Early Modern Readers and Books
History 280B, Seminar, Section 7; CCN 39490

Syllabus | E-mail

• The history of the book has undergone significant change in recent decades, beginning in France and spreading throughout Europe and the New World. This class focuses on the Early Modern period with a wide range of readings from early works (Febvre & Martin, Darnton, Chartier, Eisenstein ), to overviews (A History of Reading in the West, ed. Cavallo & Chartier, 1999; Harvey J. Graff's The Legacies of Literacy, 1987), to quite recent views, such as Kevin Sparke's Reading Revolutions: The Politics of Reading in Early Modern England (2000). Special attention will be given to theories of reading, literacy and education, reading and the Reformation, and the cycle of author/publisher/printer/bookseller/reader.

  Of secondary importance will be exploration of early printed books themselves, at the Bancroft Library, in facsimile, and through evaluation of recent catalogues such as the Illustrated Incunable Short Title Catalog on CD-ROM (1998) and the 24-vol. Verzeichnis der im deutschen Sprachbereich erschienenen Drucke des XVI. Jahrhunderts, VD 16 (1983-1997).

• Reading
  • Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin. The Coming of the Book. The Impact of Printing 1450-1800. First published as L'Apparition du livre in 1958; transl. by David Gerard and published London: NLB, 1976.
  • Robert Darnton. "What Is the History of Books?" In Books and Society in History. Ed. Kenneth E. Carpenter. New York: R. R. Bowker, 1983, pp. 3-26.
  • Elizabeth L. Eisenstein. The Printing Press as an Agent of Change.Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early-Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.
  • The Culture of Print: Power and the Uses of Print in Early Modern Europe. Alain Boureau et al. Ed. Roger Chartier; trans. Lydia Cochrane. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989. Originally Usages de l'imprimé (1987)
  • A history of reading in the West . Edited by Guglielmo Cavallo and Roger Chartier ; translated by Lydia G. Cochrane. Amherst : University of Massachusetts Press, 1999. (Storia della lettura nel mondo occidentale).
  • Kevin Sharpe. Reading Revolutions: The Politics of Reading in Early Modern England. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000.
  • R. W. Scribner. Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Reformation Germany. London: The Hambledon press, 1987.
  • José Rabasa. Writing Violence on the Northern Frontier. The Historiography of Sixteenth-Century New Mexico and Florida and the Legacy of Conquest. Durham & London: Duke University Press,
  • Watt, Tessa. Cheap print and popular piety, 1550-1640. Cambridge [England] ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1991. Series title: Cambridge studies in early modern British history. UCB Main PR428.C48 W38 1991
  • The Reformation and the book. Edited by Jean-Francois Gilmont: edition and translation by Karin Maag. Aldershot, Hants, England ; Brookfield USA : Ashgate, 1998.
  • Grendler, Paul F. "Schooling in Western Europe." No. V (paged 775-787). "The Organization of Primary and Secondary Education in the Italian Renaissance." No. VI (paged 185-205. In Books and Schools in the Italian Renaissance. Aldershot, Hampshire, Great Britain ; Brookfield, Vt.: Variorum, 1995. UCB Main LA791.3 .G73 1995
  • Lisa Jardine. Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance. New York: Norton, 1996. Chap. 3, "The Triumph of the Book.
  • . Henri-Jean Martin. The History and Power of Writing. Translated by Lydia G. Cochrane. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994 (1988 in French). Chapters 5: The Arrival of Print; 6: The Reign of the Book; 8: The Book and Society.
  • Christiane Andersson. "Popular Imagery in German Reformation Broadsheets." In Print and Culture in the Renaissance. Essays on the Advent of Printing in Europe. Ed. by Gerald P. Tyson, Sylvia S. Wagonheim. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1986. pp. 120-50.
  • Keith P. F. Moxey. "The Function of Peasant Imagery in German Graphics." In Print and Culture in the Renaissance. Essays on the Advent of Printing in Europe. Ed. by Gerald P. Tyson, Sylvia S. Wagonheim. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1986. pp.151-88.
  • Harvey Graff. The Legacies of Literacy. Continuities and Contradictions in Western Culture and Society. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987. Chap 4. Ends and Beginnings: The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries. Chap. 5. Print, Protest, and the People. 108- 172.
  • Heresy and Literacy, 1000-1530. Edited by Peter Biller and Anne Hudson. Cambridge
  • Strauss, Gerald. Luther's House of Learning: Indoctrination of the Young in the German Reformation. Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, c1978.
  • David Cressy. Literacy and the Social Order. Reading and writing in Tudor and Stuart England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980.

Other interesting items:
• Roger Chartier. "Orality Lost: Text and Voice in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries." In Across Boundaries: The Book in Culture and Commerce, ed. Bill Bell, Philip Bennett & Jonquil Bevan (New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2000), pp. 1-28.