Reading and Literacy in the Middle Ages and Renaissance

Description

It is not surprising that the development of the internet and related electronic technologies has coincided with an academic interest in the history of reading. Using and transmitting texts in new ways, scholars have become increasingly aware of the precise ways in which manuscripts and printed books transmitted texts to early modern readers. This volume collects nine essays on reading and literacy in Europe from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries. Topics include: the function of marginalia in vernacular medieval manuscripts; the trope of reading in the fourteenth century; the definition of literacy in early modern England; marginalia and reading practices in early modern Italy; revision of medieval texts in the Renaissance; the prevalence of translated French poetry in sixteenth-century England; the use of poems as props in the plays of Shakespeare; the private reading of the playscripts of masques; and early-modern women’s reading practices. These essays demonstrate the energy and excitement of the rapidly developing field of the history of reading. They will appeal to those interested in European cultural history, the transition from manuscript to print culture, the history of literacy, and the history of the book. Front matter (“Contents”, “Acknowledgments”), p. i Free Access Introduction, p. xi Ian Frederick Moulton https://doi.org/10.1484/M.ASMAR-EB.3.106 Revertere! Penitence, Marginal Commentary, and the Recursive Path of Right Reading, p. 1 Martha Dana Rust https://doi.org/10.1484/M.ASMAR-EB.3.107 The Trope of Reading in the Fourteenth Century, p. 25 Burt Kimmelman https://doi.org/10.1484/M.ASMAR-EB.3.108 English Auctores and Authorial Readers: Early Modernizations of Chaucer and Lydgate, p. 45 Michael Ullyot https://doi.org/10.1484/M.ASMAR-EB.3.109 A Survey of Verse Translations from French Printed Between Caxton and Tottel, p. 63 A. E. B. Coldiron https://doi.org/10.1484/M.ASMAR-EB.3.110 Inscribed Meanings: Authorial Self-Fashioning and Readers’ Annotations in Sixteenth-Century Italian Printed Books, p. 85 Brian Richardson https://doi.org/10.1484/M.ASMAR-EB.3.111 “Vaine Books” and Early Modern Women Readers, p. 105 Kathryn deZur https://doi.org/10.1484/M.ASMAR-EB.3.112 Poems as Props in Love’s Labor’s Lost and Much Ado About Nothing, p. 127 Frederick Kiefer https://doi.org/10.1484/M.ASMAR-EB.3.113 The Masque as Book, p. 143 Lauren Shohet https://doi.org/10.1484/M.ASMAR-EB.3.114 Rhetorics and Practices of Illiteracy or The Marketing of Illiteracy, p. 169 Heidi Brayman Hackel https://doi.org/10.1484/M.ASMAR-EB.3.115 Back matter (“Notes on Contributors”, “Index”), p. 185