Cultures of collecting

2021 ◽  
pp. 138-164
Author(s):  
David Pearson
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Medieval Manuscripts ◽  
Printed Books ◽  
Book Collecting ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Material Evidence

Studies of private libraries and their owners invariably talk about ‘book collecting’—is this the right terminology? After summarizing our broadly held understanding of the evolution of bibliophile collecting from the eighteenth century onwards, this chapter considers the extent to which similar behaviours can be detected (or not) in the seventeenth, drawing on the material evidence of bookbindings, wording in wills, and other sources. Do we find subject-based collecting, of the kind we are familiar with today, as a characteristic of early modern book owners? Some distinctions are recognized in ways in which medieval manuscripts (as opposed to printed books) were brought together at this time. The relationship between libraries and museums, and contemporary attitudes to them, is explored. The concluding argument is that ‘collecting’ is a careless word to use in the seventeenth-century context; just as we should talk about users rather than readers, we should use ‘owners’ rather than ‘collectors’ as the default term, unless there is evidence to the contrary.

scholarly journals Media Literate Catholics: Seeing, Reading and Writing in Early Modern Participatory Culture

Authorship ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Feike Dietz
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
New Media ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Media Literacy ◽  
Participatory Culture ◽  
Reading And Writing ◽  
Printed Books ◽  
Catholic Culture ◽  
Media Practices ◽  
The Relationship

In this article I use the concept of ‘media literacy’ – generally discussed in the context of new media – to analyse media ability and conversance in seventeenth century Catholic culture. In particular, I focus on an untitled and anonymous Dutch composite volume which combines handwritten texts, printed texts and images. By reconstructing the relationship between the manuscript and its printed sources, I argue that the composite volume was the result of a meditative reading and writing process in which fragments from the popular religious emblem book Pia Desideria (1624) and other contiguous printed books were combined in a new multimedial product, which may serve as a means to share (media) skills and knowledge, and to facilitate the meditation processes of future consumers. I demonstrate that literacies now associated with new media – such as the ability to actively participate in media practices, and to consult hypertexts – were vital to early modern Catholics who constructed their identity by using and producing media.

Afterword

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria Brownlee
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Popular Entertainment ◽  
Departure Point ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Relationship

The recent upturn in biblically based films in Anglophone cinema is the departure point for this Afterword reflecting on the Bible’s impact on popular entertainment and literature in early modern England. Providing a survey of the book’s themes, and drawing together the central arguments, the discussion reminds that literary writers not only read and used the Bible in different ways to different ends, but also imbibed and scrutinized dominant interpretative principles and practices in their work. With this in mind, the Afterword outlines the need for further research into the relationship between biblical readings and literary writings in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe.

The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Dance

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
William Shakespeare ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Reference Point ◽  
The Body ◽  
Single Source ◽  
Dance Studies ◽  
Disciplinary Field ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Integral Feature

The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Dance is the first collection of essays to examine the relationship between William Shakespeare and dance. Despite recent academic interest in movement, materiality, and the body—and the growth of dance studies as a disciplinary field—Shakespeare’s employment of dance as both a theatrical device and thematic reference point remains under-studied. The reimagining of his writing as dance works is also neglected as a subject for research. Alan Brissenden’s 1981 Shakespeare and the Dance remains the seminal text for those interested in early modern dancing and its appearances within Shakespearean drama, but this new volume provides a single source of reference for dance as both an integral feature of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century culture and as a means of translating Shakespearean text into movement.

Jeremiah in Art

2021 ◽  
pp. 578-609
Author(s):  
Mary Chilton Callaway
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Dynamic Process ◽  
Medieval Manuscripts ◽  
Printed Books ◽  
Artistic Representations ◽  
The Way

The story of Jeremiah in art reveals a dynamic process of traditional tropes that signaled the ancient prophet blended with contemporary features mirroring the viewer. This interplay made artistic representations of Jeremiah at once familiar, yet also at times unsettling in the way they contemporized the prophetic message. The chapter explores the developing image of Jeremiah through the centuries in five media: painted images on ancient frescoes, stone statues in medieval cathedrals and monasteries, illuminations in medieval manuscripts, woodcuts in early modern printed books, and various forms in modernity. Jewish, Christian, and Muslim images of the prophet together display a process in which historically contingent tropes gradually became timeless markers of the prophet. At the same time, these images show the power of Jeremiah to speak prophetically in new circumstances.

scholarly journals Sounding Silence: Inspiration And Passiveness In The Reading Of Early Modern Women

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Essig García
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Silent Reading ◽  
Cultural Practice ◽  
Religious Experiences ◽  
Material Change ◽  
Early Modern Women ◽  
Las Mujeres

Abstract: cultural and material change described by historians of reading intersects with literary history in different and complex ways. An example is the cultural practice of silent reading in intimacy, which came to be pivotal for the literature of sensibility. It was gendered female in the eighteenth century and looked upon with disfavour, notably by moralists and pedagogues. However, not very long before, silent reading was associated with spirituality and women’s religious experiences, and was compatible with the virtues expected of the “lady of the Renaissance”. Several texts from the seventeenth century, notably diaries by women, will be discussed. Título en español: “Resonancia del silencio: inspiración y pasividad en la lectura femenina en el siglo XVII”.Resumen:los cambios culturales y materiales que describe la historia de la lectura entran en relaciones variadas y complejas con la historia literaria. Un ejemplo de esa dialéctica es la evolución de la práctica de la lectura silenciosa en recogimiento, que alcanzó una importancia extraordinaria para la novelística del Dieciocho. Se consideraba propia de las mujeres y estaba mal vista por moralistas y pedagogos. No mucho antes, empero, la lectura en silencio había sido un componente de la experiencia espiritual y religiosa de la mujer del Renacimiento, y como tal compatible con las virtudes femeninas. El artículo incluye comentarios de varios textos del diecisiete, en particular diarios de mujeres.

