Marotti 1995

Marotti, Arthur F. Manuscript, Print, and the English Renaissance Lyric. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995.

"In short, the various manuscript and print forms in which texts were recorded and transmitted can be the basis of a socioliterary history that unlike traditional literary history considers texts in their material specificity (rather than their edited 'ideal' forms), attends to their reception and reproduction in a variety of social and historical circumstances (and not just in the context of the print publication process), and emphasizes an inchoate or developing definition of literature and authorship (rather than a stable definition based on alleged authorial 'intentions')." (xi-xii)

"In the older, manuscript system, the modern boundary between the literary and the nonliterary had not yet solidified, and texts were immersed in social worlds whose conditions enabled them to be produced and consumed." (xii)

"Printed texts of lyric verse -- something of an innovation and a matter also of printers' fortuitous access to the literary communications of restricted social groups and coteries -- yield a distorted picture of literary history or of the place of literary texts in the life of the society that produced and consumed them." (xiii)

Lyrics and the Manuscript System

"Single poems as well as sets of poems were written as occasional works. Their authors professed a literary amateurism and claimed to care little about the textual stability or historical durability of their socially contingent productions." (2)

poems on rings, food trenchers, glass windows, paintings, tombstones and monuments, on trees (3) [see footnotes for citations]

prison poetry (4-5)

occasional poetry for specific social occasions (9)

"When social verse passed in the system of manuscript transmission beyond its original environments of production and reception, it was usually recoded and recontextualized, especially when poems were collected or anthologized in a process that converted them into works of 'literature'." (10)

writing in blank or "table" books (16)

• more common in 17c, but some early examples

manuscript collections "range from casual, personal, or family commonplace-book collections to carefully arranged, sometimes professionally transcribed, volumes" (17)

"in England, unlike in France, the practice of assembling carefully planned, sometimes decorated or illuminated, manuscripts of lyric verse did not take hold in the early Renaissance, and so the manuscripts in which one finds courtly poems are not true lyric anthologies but collections of different types in which the transcription of lyrics was, if not an afterthought, at least a casual practice" (17)

lyrics often inserted in books given over for other purposes (17)

personal miscellany different from the professional collection (18)

• e.g. John Shirley

manuscripts often mix the works of multiple authors, but a few are given over to single authors (22)

John Donne: found in more surviving manuscript documents than any other English Renaissance poet (24)

women were taught to use italic, rather than secretary, script (25)

Donne's poem showing his preference for manuscript circulation (27)

layout of a manuscript differs from that of a printed text (27)

John Lyly, preference for the crooked lines of a manuscript text (28)

"Some professionally transcribed manuscripts of verse include rudimentary forms of ornamentation and deploy poems on the page with some sense of aesthetic design." (28-9)

some manuscripts have features of calligraphy and ornamentation; "generally, however, there is a marked difference between the iconicity of ornamented or unornamented or unornamented texts in printed editions and the appearance of the same texts in manuscript collections where their physical appearance does not call attention to them as aesthetic objects" (29)

poets giving instructions for layout of verse in print (29)

Print and the Lyric

printed lyric verse in Italy and France had a cultural centrality by 16c that it didn't in England (209)

reasons:

• "absence of a clear and strong tradition of vernacular literature into which such publications could be incorporated" (210)
• "class issue sharpened by print culture" -- stigma of print (210)
• "perception of love poetry and immature, not intellectually serious writing" (210)
• "association of love lyrics with privacy" -- not fit for publication (210)
• "association of yrics with specific social occasions" -- "ephemeral artifacts" (210)

precedent of Chaucer (211)

last third of 16c, "stigma" of print began turning into "prestige" (211); important moments in this transition

• Tottel's Miscellany (1557)
• Sidney's 'Astrophil and Stella (1591, 1592), and Ponsonby's 1598 folio of Sidney's collected works
• Ben Jonson's Workes (1616)
• editions of Donne and Herbert (both 1633)

Tottel's Miscellany (1557)

