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send Traister e-mail concerning this page at
traister@pobox.upenn.edu
Autumn 1995
Wednesday 3:00--6:00 P.M. Ryan: 215 898 7552 (W)
Lea Library home telephone number available in class
6th floor, Van Pelt Library ryan@pobox.upenn.edu (e-mail)
Traister: 215 898 7088 (W)
home telephone number available in class
traister@pobox.upenn.edu (e-mail)
Home page URL: http://www.english.upenn.edu/~traister
Click here to send an e-mail message to Michael Ryan (ryan@pobox.upenn.edu).
Click here to send an e-mail message to Daniel Traister (traister@pobox.upenn.edu).
Click here to send an e-mail message to the class.
Click here for various course resources.
Books Available for Purchase
The following should be available at the Penn Book Center, 3726
Walnut Street:
Philip Gaskell, New Introduction to Bibliography (expensive but
unavoidable for the serious)
Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (also
expensive; for those who want the full argument, all the notes, and the
bibliographical references)
----------, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe (the
Readers' Digest condensed version of the preceding)
Lucien Febvre and H.-J. Martin, The Coming of the Book (a bit dated
here and there, it remains the classic of its genre)
Carlo Ginzberg, The Cheese and the Worms (a pioneering work of microhis-
torical investigation)
Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy (worth having if only for Ong's
ability to define positions and issues)
Alvin Kernan, Samuel Johnson and the Impact of Printing (sensible
and accessible, it deals with a broad range of issues)
Roger Chartier, The Order of Books (we will also be using Chartier's
1993 Rosenbach Lectures, to appear imminently from the Penn Press)
Ivan Illich, In the Vineyard of the Text (makes clear to the non-medieval-
ist the case for the emergence of textual literacy in the later Middle Ages)
Barbara Shailor, The Medieval Book (a useful introduction by an
accomplished paleographer and codicologist)
Course Description
This course is an introduction to the history and historiography
of early printed books and printing. It emphasizes the material means by
which texts were created and transmitted and the cultural practices that
informed their appropriation. Focusing on the materiality of texts will
require the careful examination of manuscripts and printed books from the
early modern period that are part of the Library's Special Collections.
The seminar will include practicums which will allow students to
examine issues at the borders of "bibliography," "history," and "litera-
ture." The nature of such issues, the resources available to deal with
them, and possible answers to the problems they pose will be the burden of
these sessions. The evidence of the artifact, that is, of the material
page or the book as a whole, together with the texts they contain, will
provide the basis for case studies in the history of ideas and the ways in
which cultures are transmitted and appropriated.
Requirements
Students are asked to do a series of short papers/reports, many of
which are conceived as practicums designed to provide students with ex-
perience in working with original materials. Students will also submit a
10-15 page research paper on a topic cleared in advance with the instruc-
tors. The readings are both useful and interesting, and the practicums
will give the seminar more of an informal, workshop character. We hope to
schedule two field trips that will give students an opportunity to parti-
cipate in making paper and in printing on a common press.
Sessions and Readings
All items starred with an asterisk (*) should be available on
reserve in Rosengarten. Required readings not asterisked will either be
available at the Penn Book Center or in photocopy from from the
instructors. REQ=required; REC=recommended.
September 6: Introductory
Overview of seminar and historiographical background.
September 13: What IS the History of the Book?
REQ:
G. Thomas Tanselle, The History of Books as a Field of Study (1981).
Robert Darnton, "What Is the History of Books?" In Kenneth Carpenter,
ed., Books and Society in History (New York, 1981).
John Feather, "The Book in History and the History of the Book." Journal
of Library History, 21 (1986), 12-26.
Donald F. McKenzie, Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts (London,
1986). [A major reconceptualization of the field by its most
astute practitioner.]
Nicolas Barker & Thomas Adams, "A New Model for the Study of the Book." In
Barker and Adams, eds., A Potencie of Life (London, 1994), 5-43.
REC:
Pierre Machery, A Theory of Literary Production (Boston, 1978).
Hans Erich Boedeker, ed., Histoires du livre (Paris, 1995). [A veritable
Baedeker to the various national projects for histories of the book.
