (original) (raw)
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The Adventures and Misadventures of a Festschrift
1969
It is no small secret to scholars across the disciplines that the festschrift is a dying enterprise. Increasingly, trade presses are following university presses in setting strict policies against them, which makes the appearance of The Modernist Imagination: Intellectual History and Critical Theory: Essays in Honor of Martin Jay, edited by five of Jay’s former students (Warren Breckman, Peter E. Gordon, A. Dirk Moses, Samuel Moyn, and Elliot Neaman) all the more surprising. The Modernist Imagination commits the expected cardinal sins of the festschrift. The essays are, at times, a bit self-gratifying and too indebted to the critical methodologies and theoretical lenses of the scholar they attempt to praise. They also often fail to engage the work of Jay critically in ways that others who were not bound to produce an essay in his honor might, and, like many a festschrift before it, this one fails to find cohesion and unity, or speak a direct critical narrative. But for all of its we...
Modern Philology, 2016
There is a saying among scholar-librarians that goes something like this: all manuscripts are copies, and all printed books are unique. 1 In the past, such bibliographical witticism served to keep newcomers to the field of rare books and manuscripts on their toes. Today, such truths may not be selfevident. Manuscripts seem to promise greater research value because of their apparent uniqueness, and they continue to command high sale prices in the marketplace, even while the cost of many antiquarian books continues to fall. Curators of special collections, meanwhile, are increasingly asked to justify purchases of printed materials that may seem unnecessary, redundant, or even burdensome when electronic surrogates are readily available via digital libraries such as Google Books. Some commentators treat the discarding of physical books as a fait accompli: "What are we going to do with all that space that was once devoted to storage in the form of stacks?" 2 It is here that David McKitterick has much to teach us. Written as a companion to his Print, Manuscript and the Search for Order, 1450-1830 (2003), Old Books, New Technologies explores what McKitterick calls the "myth of the uniformity of print" (42). We learn about the vexed historical role that printed books play as unique, physical artifacts that, more frequently than not, are presented as identical copies. Yet it is only by analyzing multiple wit-For permission to reuse, please contact
Makers and Users of Medieval Books: Essays in Honour of A. S. G. Edwards
The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 2016
Book Reviews 489 training. Here as elsewhere, greater consistency across the volume in terms of presentation and audience would be welcome. the volume concludes with four essays on Welsh sources that make it a broader Celtic enterprise, and while the articles on Welsh sources are clustered together, in their examination of statutes governing the bardic profession and what they reveal about late-medieval Welsh poetry production (David N. Klausner) as well as in their astute exploration of the terminology regarding poets and storytelling practices in the Fourth branch of the Mabinogi (Patrick Ford), they very much cohere with other articles in the volume about the broader business of storytelling. the third Welsh essay bridges Ireland and Wales productively: Karen Jankulak's excellent article on the extent of Irish settlement in Ceredigion (Cardiganshire) reassesses evidence including ogham inscriptions and literary foundation myths. While Jankulak shows that much of the direct evidence for Irish presence in Ceredigion does not hold up, she concludes with the important point, germane to studies on the Irish Sea and North Sea region, that "there is no reason to take this lack of evidence as evidence that there was not such a presence. this case is one of many examples in which deconstruction of the seductive literary narrative should not lead us to discount entirely the reality of contact" (p. 264). that the subjects, periods, and sources covered in Gablánach in Scélaigecht are so extensive is a real testament to the reach of Ann Dooley's voice throughout Celtic Studies. there are several pieces of solid scholarship in this Festschrift, as well as multiple excellent and important essays, and a JEGP readership will be rewarded by selective reading. However, attention to storytelling (scélaigecht) in the title begs the question-what story is this Festschrift telling, and who is the audience? the volume would have benefited
2017
“This rich crop of new empirical research in book history focuses especially on the movement of books through markets and networks of users. Eleven case studies span an impressive variety of analytical techniques, primary sources, and contexts.” (Ann M. Blair, Henry Charles Lea Professor of History, Harvard University, USA) // “This book contributes significantly to a spatial turn in the history of the book. Its contributors identify innovative means of combining the study of the life-cycle of books with their mode and compass of transmission. The collection notably extends our understanding of the social history of knowledge.” (James Raven, Professor of Modern History, University of Essex, UK) // This book presents and explores a challenging new approach in book history. It offers a coherent volume of thirteen chapters in the field of early modern book history covering a wide range of topics and it is written by renowned scholars in the field. The rationale and content of this volume will revitalize the theoretical and methodological debate in book history. The book will be of interest to scholars and students in the field of early modern book history as well as in a range of other disciplines. It offers book historians an innovative methodological approach on the life cycle of books in and outside Europe. It is also highly relevant for social-economic and cultural historians because of the focus on the commercial, legal, spatial, material and social aspects of book culture. Scholars that are interested in the history of science, ideas and news will find several chapters dedicated to the production, circulation and consumption of knowledge and news media. http://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319533650 http://www.palgrave.com/de/book/9783319533650 Chapter 1. Introduction Books and Book History in Motion: Materiality, Sociality and Spaciality; Daniel Bellingradt and Jeroen Salman. PART I: BEYOND PRODUCTION. Chapter 2. Promoting the Counter Reformation in Provincial France; Malcolm Walsby. Chapter 3. Conrad Gessner and the Mobility of the Book; Paul Nelles. Chapter 4. Paper Networks and the Book Industry; Daniel Bellingradt. Chapter 5. Marketing a New Legal Code in Fifteenth Century Castile; Benito Rial Costas. PART II: BEYOND CIRCULATION. Chapter 6. Links between Newspapers and Books; Andreas Golob. Chapter 7. Publishers, Editors, and Artists in the Marketing of News in the Dutch Republic circa 1700; Joop W. Koopmans. Chapter 8. The Battle of Medical Books; Jeroen Salman. Chapter 9. What killed Théodore Rilliet de Saussure?; Mark Curran. PART III: BEYOND CONSUMPTION. Chapter 10. Reading Strategies in Scotland circa 1750 1820; Vivienne Dunstan. Chapter 11. Italian Books and French Medical Libraries in the Renaissance; Shanti Graheli. Chapter 12. Printed in Europe, consumed in Ottoman lands; Geoffrey Roper. Epilogue: Matter, Sociability and Space; Joad Raymond.
This text takes the form of a conversation between Danné Ojeda and Mathieu Lommen with a preliminary introduction by Danné referring to book history and the history of reading. The talk took place on 14 May 2014, in the Special Collections (Bijzondere Collecties), that house medieval manuscripts, books, prints, among other heritage materials in the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Through the introduction and the following conversation, we will examine books’ materiality and form as they define both the history of the book from its infancy and that of reading. The former will help us to understand how books have influenced not only thinking but also human ergonomic behavior towards these artifacts. The text also highlights the development of book forms by examining why certain transformations or deviations to the traditional book form took place and their impact on the history of book development and reading. This is in order to ascertain the consequences of the book’s physical transformation on the reader’s use and appreciation of it as a basic object of knowledge. In this regard, first the introductory text offers a succinct overview of the changes and transformations of the book’s physical forms. Second, the conversation focuses on the Special Collection of the University of Amsterdam in order to expose the criteria, guidelines, and parameters which classify a book as a “collectable object”, to be archived for the preservation of a record of the history of books and their forms.