• "not only inaugurated the fashion for publishing anthologies that disseminated privately circulated, mostly courtly, poetry to a wider public, but it also demonstrated some of the sociocultural implications of print as a medium" (212)
• went through 9 editions and more printings in 30 years
• led to other Elizabethan poetry collections: The Paradise of Dainty Devices (1576); a Gorgeous Gallery of Gallant Inventions (1578); A Handful of Pleasant Delights (1566); Brittons Bowre of Delights (1591); The Phoenix Nest (1593); The Arbor of Amorous Devices (1597); England's Helicon (1600); Belvedere: or the Garden of the Muses (1600); Englands Parnassus (1600); A Poetical Rhapsody (1602)
• resembled manuscript collections like the Arundel Harington Manuscript
• manuscripts circulated among courtiers, Inns of Court, academic and aristocratic audiences; "a larger audience of educated and fashionable gentlemen and gentlewomen purchased printed poetry collections and pamphlets of individual poets' work partly to gain access to such socially restricted literary communications" (214-5)
• "part of a program of nationalistic self-assertion" (215)
• characterizes print as democratizing (215)
• "By transferring the anthology model from manuscript to print, Tottel's collection set the precedent for the publication of miscellaneous social verse in other poetry anthologies as well as in single-author editions." (217)
• Tottel didn't just transfer verse from manuscript to print; rearranged some poems (217) -- role of the compiler-editor
• furthered the institutionalizing of titles that are more general -- away from occasional or social context of production (218-9)

George Gascoigne, "Adventures of Master F. J."; collection of poems written for (a fictional) occasional love affair -- c.f. with Tribble 1993 on Spenser's Calendar, or Quilligan 2005 on Sidney's sonnet sequence

"In a fictional frame, then, gascoigne has replicated the circumstances of the production, transmission, and preservation or collection of social verse, calling attention to the social and biographical circumstances in which lyrics were typically written, while making straightforward social and biographical interpretation quite problematic." (222)

importance of "front matter" -- "a site of contestation and negotiation among authors, publisher/printers, and readership(s)" (222)

""although we associate print with the preservation of texts that, if confined to the system of manuscript transmission, faced the danger of being lost, it is important to recognize that many printed works were conceived of or treated as ephemeral." (227) -- many smaller printed editions have disappeared

Sidney and the Legitimizing of Printed Lyric Verse

Thomas Newman's 2 1591 quartos of Astrophil and Stella: "enormously important publishing events"; "part of a process in the 1590s in which the work of this author was posthumously made available to a public beyond the closed circle of the Sidney-Herbert family" (229)

Lownes's 1592 quarto of Astrophil and Stella; Ponsonby's 1590 and 1593 Arcadia and 1595 Defence of Poesie and 1598 folio of Sidney's collected works

"fundamentally changed the culture's attitudes toward the printing of the secular lyrics of individual writers, lessening the social disapproval of such texts and helping to incorporate what had essentially been regarded as literary ephemera into the body of durable canonical texts." (228-9)

Newman's first collection of Sidney's sonnets were augmented with poems from Daniel, Campion, Greville, and others' works

• "Practices of gathering the work of many authors in manuscripts, then, carried over into print culture not only in the production of poetry anthologies, but also in the presentation of single-author editions." (231)

Phoenix Next (1593) -- published as a memorial to the deceased Sidney (234-5); "gave a certain legitimacy to the published writings of lower-born poets" (235)

A Poetical Rhapsody (1602), edited by Francis Davison; includes Sidney legend to legitimate other verse; includes a poem by the countess of Pembroke

Ponsonby's 1598 folio of Sidney's works -- "helped establish the authority of printed literature, especially of collected editions in the prestigious folio format" (236)

Jonson, Authorship, and Print

frontispiece portrait; used for posthumous collections, but with Jonson began being used for living authors (240)

"Jonson's incorporation of lyric poetry in his Workes is a function of his conception of such work as ethically serious production." (240)

published the same year as the collected works of the King

disdain for middle class readers and fashionable "termers" (lawyers in town during sessions of the law courts) (242)

"When Ben Jonson tried to assume control over the reception and interpretation of his writings, he was encouraged to do so by the new conditions of literature in a print culture that made possible what was virtually impossible in a system of manuscript transmission, where the uses and interpretation of texts were more obviously under reader control." (242)