Articles in English, German, and French,]
David B. Hall, "On Native Ground: From the History of Printing to the His-
tory of the Book." Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society,
93 (1983), 313-36.
Jonathan Rose, "Reading the English Common Reader: A Preface to the History
of Audiences." Journal of the History of Ideas, 53 (1992), 47-52.
September 20: The Spoken and the Written Words
REQ:
Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy
Eric A. Havelock, The Muse Learns to Write (Yale, 1986)*
David R. Olson, The World on Paper: The Conceptual and Cognitive Impli-
cations of Writing and Reading (Cambridge UP, 1994), 1-19, 91-114.
Brian Stock, Listening for the Text (Johns Hopkins, 1990), 1-15, 140-58.
Jack Goody, The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society (Cam-
bridge UP, 1986), 1-44, 171-85.* [Try to skim what's in between to
get the balance of the argument.]
REC:
F. Coulmas, Writing Systems of the World (Blackwell, 1989).
Ruth Finnegan, Literacy and Orality (Blackwell, 1988).
Jack Goody, The Interface between the Oral and the Written (Cambridge UP,
1987).
Victor Harris, Ancient Literacy (Cambridge UP, 1989).
Eric A. Havelock, The Literate Revolution in Greece and Its Cultural
Consequences (Princeton, 1982).
Rosamund McKitterick, ed., The Uses of Literacy in Early Medieval Europe
(Cambridge UP, 1990).
Michael T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England 1066-1307
(London, 1979)
Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy (Princeton, 1983).
September 21: Special Workshop: Roger Chartier, "Voice, Punctuation, and
the Text in the 16th and 17th Centuries." 4:30--6:00 P.M., Woody Room, Van
Pelt-Dietrich Library, 2nd floor.
September 27: The Impact of Printing
REQ:
Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change [Read as much
as you can; it skims easily. Or read the junior version for this
class.]
Febvre and Martin, The Coming of the Book, ch. 8.
Anthony Grafton, "The Importance of Being Printed." Journal of Interdis-
ciplinary History, 2 (1980).
Paul Needham, Review of Eisenstein in Fine Print, 6 (1980), 23-5, 32-5.
Roger Chartier, "Introduction" to The Culture of Print: Power and Uses of
Print in Modern Europe (Princeton, 1989).
REC:
Roger Chartier, "The Practical Impact of Writing." In Chartier, et alii,
eds., The Passions of the Renaissance (= vol. 3 of The History of
Private Life), 111-159.
Henri-Jean Martin, The History and Power of Writing (U of Chicago, 1994).
Owen Gingerich, "Copernicus and the Impact of Printing." In Beer and Strand,
eds., Vistas in Astronomy (Oxford, 1975).
T. K. Rabb, "Debate: The Advent of Printing and the Problem of the Renais-
sance." Past & Present, 52 (1971).
Hans Bekker-Nielsen, ed., From Script to Book (Odense, 1986).
October 4 & 11: The Making of Manuscripts and Manuscript Culture
REQ:
Barbara Shailor, The Medieval Book
Reynolds and Wilson, Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of
Greek and Latin Literature (Oxford, 1974)* [A fundamental text.
Read as much as you can.]
Michael T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record, 185-334.*
Roberts and Skeat, The Birth of the Codex (Oxford, 1987).* [One of the
best recent summaries of the transition from scroll to codex.]
Malcolm Parkes, "The Influence of the Concepts of Ordinatio and Compilatio on
the Development of the Book." In Alexander and Gibson, eds., Medieval
Learning and Literature (Oxford, 1976).
Graham Pollard, "The Pecia System in the Medieval Universities." In Parkes
and Watson, eds., Medieval Scribes, Manuscripts, and Libraries (Lon-
don, 1978).
B. L. Ullman, Ancient Writing and Its Influence (New York, 1973), 59-166.*
Mary and Richard Rouse, Authentic Witnesses: Approaches to Medieval Texts
and Manuscripts (Notre Dame, 1991), 191-220; 221-255; and 259-338.*
[Excellent articles on the layout of the page, the evolution of
reference tools within manuscripts, and the early book trade.]
REC:
Bernhard Bischoff, Latin Paleography: Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Cam-
bridge, 1990).
