Book Notes

David McKitterick. Print, Manuscript and the Search for Order. 1450-1830. Cambridge.

– trade in books was international from the beginning

– the literature produced includes all genres of print

-Gutenberg was not imitating a manuscript but making a book as it was understood by his clients

-early books were a hybrid of print and manuscript, of old and new technologies

-early readers made no distinction between printed and manuscript books

-no sudden break in the production of manuscripts in 1500: manuscript production continued until well into the 17th century in England (and until the 19th century in Spain, Italy and Eastern Europe)

-if print did bring about a revolution, it was a gradual one that took over 200 years

-“In practice, each new technology does not replace the previous one. Rather, it augments it, and offers alternatives.”

-the 18th century sees a standardization in printing that is part of a larger movement in the standardization of all manufacturing processes.

-development of illustration should be seen as a process parallel to the history of the printed word.

The Distance, The Shadows. Selected Poems of Victor Hugo. trans. Harry Guest. Anvil.

Selected Poems of Victor Hugo. ed. and trans. by EH and AM Blackmore. (University of Chicago Press).

Note: AVOID the new Victor Hugo Selected Poems Penguin edition by Brooks Haxton (“the least satisfactory of the three bilingual volumes under review”)

Simon Morley. Writing on the Wall: Word and image in modern art. Thames and Hudson.

Barbara Newman. God and the Goddesses: Vision, poetry and belief in the Middle Ages. University of Pennsylvania Press.
-four cases: Dame Nature, Lady Love, Holy Wisdom, Mary.
-the agency of female divinities opened a range of possibilities for medieval believers for addressing gender specific psychological and cultural needs.