"After the publication of his folio, Jonson's return to the system of coterie manuscript circulation for his lyric verse is a sign both of the continuing strength of that system and of the lowered prestige of lyric verse in the Jacobean period." (245)

"On the whole, the Jacobean era was not a good time to publish secular lyric poetry. No new substantial anthology appeared in this period and the rate of publication of single-author editions of lyrics dropped considerably" (246)

"Many poets restricted their lyric writing to coterie audiences and to the system of manuscript transmission, especially since in the Jacobean period, secular yric poetry declined somewhat in importance, partly due to King James I's preference for other kinds of writing." (246) -- lyric verse tended to remain in manuscript circulation; belief that amorous or occasional verse should not be printed (247)

Donne, Herbert, and the Lyric Collection

posthumous publication of Donne's Poems and Herbert's Temple (1633) -- "watershed event that changed the relationship of lyric poetry to the print medium, helping to normalize within print culture the publication of poetry collections by individual authors" (247)

process of installing courtly and Royalist poets in the literary institution of print culture

after their publication, "lyric poems themselves were perceived less as occasional and ephemeral and more as valuable artifacts worth preserving in those monumentalizing editions that were among the most prestigious products of print culture" (247)

pre-publication, Donne known as a coterie poet; only his Anniversaries had been published, and his Satires were his best known works (amorous and religious lyrics had reached only a restricted audience); Donne known primarily as an ecclesiastical figure

• first love poem is 94th in the book -- intentional delaying behind spiritual poetry?
• encomiums put at the end of the book, since Donne doesn't need them to authorize his work

"The 1633 edition had an important place int he history of printed verse -- a context that ultimately wrought the transformation of Donne from a literary amateur into a canonical English author, from someone writing for manuscript circulation for coterie readers, sometimes within the framework of social and political patronage, into an 'author' in the modern institution of literature." (252) -- but Donne's name isn't even on the title page?

Herbert's 1633 Poems

• Ferrar's preface turns Herbert's life into one of a saint
• index of titles allows the poetry to be used for devotional purposes (256)
• "Justified, then, as serious religious writing by a saintly, learned parson whose exemplary life could edify readres, presented by the press of the university with which he was formerly affiliated, published in the handy portable form of the duodecimo, "The Temple. Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations. By Mr. George Herbert" had no need for apology as a printed volume of lyrics. Posthumously glorifying its humble author through the print medium, it offered a model other religious writers of lyric verse could, and did, follow. After Herber, at least as far as the religious lyric is concerned, print was the proper medium for its dissemination -- one sign of how print culture paradoxically both made the private public and demarcated private life itself more clearly as a social space." (257)

posthumous poetry -- "offered the opportunity to reinforce the political partisanship of poets, publishers, and readers" (258)

1640s-50s: "collected editions of poets' works as well as poetry anthologies were largely a manifestation of Royalism" (258); Donne and Herbert were influential in art "because they came to be associated with the publication of Royalist and High Church authors in the Civil War and Interregnum" (258); "The medium of print was converted from a potential embarrassment to Royalist writers to a safe haven for their work and a sign of political resistance to the authority of those who had defeated the king's forces." (259)

Humphrey Moseley, Single-Author Editions, and the Anthologizing of Verse

Moseley, printer who "in the midst of the austere Commonwealth/Protectorate period ... served to preserve the courtly and Royalist aesthetic" (260)

Poetry Anthologies at Midcentury

few significant anthologies in 1640s-1650s

The Academy of Complements; Wits Recreation

Harmony of the Muses (1654); Musarum Deliciae: or the Muses Recreation (1655)

"drollery", term used for anthologies of miscellaneous verse compiled by the Cavaliers to poke fun at Puritanism

The Mysteries of Love & Eloquence (1658); courtesy book with verse retrogressive understanding poetry as art of the upper classes, "combining a strong snob appeal with its strategies of vulgarization" (272); de-monumentalizes poets like Drayton and Sidney by turning them into proverbs to be used by all

"Royalist nostalgia, upper-class exclusiveness, and anti-Puritan sentiments mark some of the poetical anthologies and literary miscellanies of this period (as they do other types of publication, such as single-author editions)." (276)

