Blanks, Print, Space, and Void in English Renaissance Literature: An Archaeology of Absence

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Jonathan Sawday (Walter J. Ong, SJ, Chair in the Humanities, Department of English, Walter J. Ong, SJ, Chair in the Humanities, Department of English, Saint Louis University)

Blanks, Print, Space, and Void in English Renaissance Literature

An Archaeology of Absence

Jonathan Sawday (Walter J. Ong, SJ, Chair in the Humanities, Department of English, Walter J. Ong, SJ, Chair in the Humanities, Department of English, Saint Louis University)

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English

Oxford University Press
12 October 2023

Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800; Literary studies: poetry & poets; Archaeological theory

Blanks, Print, Space, and Void in English Renaissance Literature is an inquiry into the empty spaces encountered not just on the pages of printed books in c.1500-1700, but in Renaissance culture more generally. The book argues that print culture in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries helped to foster the modern idea of the 'gap' (where words, texts, images, and ideas are constructed as missing, lost, withheld, fragmented, or perhaps never devised in the first place). It re-imagines how early modern people reacted not just to printed books and documents of many different kinds, but also how the very idea of emptiness or absence began to be fashioned in a way which still surrounds us.

Jonathan Sawday leads the reader through the entire landscape of early modern print culture, discussing topics such as: space and silence; the exploration of the vacuum; the ways in which race and racial identity in early modern England were constructed by the language and technology of print; blackness and whiteness, together with lightness, darkness, and sightlessness; cartography and emptiness; the effect of typography on reading practices; the social spaces of the page; gendered surfaces; hierarchies of information; books of memory; pages constructed as waste or vacant; the genesis of blank forms and early modern bureaucracy; the political and devotional spaces of printed books; the impact of censorship; and the problem posed by texts which lack endings or conclusions. The book itself ends by dwelling on blank or empty pages as a sign of human mortality. Sawday pays close attention to the writings of many of the familiar figures in English Renaissance literary culture - Sidney, Shakespeare, Donne, Jonson, and Milton, for example - as well as introducing readers to a host of lesser-known figures. The book also discusses the work of numerous women writers from the period, including Aphra Behn, Ann Bradstreet, Margaret Cavendish, Lady Jane Gray, Lucy Hutchinson, Æmelia Lanyer, Isabella Whitney, and Lady Mary Wroth.

By: Jonathan Sawday (Walter J. Ong SJ Chair in the Humanities Department of English Walter J. Ong SJ Chair in the Humanities Department of English Saint Louis University)
Imprint: Oxford University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 240mm, Width: 160mm, Spine: 30mm
Weight: 1g
ISBN: 9780192845641
ISBN 10: 0192845640
Pages: 592
Publication Date: 12 October 2023
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Jonathan Sawday is a cultural and literary historian. He is currently the Walter J. Ong., SJ, Chair in the Humanities in the Department of English at Saint Louis University, in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. He is the author and co-editor of five previous books, and many essays, articles, and reviews, chiefly on the literature and culture of the early modern period in the British Isles.