Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities. Revised Ed. London: Verso, 1983 / 2006.
Why a book on Nationalism on a reading list focused primarily on Book History? Why a work that spends most of its time discussing the post-Enlightenment manifestation of the Nation-state when my period-of-focus is early modern? Because, despite most of the received wisdom on this work, Anderson posits a beginning of Nationalism in the early modern period, and places the power behind that beginning in the hands of what he terms "print-capitalism." This is actually an excellent example of a study of the impact of text technologies in a wider-theory context.
Suddenly, this seemingly wacky choice is much more "on topic" for me than it first appeared. My focus, however, does reproduce a phenomenon Anderson decries in his preface, a "Eurocentric provincialism" that ignores his chapter on "Creole Pioneers." This is not, however, because I do not think that the colonized peoples of North and South America (his focus for "creole" cultures) didn't contribute to Nationalism. Rather, the nationalisms I'm interested in are the ones he predicates on his theory of "print-capitalism," and he seems to make a fairly clear distinction, himself, between the European self-definitions he claims are spurred by this phenomenon and the Creole Pioneers whose motivations are distinct and whose growth and actions take place later in his historical narrative.
So since I am reading for the purposes of elucidating the cultural phenomenon of print in a European context, I hope my eurocentric predilections will be excused.
To address the question which brought me to this text, then: Why "print-capitalism," and how does Anderson posit it as a fundamentally influential development vis-a-vis the growth of nationalism in Europe?
Language, both written and oral, features prominently in Anderson's definition-scheme. Accordingly, one of his posited primary cultural roots of 'nation' is the shift away from sacred "truth-languages" (e.g. Latin, Quar'anic Arabic, or Examination Chinese), which are designated as a language which functioned as a "privileged system of re-presentaiton" that is the only way of apprehending "ontological reality" (14-19). Basically, only Latin allows you to talk to God, so Latin is a unifying language for Christendom. Challenged by the new peoples, places, and things discovered in the age of exploration, these languages, which used to bind a large, scattered population into a general idea of a unified faith-system, cease to encompass all of the experiences of its people, leading to a gradual fragmentation, pluralization, and territorializaiton (19). This analysis, particularly the latter part describing its fragmentation, seems to be more focused on the western/ Christian model, and it's unclear if all claims equally apply to the other two sacred-language systems (quar'anic Arabic / Islam, Examination Chinese / Confucianism).
As part of his discussion of the 'upset' of these sacred languages, Anderson relies heavily on figures from Febvre and Martin's Coming of the Book to illustrate the rising power of the vernacular. What this brief sketch of the shift in book-markets (less than a page, and wholly taken from Febvre and Martin) fails to mention, however, is the shifting demographics of the market for printed books as advances in technology and availability of materials brings down prices and makes localized markets more feasible. While it's likely true that 77% of books printed before 1500 were in Latin and that figure quite likely reversed by 1550, the early high percentage of Latin books may have been skewed by the necessities of an inherently constrained market. Only the very wealthiest could buy books, so to take advantage of the greatest number of wealthy people, it made sense to publish in the language the greatest number of highly educated, very wealthy people could read. When the market widened even slightly, it made more sense to publish in local vernaculars. Comparing the market for incunabula to the market for books even 100 years later seems rather problematic.
The second aspect through which Anderson ties language to national consciousness is through the consumption of print materials. Anderson specifically mentions the novel and the newspaper as means of changing the consciousness of groups of people to allow for the concept of imaginary shared communities. Both, he claims, shifted human consciousness from a Messianic time-frame ("a simultaneity of past and future in an instantaneous present"), to a clocked, calendrical understanding of time. While 'Novel' and 'Newspaper' both seem a bit late for this, the general gist (readers identify with protagonists in novels and mentally assume their social connections, newspapers are dated and assume a community of concerns) makes sense, if perhaps are also applicable to other genres ("to the Reader" prefaces assume communities of readers long before the novel comes about, news sheets and published letters function essentially the same as the characteristics denoted to newspapers).