Jesse Gellrich, The Idea of the Book in the Middle Ages (Cornell, 1986).
[Warning: tough going; lots of jargon.]
Christopher De Hamel, A History of Illuminated Manuscripts (Godine, 1986).
----------, Scribes and Illuminators (Toronto, 1992).
----------, Glossed Books of the Bible (1984).
Rosamund McKitterick, The Carolingians and the Written Word (Cambridge UP,
1989).
Malcolm Parkes, Pause and Effect: Punctuation in the West (U of Calif
Press, 1993). [Highly recommended.]
----------, Scribes, Scripts, and Readers (London, 1991).
Peter Ganz, ed., The Role of the Book in Medieval Culture (Brepols, 1986).
Jeremy Griffiths and Derek Pearsall, eds., Book Production and Publication
in Britain, 1375-1475 (Cambridge UP, 1995).
Michelle Brown, Understanding Illuminated Manuscripts (British Library, 1994).
[Glossary of terms.]
Malachi Beit-Arie, The Makings of the Medieval Hebrew Book (Jerusalem, 1993).
[B-A has brought the Hebrew MS tradition within the orbit of con-
temporary scholarship. He will be at Penn during the Spring term.]
E. J. Kenney, The Classical Text: Aspects of Editing in the Age of the
Printed Book (U of Cal, 1974).
October 18: The Printed Book: Materials, Techniques and Technologies
REQ:
Febvre and Martin, Coming of the Book, chs. 1-3.
Gaskell, New Introduction to Bibliography, 5-185.
D. F. McKenzie, "Printers of the Mind: Some Notes on Bibliographical
Theories and Printing House Practices." Studies in Bibliography,
22 (1969). [A major--and early--attempt to bring the historical
record to bear on the practices of bibliography.]
REC:
James Moran, Printing Presses: History and Development from the 15th
Century to Modern Times (U of Cal, 1973), 17-47.
Dard Hunter, Papermaking: The History and Technique of an Ancient Craft
(New York, 1978).
Giles Barber, Bookmaking in Diderot's "Encyclopedie" (Farnborough, 1973).
Joseph Moxon, Mechanick Exercises (1683; rpt. Oxford, 1962). [The classic
contemporary work in English on the operation of the common press
and the organization of the print shop.]
Paul Needham, [Two seminal articles on early printing] in Papers of the
Bibliographical Society of America, 76:4 (1982), 395-456; and 77:3
(1983), 341-371.
Hieronymus Hornschuch, Orthotypographia (1608; rpt. 1972). [One of the few
contemporary manuals on proofreading. Available here in Latin and
facing English translation.]
Adrian and Joyce Wilson, The Making of the Nuremburg Chronicle (Amsterdam,
1976).
October 25: The Page, Type, and Binding
REQ:
Nicolas Barker, "The Aldine Italic." In Myers and Harris, eds., A Millen-
nium of the Book (London, 1994), 45-59. [Condensed version of
monograph listed below.]
J. Paul Hunter, "From Typology to Type: Agents of Change in 18th-Century
English Texts." In Ezell and O'Keeffe, Cultural Artifacts and
the Production of Meaning (U of Mich, 1994).
Nicholas Pickwoad, "Onward and Downward: How Binders Coped with the
Printing Press before 1800." In Myers and Harris, A Millennium of
the Book, 61-106.
M. Corbett and R. Lightblown, The Comely Frontispiece: The Emblematic
Title-Page in England, 1550-1660 (London, 1979). [Read the intro
and anything else that may be relevant to your interests and project.]
REC:
Harry Carter, A View of Early Typography up to about 1600 (Oxford, 1969).
E. P. Goldschmidt, Gothic and Renaissance Bookbindings (Amsterdam, 1967).
Anthony Hobson, Humanists and Bookbinders (Cambridge UP, 1989).
Nicolas Barker, Aldus Manutius and the Development of Greek Script and Type
in the 15th Century (1985).
David Bland, A History of Book Illustration (U of Cal, 1969).
Sandra Hindman and James Farquhar, Pen to Press: Illuminated Manuscripts
and Printed Books in the First Century of Printing (Johns Hopkins,
1977).
