Editors:
- Promotes constructive dialogue between disciplines such as literature and comparative literature, history, history of art, media, book and cultural studies
- Furnishes an historical analysis of books and prints in cultural history by demonstrating how textual, visual, and cognitive skills combine with imaginary trends and patterns
- Looks at the way cultural trends shape readings of books and prints
- Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras
Part of the book series: New Directions in Book History (NDBH)
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Table of contents (11 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Manuscripts as Cultural Objects
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Front Matter
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Printed Books: Media, Objects, Uses
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
About this book
This book contributes significantly to book, image and media studies from an interdisciplinary, comparative point of view. Its broad perspective spans medieval manuscripts to e-readers. Inventive methodology offers numerous insights into visual, manuscript and print culture: material objects relate to meaning and reading processes; images and texts are examined in varied associations; the symbolic, representational and cultural agency of books and prints is brought forward.
An introduction substantiates methods and approaches, ten chapters follow along media lines: from manuscripts to prints, printed books, and e-readers. Eleven contributors from six countries challenge the idea of a unified field, revealing the role of books and prints in transformation and circulation between varying cultural trends, ‘high’ and ‘low’. Mostly Europe-based, the collection offers book and print professionals, academics and graduates, models for future research, imaginatively combining material culture with archival data, cultural and reading theories with historical patterns.Reviews
“This fascinating collection will be of interest to many VPR readers for its emphasis on the methodologies of studying text and image in the broad context of print (and manuscript) culture. It provokes those of us working in the orbit of nineteenth-century periodicals to think more comparatively about our approaches to the media we research.” (Mark W. Turner, Victorian Periodicals Review, Vol. 53 (1), 2020)
“Evanghelia Stead’s Reading Books and Prints as Cultural Objects will be welcomed by Book Studies scholars for its modeling of a material approach to reading that crosses chronologies, geographies, and media. A truly interdisciplinary collection, there is much here to provoke, challenge, and inspire future studies.” (Lorraine Janzen Kooistra, Quaerendo, Vol. 49, 2019)
“It offers a stimulating interdisciplinary perspective on the function of books and prints, spanning a broad period from medieval manuscript to digital work. … Reading Books and Prints as Cultural Objects is a very rich and insightful interdisciplinary approach.” (Fabienne Gaspari, Interfaces, Vol. 42, 2019)
“Rather than ask the old questions, ‘what is a book’ or ‘what is a print’, Stead and her collaborators want to know: what has been the use of this text-bearing object? What does it do? Applying those queries to all manner of media – made, found, used, and re-purposed – this new approach dissolves (and complicates) the distinction between the material and textual aspects of what we read, and encourages methodologies that cross the boundaries of discipline.” (Leslie Howsam, Emerita Distinguished University Professor, University of Windsor, Canada)“This volume is both original and useful. Whilst each of the essays in and of itself offers new research, the volume taken as a whole is a substantial contribution to book, image, and media history. It deliberately disrupts the idea of a unified field, demonstrating how both books and prints (sometimes combined within the same volume) act as agents between cultures.” (Kate Flint, Provost Professor of Art History and English, University of Southern California, USA)
Editors and Affiliations
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Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin, Guyancourt, France
Evanghelia Stead
About the editor
Evanghelia Stead is Fellow of the Institut Universitaire de France and Comparative Literature Professor at the University of Versailles-Saint-Quentin (UVSQ), France. She runs the TIGRE seminar at the École Normale Supérieure, Paris, France. She has published extensively on print culture, iconography, reception, myth, the fin-de-siècle, and the ‘Thousand and Second Night’ literary tradition.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Reading Books and Prints as Cultural Objects
Editors: Evanghelia Stead
Series Title: New Directions in Book History
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53832-7
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-53831-0Published: 12 January 2018
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-85252-2Published: 04 June 2019
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-53832-7Published: 20 December 2017
Series ISSN: 2634-6117
Series E-ISSN: 2634-6125
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XI, 317
Number of Illustrations: 31 b/w illustrations
Topics: History of the Book, Cultural History