The real argument about the nationalizing effect of print, however, comes in chapter 3, when Anderson makes the link between print-as-commodity, with its reproducibility and dissemination-routes, and capitalism. Although he acknowledges that "early printers established branches all over Europe," supported by a quote from Coming of the Book, he then undermines that quote by noting that L'Apparition doesn't contain the words for 'national' and 'international' from the quote, it just mentions "par-dessus les frontières." This translation issue, however, doesn't negate the thrust of the quote, which is that international print-houses *did* work across borders. While I agree that market forces are probably responsible for the rise in vernacular printing (38), this vernacular printing did not respect national borders the way he seems to assume. French books were printed in the Amsterdam, Geneva, and London, all for export to France. While I think vernacular literature did much to define the group consciousness of a given people, it was not necessarily produced by those people, nor was its creation necessarily an act of self-definition. More convincing is his argument that print combined with the Protestant revolution "mobilized [merchants and women] for politico-religious purposes" (40).
Print, he argues, creates a stable realm of communication based on the vernaculars, but with an agreed upon leveling function that unifies dialects (he calls this "print-languages"). While he notes in his footnotes his reliance on Febvre and Martin's more sociological form of print-history, he distinguishes print from print-capitalism as a revolutionary force (contradicting Eisenstein and Steinberg) by noting "although printing was invented first in China, possibly 500 years before its appearance in Europe, it had no major, let alone revolutionary impact -- precisely because of the absence of capitalism there" (n.21, p. 44). The vast differences from the xylographic pages of an ideographic language verses movable type of an alphabetic language may also have impacted this difference, in addition to the differing economic systems.
I feel that while Anderson may be overstating the combined novelty of print and "capitalism" in the late 15th to early 16th centuries, the observations he makes on the sociological impact of printed books seem sound. I'm now conflicted about whether to follow this book with Richard Helgerson's Forms of Nationhood: The Elizabethan Writing of England, or D. F. McKenzie's Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts. I suppose you'll just have to wait and see...
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Spain: Backgrounds
J. H. Elliott, Imperial Spain: 1469-1716. London: Edward Arnold 1963; reprinted London: Penguin, 2002.
Garrett Mattingly, The Armada. Boston: Hughton Mifflin, 1959; reprinted 2005.
So as part of my thesis, I'm looking at the printing environment of propaganda works concerning the brief flash in the Anglo-Spanish War (1585-1604) that became known in English speaking accounts as "The Attack of the Spanish Armada." Given that I don't want my retelling to simply reinforce the persistent Two-State account of the event (It was Spain! against England!), but rather to situate the pamphlets I'm looking at in the larger context of international relations in the period, it seemed like a good idea to bone up on A. Spanish history from a Spain-focused point of view, and B. The "best" available account of the attack itself. Hence these two Oldie-but-goodie history books make my list.
J. H. Elliott barely mentions the Armada at all. Beginning with the unification of Castile and Aragon, he traces a complex history of Spain that emphasizes its Italian, Netherlands, and American possessions as integral parts of Spanish identity. The Anglo-Spanish War, which loomed so huge in English imagination, doesn't evoke the same emotional resonance in this Spanish focused account. Instead, far more space is given to the economic factors that shaped Spain's destiny, and the religious and political struggles that shaped its foreign policy. The Netherlands, a possession of Philip II by virtue of his lineage from his father, Charles V's maternal grandmother, Mary of Burgundy.
This work is true Great Man History; it focuses on the interior court struggles, the basic economics, and the personal philosophies which affected the decision making of Ferdinand and Isabella, Philip the Fair (married to Juana the Mad), their son Charles V, and his grandson Philip II. It's worth reading just for the chart of the Spanish Hapsburg lineage, which makes you realize both A: how close the English royal family and the Hapsburgs were, and B: That family tree has loops in it. Suddenly it's easy to understand why Charles II, Philip II's great grandson, looks positively *ill* in every portrait.
While lacking in the pieces of everyday life that social historians today find so appealing (woman? there were women in Spain?) Elliott gives a compelling glimpse into the economic forces which tied Spain to the rest of Europe, and the social forces which errected a thick barrier between its society and the possible intrusions of unorthodox outsiders.
