ENGLISH

The Immaterial Book : Reading and Romance in Early Modern England

By Sarah Wall-Randell

Book information

Publisher
University of Michigan Press
Year
2013
ISBN
9780472029143, 9780472118779
LCC
PR428
Language
english
Format
EPUB
Filesize
626 kB (641329 bytes)
Edition
1
Pages
194\0
Time added
2023-08-14 15:09:40
1500-1700 -- History and criticism. ; RomancesBooks and reading in literature. ; English literatEnglish -- History and criticism.

Description

In romances--Renaissance England's version of the fantasy novel--characters often discover books that turn out to be magical or prophetic, and to offer insights into their readers' selves. The Immaterial Book examines scenes of reading in important romance texts across genres: Spenser's Faerie Queene, Shakespeare's Cymbeline and The Tempest, Wroth's Urania, and Cervantes' Don Quixote. It offers a response to "material book studies" by calling for a new focus on imaginary or "immaterial" books and argues that early modern romance authors, rather than replicating contemporary reading practices within their texts, are reviving ancient and medieval ideas of the book as a conceptual framework, which they use to investigate urgent, new ideas about the self and the self-conscious mind.

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