Meyer Schapiro, Words and Pictures: On the Literal and Symbolic in the
Illustration of a Text (The Hague, 1973).
November 1: Printers, Publishers, and the Trade in Books
REQ:
Febvre and Martin, The Coming of the Book, chs. 4-7.
Robert Darnton, "Workers Revolt: The Great Cat Massacre," Great Cat
Massacre, 75-104.
Roger Chartier, "Text, Symbols, and Frenchness: Historical Uses of Sym-
bolic Anthropology," Cultural History: Between Practices and
Representations (Cornell, 1988), 95-111. [A thoughtful critique
of Darnton.]
Terry Belanger, "From Bookseller to Publisher: Changes in the London Book
Trade, 1750-1850." In Richard Landon, ed., Aspects of the British
and North American Book Trade (ALA, 1978), 7-16.
William L. Joyce, et al., eds., Printing and Society in Early America
(American Antiquarian Society, 1983), 1-185.*
Natalie Z. Davis, "A Trade Union in 16th-Century France," Economic History
Review, 19 (1966), 48-69.
REC:
Brian Richardson, Print Culture in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge UP, 1994).
Martin Lowry, The World of Aldus Manutius (Blackwell, 1979).
----------, Nicholas Jenson and the Rise of Venetian Publishing (Black-
well, 1991).
Keith Maslen, An Early London Printing House at Work (BSA, 1993).
John Lancaster and Keith Maslen, The Bowyer Ledgers . . . 1699-1777 (BSA,
1991).
Robert Darnton, The Business of Enlightenment: A Publishing History of
the "Encyclopedie" (Harvard, 1979).
Rudolph Hirsch, Printing, Selling, and Reading, 1450-1550 (Wiesbaden, 1974).
Myers and Harris, eds., Spreading the Word: The Distribution Networks of
Print, 1550-1850 (London, 1990).
John Feather, The Provincial Book Trade in 18th-Century England (Cambridge
UP, 1985).
Bernhard Fabian, The English Book in 18th-Century Germany (British
Library, 1992).
R. J. W. Evans, The Wechel Presses: Humanism and Calvinism in Central
Europe, 1572-1627 (Past & Present Supp. 2, 1975).
William L. Joyce, et al., eds. Printing and Society in Early America
(American Antiquarian Soc., 1983).
Edwin Wolf, II, The Book Culture of a Colonial American City: Philadephia
Books, Bookmen, and Booksellers (Oxford, 1988).
Lotte Hellinga, Caxton in Focus: The Beginning of Printing in England
(The British Lib., 1983).
Janet Ing, Johann Gutenberg and His Bible: An Historical Study (New York,
1988).
William G. Pettas, The Giunti of Florence: Merchant Publishers of the
16th Century (San Francisco, 1980).
Cyprian Blagden, The Stationers' Company: A History 1403-1959 (Cambridge
UP, 1960).
David W. Davies, The World of the Elseviers, 1580-1712 (The Hague, 1954).
D. F. McKenzie, "The London Book Trade in the Later 17th Century,"
(unpublished, 1976). [Surely, among the most widely distributed
and consulted unpublished pieces in our time; a phenomenon in its
own right. We have a copy....]
Myers and Harris, eds., The Economics of the British Booktrade, 1605-1939
(London, 1985).
Leon Voet, The Golden Compasses: A History and Evaluation of the Printing
and Publishing Activities of the Officina Plantiniana at Antwerp
(Amsterdam, 1969).
Giovanni Mardersteig, The Remarkable Story of a Book Made in Padua in
1477 (London, 1967).
November 8: The Written Word in the Age of Printing
REQ:
Lotte Hellinga, "Manuscripts in the Hands of Printers," and M. D. Reeve,
"Manuscripts Copied from Printed Books." In J. B. Trapp, ed.,
Manuscripts in the Fifty Years after the Invention of Printing (U
of London, 1983), 3-20.
Harold Love, Scribal Publication in 17th-Century England (Oxford, 1993),
3-137.*
Arthur F. Marotti, Manuscript, Print, and the English Renaissance Lyric
(Cornell, 1995), 75-208.*
REC:
Jonathan Goldberg, Writing Matter: From the Hands of the English Renais-
sance (Stanford, 1990). [An important subject, an obscure book.]