Garrett Mattingly's work is a different beast all together. Focusing on the events leading up to the event itself, as well as a blow-by-blow telling of events, it's aimed at a general history readership. Which means, infuriatingly enough, there are no footnotes. Even so, it's one of the most reputable academic works on the event out there, even though it's a good 51 years old at this point. There are very abbreviated endnotes, however, with brief source descriptions amounting to perhaps one line about every three sources. The notes to chapter 30, "Drake is Captured!", which dealt with some of the print reaction, will be particularly useful to me. It has an intriguing note which describes the pamphlet Discours veritable de ce qui s'est passé entre les deux armées... which claims to have been published in Paris, as "Obviously from the same press" as La copie d'une lettre ... à Don Bernardin de Mendoza, which is one of my main focus texts. Mattingly identified the Italian and Dutch translations of Copie of a Letter, but seems to have missed the second French translation and the German. This chapter does a good job of sketching some of the print reaction. Mattingly credits Medoza with much of the force of the propaganda reaching Spain, but perhaps neglects the impact of English efforts in French and other continental languages. Like most accounts which focus on English Vs. Spanish viewpoints, he also manages to sideline and discount the import or reason for the Dutch and German publications. I just hope I can do them justice without necessarily going out and learning sixteenth century High German right now. I just don't have time, yo.
Garrett Mattingly, The Armada. Boston: Hughton Mifflin, 1959; reprinted 2005.
So as part of my thesis, I'm looking at the printing environment of propaganda works concerning the brief flash in the Anglo-Spanish War (1585-1604) that became known in English speaking accounts as "The Attack of the Spanish Armada." Given that I don't want my retelling to simply reinforce the persistent Two-State account of the event (It was Spain! against England!), but rather to situate the pamphlets I'm looking at in the larger context of international relations in the period, it seemed like a good idea to bone up on A. Spanish history from a Spain-focused point of view, and B. The "best" available account of the attack itself. Hence these two Oldie-but-goodie history books make my list.
J. H. Elliott barely mentions the Armada at all. Beginning with the unification of Castile and Aragon, he traces a complex history of Spain that emphasizes its Italian, Netherlands, and American possessions as integral parts of Spanish identity. The Anglo-Spanish War, which loomed so huge in English imagination, doesn't evoke the same emotional resonance in this Spanish focused account. Instead, far more space is given to the economic factors that shaped Spain's destiny, and the religious and political struggles that shaped its foreign policy. The Netherlands, a possession of Philip II by virtue of his lineage from his father, Charles V's maternal grandmother, Mary of Burgundy.
This work is true Great Man History; it focuses on the interior court struggles, the basic economics, and the personal philosophies which affected the decision making of Ferdinand and Isabella, Philip the Fair (married to Juana the Mad), their son Charles V, and his grandson Philip II. It's worth reading just for the chart of the Spanish Hapsburg lineage, which makes you realize both A: how close the English royal family and the Hapsburgs were, and B: That family tree has loops in it. Suddenly it's easy to understand why Charles II, Philip II's great grandson, looks positively *ill* in every portrait.
While lacking in the pieces of everyday life that social historians today find so appealing (woman? there were women in Spain?) Elliott gives a compelling glimpse into the economic forces which tied Spain to the rest of Europe, and the social forces which errected a thick barrier between its society and the possible intrusions of unorthodox outsiders.
Garrett Mattingly's work is a different beast all together. Focusing on the events leading up to the event itself, as well as a blow-by-blow telling of events, it's aimed at a general history readership. Which means, infuriatingly enough, there are no footnotes. Even so, it's one of the most reputable academic works on the event out there, even though it's a good 51 years old at this point. There are very abbreviated endnotes, however, with brief source descriptions amounting to perhaps one line about every three sources. The notes to chapter 30, "Drake is Captured!", which dealt with some of the print reaction, will be particularly useful to me. It has an intriguing note which describes the pamphlet Discours veritable de ce qui s'est passé entre les deux armées... which claims to have been published in Paris, as "Obviously from the same press" as La copie d'une lettre ... à Don Bernardin de Mendoza, which is one of my main focus texts. Mattingly identified the Italian and Dutch translations of Copie of a Letter, but seems to have missed the second French translation and the German. This chapter does a good job of sketching some of the print reaction. Mattingly credits Medoza with much of the force of the propaganda reaching Spain, but perhaps neglects the impact of English efforts in French and other continental languages. Like most accounts which focus on English Vs. Spanish viewpoints, he also manages to sideline and discount the import or reason for the Dutch and German publications. I just hope I can do them justice without necessarily going out and learning sixteenth century High German right now. I just don't have time, yo.
