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HIST 440 AUTHORSHIP & PUBLISHING
Why study the history of the book? There exist two mutually supportive approaches to the book as an object of study. For the past eighty years scholars working in philology, paleography, and literature have developed a methodology for studying the book as an artifact--as an object from the near or distant past that yields information based upon formal presentation of a particular text. For these scholars books are something more than boxes for transmitting ideas or vehicles for carrying illustrations. These scholars note how different editions of ostensibly the "same" text may yield variations and perhaps distorted meanings of it. Their bibliographical analyses disclose precious information about the copying, printing, and publishing practices of a particular time or place. For them books are archeological finds and must be submitted to specialized modes of interpretation. This approach to the book is known as codicology among scholars working in medieval and Renaissance books, and as analytical bibliography to scholars working on modern books and documents. The second approach, comparatively recent in origin, often is known by its French name, l'histoire du livre, because it is associated with a group of French historians (and English-speaking specialists in French history). Allied to a fashionable movement in social and cultural history, l'histoire du livre covers subjects like literary property rights, censorship, marketing strategies, and the history of reading. A group of international scholars has collaborated on a magnificent history of the French-language printed book from the Renaissance through the twentieth century. It is a model for work in progress on the history of the book in Great Britain, Germany, the Low Countries, Australia, Canada, and the United States. We say "a" model, because different cultural, political, and economic traditions in each of these countries will distinguish its book history from the others. Once completed, all of these works nevertheless will represent one of the most important efforts at collaborative cultural history ever undertaken. This course will offer the opportunity to consider the manuscript and printed book both as a physical object and as a transmitter of culture. We shall glance at issues linked to the histories of reading and censorship. We shall meet with a collector, a printer, and a person who makes her living as an author. We shall analyze the physical construction of the book. Our resources will be the Knight Library, particularly its Rare Books Collection. By the end of the fourth week of class you should have discussed a research
topic with one of the instructors. By November 5, you should have prepared
a page-long outline and brief bibliography. You will have the opportunity
to share the ideas of your papers with others in the class. Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin, The Coming of the Book. (Any available edition.) While there is no specific reading schedule for this background book, you should read at least two chapters per week and complete it by the fourth week of class. Christopher De Hamel, Scribes and Illuminators (Toronto, 1992). Kate Wilhelm, Desperate Measures (Don Mills, Ontario, Canada, 2001). The Book History Reader, ed. David Finkelstein and Alistair McCleery (London and New York, 2003). Optional Purchase.
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