The Author's Hand and the Printer's Mind: Transformations of the Written Word in Early Modern Europe

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Roger Chartier (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris)

The Author's Hand and the Printer's Mind

Transformations of the Written Word in Early Modern Europe

Roger Chartier (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris)

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English

Polity Press
04 October 2013

Literature, Poetry & Criticism; Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800; Social & cultural history; Publishing industry

In Early Modern Europe the first readers of a book were not those who bought it. They were the scribes who copied the author’s or translator’s manuscript, the censors who licensed it, the publisher who decided to put this title in his catalogue, the copy editor who prepared the text for the press, divided it and added punctuation, the typesetters who composed the pages of the book, and the proof reader who corrected them. The author’s hand cannot be separated from the printers’ mind.

This book is devoted to the process of publication of the works that framed their readers’ representations of the past or of the world. Linking cultural history, textual criticism and bibliographical studies, dealing with canonical works - like Cervantes’ Don Quixote or Shakespeare’s plays - as well as lesser known texts, Roger Chartier identifies the fundamental discontinuities that transformed the circulation of the written word between the invention of printing and the definition, three centuries later, of what we call 'literature'.

By: Roger Chartier (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales Paris)
Imprint: Polity Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 154mm, Spine: 21mm
Weight: 390g
ISBN: 9780745656021
ISBN 10: 0745656021
Pages: 224
Publication Date: 04 October 2013
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Preface Part I: The Past in the Present 1. Listen to the Dead with Your Eyes 2. History: Reading Time 3. History and Social Science: A Return to Braudel Part II: What is a Book? 4. The Powers of Print 5. The Author’s Hand 6. Pauses and Pitches 7. Translation Part III: Texts and Meanings 8. Memory and Writing 9. Paratext and Preliminaries 10. Publishing Cervantes 11. Publishing Shakespeare 12. The Time of the Work

Roger Chartier is professor of history at the College de France, Director of Studies at the Ecole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales and Annenberg Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania.

Reviews for The Author's Hand and the Printer's Mind: Transformations of the Written Word in Early Modern Europe

Chartier's essays provide an impressive model for just such a rigorous and sophisticated investigation of the reading and writing habits of the past? Australian Journal of Politics and History ''In these essays on the linguistic, typographical, social and cultural contexts of works by Shakespeare and Cervantes (among others), Roger Chartier shows once again his remarkable gifts for close reading, original observations, and the judicious and fruitful use of sociocultural theory.'' Peter Burke, University of Cambridge ''These brilliant essays, by the world's foremost historian of the book, are an essential guide to the textual labyrinth in which we find ourselves, a perplexing maze in which manuscripts, printed books, and digital media vie for attention. By looking with singular learning and insight at early modern texts -- above all, works by Shakespeare and Cervantes -- Chartier enables us to understand not only the written traces that have been left by the past but also the traces that we will leave for the future.'' Stephen Greenblatt, Harvard University