Friday, July 16, 2010
Women Beware Women
While my Major Field is History of Text Technologies, my minor day will focus on the literature and culture of "Renaissance" England. It still bothers me slightly to use the term "Renaissance" after so many years of "Early Modern," but hey, that's what was on the little drop-down menu for selecting minors, and it sounded nifty. That, and since my interests focus mainly in the sixteenth and *very early* seventeenth centuries, for publishing, it made sense.
As such, they expect me to have actually well, *read* some of this literature. I'm solving parts of this problem by teaching a number of texts in my Women in Literature course this summer, but you can only make undergrads read so much of your list. More's the pity.
I may find a way to work Thomas Middleton's Women Beware Women into a syllabus at some point. I saw this tragedy performed at the National Theatre when I was in London. The production was spectacular, and I think it distinctly colors my later rereading of the play.
Synopsis:
The critical character in the play is Livia, a twice-widowed noblewoman. Her scheming and manipulation fuels much of the plot, as she arranges relationships around her as though manipulating chess pieces on a board. The chess metaphor is blatant at the end of the second act, and productions tend to play it up to varying degrees. The production I saw did it subtly, with a conquered floor in the part of the set used for Livia's house, which also functioned as much of the main playing space.
Besides Livia, there is her niece Isabella, and Isabella's uncle / Livia's brother Hippolito. The audience quickly learns that Hippolito is in love with his niece, an anguishing experience for this otherwise upstanding man. When he confesses this to Isabella, she rejects him in horror. Meanwhile, Isabella is also dealing with her betrothal to an absolute idiot, called the Ward. Isabella is given some rather choice lines on the horribleness of arranged marriages, "Men buy their slaves, but women buuy their masters" being one of the best (1.2.178). The Ward is a rich fool, and the match is arranged between her father and the Ward's guardian ... Guardiano. Middleton gets around the utter inanity of that name by having no one speak it, except maybe the Ward (and he mangles it to "Guardianer").
Guardiano is evil. At the National he was played by Andrew Woodall with an avuncular malevolence which sneaks up on you, to devastating effect. You want to like him in his first few scenes, as he arranges his Idiot's wedding, but it becomes clear that he has utterly failed the Ward in raising him. And it becomes increasingly clear that he serves his Duke in other ways, most closely as a procurer. The Duke is known for his wicked ways, which apparently involve much wenching (and worrying on the part of his Cardinal brother).
There's a final important pair, a young married couple named Bianca and Leantio. Leantio has just stolen the noble Bianca from her rich parents, secretly married her, and the play opens with her introduction to his Mother. Leantio's terrified that someone will steal his new bride away, and attempts to keep her locked in the family home. Given that set up, of course the Duke sees her during a procession in the first Act.
Whew. Ok -- so how does Livia work her "magic"? She convinces Isabella that her mother slept with a famous Spaniard, thus Isabella's uncle isn't really her uncle. Isabella agrees to marry Adam Sandler's ancestor to facilitate her proposed adultery with her beloved-"not"-Uncle.
Guardiano has Livia invite Leantio's mother over for a game of chess; while they play, Guardiano proposes to show Bianca Livia's art. She finds some rather "lively" art indeed -- the Duke is waiting in an upper gallery, where he proceeds to rape the young bride. Leanto's Mother loses the game. Coming back down stairs, Bianca comes to terms with her new state as a fallen woman. Her reasoning is a bit baffling without some background in EM ideas of purity, but she decides to become the Duke's mistress -- not many other options are left to her.
In the third act, the Duke throws a banquet, and invites Bianca. This is when Leantio discovers she's no longer his sweet young bride. The Banquet is ostensibly so that the Ward may "meet" Isabella (although she's seen him already). She is put through her paces (singing, dancing -- with her Uncle), and then the Ward has a dance with her. At the National, this was pure comic slapstic -- her dance with her uncle was beautiful, and the Ward's utterly painful to watch. Meanwhile, the banquet has thrown a kink in Livia's plans. She's fallen in love. At the ripe "old" age of 39, she falls for Leantio. She provides him an "out" from the Duke's galling offer; he'll avoid the job offered by his cuckold and take the "job" of house-boy for this rich widow. The production I saw had him outfitted in a pewter silk suit for the second half of the show. It was ostentatious.