Stancetaking in seventeenth-century prefaces on obstetrics

2014 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisco Alonso Almeida ◽  
Margarita Mele-Marrero
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Power Relationship ◽  
Epistemic Stance ◽  
Authorial Identity ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
The Relationship

This paper deals with authorial stance in prefatory material of Early Modern English manuals on women’s diseases. Publications on this field from between 1612 and 1699 constitute our corpus of study. Original digitalised texts have been analysed manually to identify and detect structures concerning authorial identity and stance, according to the model developed by Marín-Arrese (2009). This model for the identification of effective and epistemic stance strategies enables us to describe both the relationship between the authors and their texts and, more specifically, the power relationship between the writers and their audience. One of the most important conclusions of this study concerns the strategic use of stance markers to enhance the quality of these books and make them appropriate for a wide variety of readers.

Freedom of Expression and Democracy

2021 ◽  
pp. 81-105
Author(s):  
Ashutosh Bhagwat ◽  
James Weinstein
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Free Speech ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Popular Government ◽  
The Press ◽  
Political Association ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter focuses on the relationship between freedom of expression and democracy from both a historical and a theoretical perspective. The term ‘freedom of expression’ includes free speech, freedom of the press, the right to petition government, and freedom of political association. Eighteenth-century proponents of popular government had long offered democratic justifications for freedom of expression. The chapter then demonstrates that freedom of political expression is a necessary component of democracy. It describes two core functions of such expression: an informing and a legitimating one. Finally, the chapter examines the concept of ‘democracy’, noting various ways in which democracies vary among themselves, as well as the implications of those variations for freedom of expression. Even before democratic forms of government took root in the modern world.

The Curious Journey of “Copyright” in East Asia

2019 ◽  
pp. 21-61
Author(s):  
Fei-Hsien Wang
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
East Asia ◽  
East Asian ◽  
English Word ◽  
Local Culture ◽  
Printed Books ◽  
National Survival ◽  
The Right ◽  
Chinese Term

This chapter traces how the English word “copyright” became the Chinese term “banquan,” which literally means “the right to printing blocks.” It examines the negotiations and struggles of the early East Asian promoters and practitioners of copyright with the understandings of ownership of the book. The chapter looks at the use of words the early promoters associated with the notion of copyright. It discusses the practices they and their contemporaries undertook in the name of “the right to printing blocks” as a crucial subject of inquiry. The early promoters of copyright in East Asia portrayed copyright as a progressive universal doctrine completely alien to the local culture, one that, for the sake of national survival, needed to be transplanted artificially. The chapter also points out the “new” ways contemporaries used to declare banquan ownership that were derived from some early modern practices whereby profits were secured from printed books.

Plague Time: Space, Fear, and Emergency Statecraft in Early Modern Italy

2021 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 87-111
Author(s):  
Nicholas A. Eckstein
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Temporal Dimension ◽  
Early Modern Italy ◽  
Time Space ◽  
Contingent Response ◽  
Spatio Temporal ◽  
Historical Examination

Michel Foucault argued famously that early modern European governors responded to plague by quarantining entire urban populations and placing citizens under minute surveillance. For Foucault, such sixteenth- and seventeenth-century policies were the first steps towards an authoritarian paradigm that would only emerge in full in the eighteenth century. The present article argues that Foucault’s model is too abstracted to function as a tool for the historical examination of specific emergencies, and it proposes an alternative analytical framework. Addressing itself to actual events in early modern Italy, the article reveals that when plague threatened, Florentine and Bolognese health officials projected themselves into a spatio-temporal dimension in which official actions and perceptions were determined solely by the spread of contagion. This dimension, “plague time,” was not a stage on the irresistible journey towards Foucault’s “utopia of the perfectly governed city.” A contingent response to a recurrent existential menace, plague time rose and fell in response to events, and may be understood as a season.

Defining Man as Animal Religiosum in English Religious Writing ca. 1650–ca. 1700

2019 ◽  
Vol 88 (4) ◽  
pp. 925-952 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. J. W. Mills
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Relationship With God ◽  
Rational Animal ◽  
Cambridge Platonism ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Subsequent Incorporation ◽  
The Continuum

This article surveys the emergence and usage of the redefinition of man not as animal rationale (rational animal) but as animal religiosum (religious animal) by numerous English theologians between 1650 and 1700. Across the continuum of English Protestant thought, human nature was being redescribed as unique due to its religious, not primarily its rational, capabilities. This article charts said appearance as a contribution to debates over man's relationship with God; then its subsequent incorporation into the discussion over the theological consequences of arguments in favor of animal rationality, as well as its uses in anti-atheist apologetics; and then the sudden disappearance of the definition of man as animal religiosum at the beginning of the eighteenth century. In doing so, the article hopes to make a useful contribution to our understanding of changing early modern understandings of human nature by reasserting the significance of theological writing in the dispute over the relationship between humans and beasts. As a consequence, it offers a more wide-ranging account of man as animal religiosum than the current focus on “Cambridge Platonism” and “Latitudinarianism” allows.

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