Martin Elsky, Authorizing Words: Speech, Writing, and Print in the Eng-
lish Renaissance (Cornell, 1989).
November 15: Regulating the Press
REQ:
Robert Darnton, "A Police Inspector Sorts His Files," in The Great Cat
Massacre, 145-89.
----------, Forbidden Best Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France (New York,
1995), 1-52.
---------- and Daniel Roche, eds., Revolution in Print (U of Cal, 1989),
3-66 [On the quirks of control in the ancien regime book trade].
Paul Grendler, The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press (Princeton,
1977), chs. I-III, VI, and VIII. *
REC:
Paul Hyland and Neil Sammells, eds., Writing and Censorship in Britain
(London, 1992), parts I & II.
Annabel M. Patterson, Censorship and Interpretation: The Conditions of
Writing and Reading in Early Modern England (U of Wisconsin, 1984).
Paul Grendler, Culture and Censorship in Late Renaissance Italy and France
(London, 1980).
November 29: Authors, Authorship, and Copyright
REQ:
Alvin Kernan, Samuel Johnson and the Impact of Print (Princeton, 1989).
Roger Chartier, "Figures of the Author," in The Order of Books, 25-59.
Mark Rose, Authors and Owners: The Invention of Copyright (Harvard, 1993).*
Martha Woodmansee, The Author, Art, and the Market (Columbia UP, 1994),
ch. 1.
REC:
Elizabeth Armstrong, Before Copyright: The French Book-Privilege System,
1486-1526 (Cambridge UP, 1990).
John Feather, Publishing, Piracy, and Politics: An Historical Study of
Copyright in Britain (New York, 1994).
Martha Woodmansee and Peter Jaszi, eds., The Construction of Authorship:
Textual Appropriation in Law and Literature (Duke UP, 1994). [An
important gathering of pieces on the subject by an array of
scholarly notables.]
A. J. Minnis, The Medieval Theory of Authorship (Toronto, 1984).
Lisa Jardine, Erasmus, Man of Letters: The Construction of Charisma in
Print (Princeton, 1993). [Erasmus as self-made celebrity via print.]
December 6: Readers Reading
REQ:
Darnton, "Readers Respond to Rousseau," in The Great Cat Massacre, 215-56.
Chartier, "Communities of Readers," in The Order of Books, 1-23.
Carlo Ginzberg, The Cheese and the Worms (Johns Hopkins, 1980).
Ivan Illich, In the Vineyard of the Text (U of Chicago, 1994).
Natalie Z. Davis, "Printing and the People," Society and Culture in Early
Modern France (Stanford, 1985), 189-226.
REC:
Robert Darnton, Forbidden Best Sellers , 181-246. [Darnton returning to
what for him was the primal question: did "ideas" cause the French
Revolution? What was the relationship between books bought, books
read, and 1789?]
Roger Chartier, The Cultural Uses of Print in Early Modern France
(Princeton, 1989).
Paul Saenger, "Silent Reading: Its Impact on Late Medieval Script and
Society." In Viator, 13 (1982), 367-414.
Michael Camille, "Reading the Printed Page." In Sandra Hindman, ed.,
Printing the Written Word (Cornell, 1989), 259-91.
Hans Robert Jaus, Towards an Aesthetic of Reception (U of Minn, 1982).
Wolfgang Iser, The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response (Johns
Hopkins, 1978).
----------, The Implied Reader (Johns Hopkins, 1978).
Cathy N. Davidson, Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in
America (Oxford, 1986).
J. Paul Hunter, Before Novels: The Cultural Contexts of 18th-Century
English Fiction (New York, 1990).
Roger Chartier, ed. The Culture of Print: Power and the Uses of Print
in Early Modern Europe (Princeton, 1989). [A valuable set of
articles on a broad range of topics relating to modes and prac-
tices of appropriating printed matter.]
December 13: PAPERS DUE
-- Festina Lente --
You can
send Traister e-mail concerning this page at
traister@pobox.upenn.edu
