Reading Books and Prints as Cultural Objects

Description

This book contributes significantly to book, image and media studies from an interdisciplinary, comparative point of view. Its broad perspective spans medieval manuscripts to e-readers. Inventive methodology offers numerous insights into visual, manuscript and print culture: material objects relate to meaning and reading processes; images and texts are examined in varied associations; the symbolic, representational and cultural agency of books and prints is brought forward. An introduction substantiates methods and approaches, ten chapters follow along media lines: from manuscripts to prints, printed books, and e-readers. Eleven contributors from six countries challenge the idea of a unified field, revealing the role of books and prints in transformation and circulation between varying cultural trends, ‘high’ and ‘low’. Mostly Europe-based, the collection offers book and print professionals, academics and graduates, models for future research, imaginatively combining material culture with archival data, cultural and reading theories with historical patterns. Front Matter ....Pages i-xi Introduction (Evanghelia Stead)....Pages 1-30 Front Matter ....Pages 31-31 From Devotional Aids to Antiquarian Objects: The Prayer Books of Medingen (Henrike Lähnemann)....Pages 33-55 How to Read the “Andachtsbüchlein aus der Sammlung Bouhier” (Montpellier, BU Médecine, H 396)? On Cultural Techniques Related to a Fourteenth-Century Devotional Manuscript (Henrike Manuwald)....Pages 57-79 “Otium et Negotium”: Reading Processes in Early Italian and German Humanism (Michael Stolz)....Pages 81-106 Front Matter ....Pages 107-107 The Fluidity of Images or the Compression of Media Diversity in Books: Galeriewerke and Histoires Métalliques (Christina Posselt-Kuhli)....Pages 109-135 Change of Use, Change of Public, Change of Meaning: Printed Images Travelling Through Europe (Alberto Milano (†))....Pages 137-156 Front Matter ....Pages 157-157 The Promotion of the Heroic Woman in Victorian and Edwardian Gift Books (Barbara Korte)....Pages 159-177 Pinocchio: An Adventure Illustrated Over More Than a Century (1883–2005) (Giorgio Bacci)....Pages 179-207 Illustration and the Book as Cultural Object: Arthur Schnitzler’s Works in German and English Editions (Norbert Bachleitner)....Pages 209-229 Two Peas in a Pod: Book Sales Clubs and Book Ownership in the Twentieth Century (Corinna Norrick-Rühl)....Pages 231-250 Front Matter ....Pages 251-251 E-Readers and Polytextual Critique: On Some Emerging Material Conditions in the Early Age of Digital Reading (Stephan Packard)....Pages 253-277 Back Matter ....Pages 279-317