"What Cromwell's government banned is no surprise compared to what it permitted. With the Restoration of the monarchy, there were even fewer, or at least different, restraints on the political and sexual content of the printed miscellanies and poetical anthologies, so the number of manuscript compilations dropped off as print became more accessible as a medium and more respectable in elite culture." (277)

generally, older prejudices against print's stigma wore off through association with socially-prominent figures, authors who had sociocultural authority, and a political and social Royalist elite (281)

Some Features of the Physical Book

typography: first, black letter was favored for lyric verse, then roman by the end of the 16c; former "associated with the native literary tradition, whereas the latter was a classicizing mode" (283)

black letter continued to be used for ballads and broadsides; "the 'native,' Gothic type was thus associated with popular culture and the internationalist, humanist type with the culture of the educated elite" (284)

in print, abbreviations were expanded and punctuation tended to be heavier (284)

"The effect on the kind of occasional and social verse represented by most lyric poetry was to iconize the verbal, to reinforce the self-consciously artistic features of poetic language." (284-5)

"The architecture of the printed book encouraged the special arrangement of lyric poems. There was, of course, a recurring tension between the anthology model and that of the structured collection: poems could be presented as rime sparse or as a carefully designed sequence, but even the former appeared to have aesthetic shape in print. From Petrarch to Jonson to Herrick, authors took pains to arrange their poems in larger aesthetic wholes: print encouraged this phenomenon." (285)

size: small, cheap quartos are ephemeral, because could remain unbound; starting with Tottel, most poetry anthologies were in quarto; later they began being printed in octavo, which was more prestigious, since 8vo books were more likely to be bound and preserved in libraries (288-9)

Patronage, Poetry, and Print

"Willing or not, members of royalty and the aristocracy found themselves portrayed in print as the authorizers protectors, even owners of a wide variety of religious, historical, scientific, polemical, and literary texts -- thought in many cases, their connection with the authors or publishers was slight or nonexistent and their names mainly functioned as (misleading) signs of celebrity endorsement." (292)

"One can detect, in the juxtaposition of dedicatory letters and epistles to readers, an interesting friction developing between the old- and new-style patrons, or at the least a complexity in the relationship of author, stationer, patron, and reader that was exploited by both writers and publishers to their own advantage." (293)

Skelton, published without dedicatory letters, with his poems presented in the same way they would be encountered in manuscripts

Tottel self-consciously positions his miscellany as bringing his readers to the status of the poets contained therein

first private individual to publish a collections of his own short poems: Barnabe Googe, Eglogs, Epitaphes, and Sonettes (1563); presented as if a friend took the manuscript and printed it for Googe while he was abroad, the book "has the marks of a deliberate authorial strategy" (297)

authors could also hide behind narrative frames, as with Gascaoigne's 'A Hundreth Sundrie Flowres (1573) (302)

Spenser's Shepheardes Calendar (1579) dedicated to Philip Sidney

Sidney acting as a posthumous patron; the Countess of Pembroke's control over his publishing (312-3)

• Nashe -- rhetoric of liberating Sidney's writing from the private "casks" of ladies; signals shift of literary power away from aristocratic coterie circles
• patronage split -- Sidney brother "authorizing the printing of such verse and the sister serving as the dedicatee and protector" (314)

"In such a conflict, publishers could take the high moral ground of allegedly acting in the public interest, even if their basic motive were private economic gain. And they could hire someone like Nashe, a university-educated professional writer familiar with the dynamics of metropolitan culture, to defend the whole project on both social and intellectual grounds." (314)

with Jonson, "the poet patronized the patrons" (318), presenting ideals through praise which the patrons must them live up to

"By the early part of the seventeenth century, the competition for patronage support for printed texts, the restricted resources of the aristocracy, and the economics of the publishing industry had, in effect, changed the functions of patrons defined in and inherited from manuscript culture. Certainly publishers were more apt to use patrons' names for the purpose of promoting sales of books to a general readership than as signs of an actual patron-client relationship in the old sense." (321)

Conclusion

William Drummond, using print for coterie circulation (325)

print influenced manuscript practices as much as manuscript did print

• title page of manuscript set up as if for a printed edition (327)
• manuscript and print bound together (328)

printer's poem apologizing for errata (331)