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A cross-cultural, comparative view on the transition from a predominant ‘culture of handwriting’ to a predominant ‘culture of print’ in the late medieval and early modern periods is provided here, combining research on Christian and Jewish European book culture with findings on East Asian manuscript and print culture. This approach highlights interactions and interdependencies instead of retracing a linear process from the manuscript book to its printed successor. While each chapter is written as a disciplinary study focused on one specific case from the respective field, the volume as a whole allows for transcultural perspectives. It thereby not only focusses on change, but also on simultaneities of manuscript and printing practices as well as on shifts in the perception of media, writing surfaces, and materials: Which values did writers, printers, and readers attribute to the handwritten and printed materials? For which types of texts was handwriting preferred or perceived as suitable? How and under which circumstances could handwritten and printed texts coexist, even within the same document, and which epistemic dynamics emerged from such textual assemblages?
In this book Kathleen Biddick investigates the fate of the enduring timelines fabricated by early Christians to distinguish themselves from their Jewish neighbors. Ranging widely across the history of text, technology, and book art, she relates three interwoven stories: the Christians' translation of circumcision into a graphic problem of writing on the heart; the temporal construction of Christian notions of history based on the binary supersession of an Old Testament past by the present of a new dispensation; and the traumatic repetition of the graphic cutting off of Christians from Jews in academic history and anthropology. Moving beyond well-studied theological polemics, Biddick works fr...
This collection, presented to Michael Friedrich in honour of his academic career at of the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, traces key concepts that scholars associated with the Centre have developed and refined for the systematic study of manuscript cultures. At the same time, the contributions showcase the possibilities of expanding the traditional subject of ‘manuscripts’ to the larger perspective of ‘written artefacts’.
InBremen als Brennpunkt reformierter Irenik zeigt Leo van Santen anhand der Biografie von Ludwig Crocius (1586-1655), wie dessen irenische Theologie zur Verständigung von Reformierten und Lutheranern nicht so sehr dogmatisch bedingt war, als vielmehr vom Bremer Stadtrat veranlasst wurde, der an guten Beziehungen mit dem lutherischen Umland Interesse hatte. Mit seiner Irenik kollidierte Crocius jedoch, zunächst 1618-1619 als Bremer Delegierter während der Dordrechter Synode, mit der von den calvinistischen Niederlanden geforderten strengen Orthodoxie, die 1636 einen Kirchenstreit verursachte. Die von Santen erstmals ausgewerteten Korrespondenzen, die Crocius aus diesem Anlass und als Prore...
A revisionist biography of Andreas Vesalius—the father of modern anatomy—as deeply shaped by Renaissance culture. In 1543 the young and ambitious physician Andreas Vesalius published one of the most famous books in the history of medicine, On the Fabric of the Human Body. While we often think of dissection as destroying the body, Vesalius believed that it helped him understand how to construct the human body. In this book, Sachiko Kusukawa shows how Vesalius’s publication emerged from the interplay of Renaissance art, printing technology, and classical tradition. She challenges the conventional view of Vesalius as a proto-modern, anti-authoritarian father of anatomy through a more nuanced account of how Vesalius exploited cultural and technological developments to create a big and beautiful book that propelled him into imperial circles and secured his enduring fame.
The early modern European book world was confronted with many crises and controversies. Some conflicts were of such monumental scale that they wrought significant reconfigurations of the trade. Others were more quotidian in nature – evidence of the intensely competitive and at times predatory nature of the industry. How publishing negotiated and responded to the various crises, conflicts and disputes of the age is explored by the rich and varied interdisciplinary contributions in this volume. To succeed in the business of books, printers and publishers needed to seize the advantage in the often complex environments in which they operated. What was required was determination, resilience, and inventiveness, even in the most challenging of times.
This book traces a revolution in values that transformed nineteenth-century attitudes to second-hand books, bibliography and collecting.
Buying and Selling explores the many facets of the business of books across and beyond Europe, adopting the viewpoints of printers, publishers, booksellers, and readers. Essays by twenty-five scholars from a range of disciplines seek to reconstruct the dynamics of the trade through a variety of sources. Through the combined investigation of printed output, documentary evidence, provenance research, and epistolary networks, this volume trails the evolving relationship between readers and the book trade. In the resulting picture of failure and success, balanced precariously between debt-economies, sale strategies and uncertain profit, customers stand out as the real winners.
This interdisciplinary handbook provides extensive information about research in medieval studies and its most important results over the last decades. The handbook is a reference work which enables the readers to quickly and purposely gain insight into the important research discussions and to inform themselves about the current status of research in the field. The handbook consists of four parts. The first, large section offers articles on all of the main disciplines and discussions of the field. The second section presents articles on the key concepts of modern medieval studies and the debates therein. The third section is a lexicon of the most important text genres of the Middle Ages. The fourth section provides an international bio-bibliographical lexicon of the most prominent medievalists in all disciplines. A comprehensive bibliography rounds off the compendium. The result is a reference work which exhaustively documents the current status of research in medieval studies and brings the disciplines and experts of the field together.
Martin Luther’s 1522 September Testament marked a watershed in Bible translation, making Scripture available to ordinary German people in their own tongue and sparking similar efforts across Europe. Building on the nascent trend of vernacular Bible translations in the early sixteenth century, Luther’s translation quickly became definitive linguistically, theologically and culturally, especially once the complete Bible was published in 1534, with production of New Testaments and Bibles in French, English and other languages keeping pace. Luther and his associates constantly revised and improved their methodology for translation and interpretation over a quarter-century of Bible publishing...