Book History (Fall 2010)

The purpose of this reading course is to study the history of the book across histories, media, and institutions. This course attempts to trace the beginnings of the book from papyri and manuscripts to the rise of digital publishing, to investigate the formation of reading culture(s), to understand the politics/ontology of publication and authorship, and to analyze the institutions involved. The course begins with classical western antiquity (through the analysis of Greek and Roman reading traditions) and concludes (but not conclusively) with an interrogation into the futurity of the book in whatever form it may take. This reading course also intends to look at various critical theories and philosophies that may inform our analysis of reading. I see this course as helping to inform my understanding of the meaning of the book (in its broadest intellectual historical sense) and its making/unmaking across a period of time.

Introduction (Part 1): the making of the book

Reading:

Mackenzie, Donald F. Bibliography and the Sociology of the Text. London: The British Library, 1986.

Darnton, Robert. "What is the history of books"? in The Kiss of Lamourette.

Supplementary reading:

Barker, Nicholas and Thomas Adams. "A New Model for the Study of the Book." A Potencie of Life.

Philip Gaskell, New Introduction to Bibliography

Jonathan Rose, "The history of books: revised and enlarged." basically a review essay of recent work. in The Darnton Debate: books and revolution in the 18th ct, ed Haydn T Mason.

The Book History Reader. Ed. by David Finkelstein and Alistair McCleery. New York & London: Routledge, 2002.

Davidson, Peter (ed). The Book Encompassed: Studies in Twentieth Century Bibliography. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 1998.

Introduction (Part 2): how are texts/books studied?

Reading:

Chartier, Roger. The Order of Books: Readers, Authors, and Libraries in Europe Between the 14th and 18th Centuries. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992.

Ong, Walter. "Orality and Literacy."

Piper, Andrew. "Introduction." Dreaming in Books: The Making of the Bibliographic Imagination in the Romantic Age. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.

Stallybrass, Peter. "Material Culture: An Introduction." Shakespeare Studies. 28 (2000): 123-129.

(Bordieu, Pierre. "The Culture of Production.)

Supplementary reading:

Febvre and Martin. The coming of the book.

McKenzie, "Printers of the Mind."

Libraries: from ancient libraries to digital bibliography

Reading:

Johnson, William A. Bookrolls and Scribes in Oxyrhynchus. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004.

Casson, Lionel. Libraries in the ancient world. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001.

Supplementary reading:

A History of Reading in the West. Eds. Guglielmo Calvallo and Roger Chartier. Trans. Lydia G. Cochrane. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999.

Olson, David. The World on Paper: The Conceptual and Cognitive Implications of Writing and Reading. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Literacy, bibliophilia and the rise of a reading culture

Ferguson, Margaret W. Dido’s Daughters: Literacy, Gender, and Empire in Early Modern England and France. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2003.

Ancient Literacies: the Culture of Reading in Greece and Rome. Eds. William A. Johnson and Holt N. Parker. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Roberts and Skeat, Birth of the Codex.

Rouse, Mary and Richard. "The Vocabulary of Wax Tablets."

Petroski, Henry. The Book on the Bookshelf. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999 --Clarissa 22:10, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Evolving book technologies: from manuscripts to e-books

Stallybrass, Peter, Chartier, Roger, Mowery, J. Franklin and Heather Wolfe. "Hamlet's Tables and the Technologies of Writing in Renaissance England." Shakespeare Quarterly 55.4 (2004): 379-419.

Chartier, Roger. Forms and Meanings: Texts, Performances, and Audiences from Codex to Computer. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995.

Grafton, Anthony and Megan Williams. The Transformation of the Book: Origen, Eusebius and the Library at Caesarea. (2006)

McKitterick, David. Print, Manuscript, and the Search for Order.

Steinberg, S. H. 500 Years of Printing.

Green, James N. and Peter Stallybrass. Benjamin Franklin: Writer and Printer. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2006.

Terry Harpold, Ex-foliations: reading machines and the upgrade path.

Publics: Who reads what and how do we know?

Johnson, William A. Readers and Reading Culture in the High Empire: A Study of Elite Reading Communities. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Sherman, William. Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007.

Jackson, H.J. Marginalia: Readers Writing in Books. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002

Isaac, Peter and Barry McKay (eds). The Human Face of the Book Trade Winchester: St Paul's Bibliographies, 1999.--Clarissa 22:50, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

--Clarissa 20:22, 23 August 2010 (UTC)Hillhouse, James T. The Grub-Street Journal.Durham: Duke University Press, 1928.

The history, politics and culture of publishing

Eisenstein, Elizabeth L. The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.

Needham, Paul. Review of Eisenstein.

Grafton, Anthony. "The Importance of Being Printed."

Green, James N. and Peter Stallybrass. Benjamin Franklin: Writer and Printer. New Castle: Oak Knoll Press, 2006.

Darnton, Robert. The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History.

Constance R. Miller. Technical and cultural prerequisites for the invention of printing in China and the West. San Francisco: Chinese Materials Center, 1983.

--Clarissa 20:17, 23 August 2010 (UTC)Cave, Roderick. The Private Press. 2nd Ed. New York & London: R.R. Bowker Company, 1983.

Intellectual Freedom, Censorship and Copyright

Loewenstein, Joseph. The Author’s Due: Printing and the Prehistory of Copyright. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.

Rose, Mark. Authors and Owners: The Invention of Copyright.

Natalie Zemon Davis, "Beyond the Market: Books as Gifts in Sixteenth-Century France."

Books as cultural agent: piracy, ephemera, networks, records, archives and futures

Eisenstein, Elizabeth L. Printing Press as an Agent of Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.

McGann, Jerome. Radiant Textuality: Literature after the World Wide Web. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

"The Piratical Enlightenment." This is Enlightenment." Ed. C. Siskin and W. Warner. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010. 301-20.

Atiyeh, George N. The book in the Islamic world: the written word and communication in the middle East. (1995)

Authorship, critical reading and gender

Jardine, Lisa. Reading Shakespeare Historically. London and New York: Routledge, 1996.

Chartier, Roger. Inscrire et effacer : Culture écrite et littérature (XIe-XVIIIe siècle).' Paris : Gallimard/Le Seuil, 2005 (or Inscription and Erasure: Literature and Written Culture from the Eleventh to the Eighteenth Century. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007).

Genet, Gerard. Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

History of the Book and the Sciences

Bender, John and Michael Marrinan. The Culture of the Diagram. Stanford University Press, 2010.

Frasca-Spada and Jardine eds., Books and the Sciences in History (2001)

Thornton and Tully's scientific books, libraries and collectors: a study of bibliography and the book trade in relation to the history of science. Ed. Andrew Hunter. Ashgate, 2000.