What could go wrong, you say? Everyone's paired up you say? Well, Leantio can't leave Bianca alone. At the beginning of the fourth act, he comes by to "gloat" - in a really sad way - about his new position as kept-boy. Unfortunately, the Duke sees him, and it occurs to the Duke that if he can kill off Hubby, he can legally marry his mistress, which would conveniently get his sermonizing brother the Cardinal off his back. So he arranges a hit on Leantio, by telling Hippolito that his sister is doing the pool boy, so to speak.
Killing Leantio unravels everything. Livia, broken hearted, informs Isabella (and her enfianced) that she's been sleeping with her Uncle. After this outburst and it's fall-out, it comes to light that the Duke used Hippolito when his hasty marriage becomes known. The family "makes up" and plot to hurt the Duke by throwing a masked Ball in "honor" of his nuptuals. Isabella and Hippolito don't realize how very hurt Livia is, however. She fully intends to kill *everybody*.
At the wedding of Bianca and the Duke, the Cardinal attempts to interrupt things. He thinks Bianca is unfit for lawful marriage, having been a mistress. Bianca and the Cardinal banter about religion, the Duke marries her anyways.
The rest of the play consists of an elaborate masque, which as the National Theatre presented it was a whirling mass of death. I haven't seen a better orchestrated fight sequence (on a revolving stage!) since the Kill Bill movies. Bianca prepares a poisoned cup for the Cardinal, but the Duke ends up drinking it. According to the stage directions, Isabella dies from "flaming fold" thrown in her lap -- the production simplified this into strangling. Guardiano falls through a trap door, as if to hell. In the production, Livia was killed twice: the first time, one of her servants dressed as her is accidentally killed in her place. It seems the stage directions only require once, though. Hippolito is shot (but fights on for a number of lines). Bianca finally kills herself, drinking from the same poisoned cup that kills the Duke.
The Cardinal is left Last Man Standing, and is able to deliver a moralizing bit on Sin. It's only four lines long though, so it doesn't impede too heavily on the bloodbath you've just witnessed.
I don't know exactly how I'd teach this yet. I think pairing it with R&J would be fantastic, actually, given the number of star-crossed lovers and how delightfully raunchy it is. It has some really good points about the things women do *to women* which can be a nice balance for a Women In Literature course, which has the unfortunate tendency to veer towards victimology as students overly simplify complex historical situations. And it's just a fun play, with more bufooning than one expects in a bloody revenge tragedy, mixed with some actual sweet emotions from characters like Livia, who in a simpler play would be purely evil.
As such, they expect me to have actually well, *read* some of this literature. I'm solving parts of this problem by teaching a number of texts in my Women in Literature course this summer, but you can only make undergrads read so much of your list. More's the pity.
I may find a way to work Thomas Middleton's Women Beware Women into a syllabus at some point. I saw this tragedy performed at the National Theatre when I was in London. The production was spectacular, and I think it distinctly colors my later rereading of the play.
Synopsis:
The critical character in the play is Livia, a twice-widowed noblewoman. Her scheming and manipulation fuels much of the plot, as she arranges relationships around her as though manipulating chess pieces on a board. The chess metaphor is blatant at the end of the second act, and productions tend to play it up to varying degrees. The production I saw did it subtly, with a conquered floor in the part of the set used for Livia's house, which also functioned as much of the main playing space.
Besides Livia, there is her niece Isabella, and Isabella's uncle / Livia's brother Hippolito. The audience quickly learns that Hippolito is in love with his niece, an anguishing experience for this otherwise upstanding man. When he confesses this to Isabella, she rejects him in horror. Meanwhile, Isabella is also dealing with her betrothal to an absolute idiot, called the Ward. Isabella is given some rather choice lines on the horribleness of arranged marriages, "Men buy their slaves, but women buuy their masters" being one of the best (1.2.178). The Ward is a rich fool, and the match is arranged between her father and the Ward's guardian ... Guardiano. Middleton gets around the utter inanity of that name by having no one speak it, except maybe the Ward (and he mangles it to "Guardianer").
Guardiano is evil. At the National he was played by Andrew Woodall with an avuncular malevolence which sneaks up on you, to devastating effect. You want to like him in his first few scenes, as he arranges his Idiot's wedding, but it becomes clear that he has utterly failed the Ward in raising him. And it becomes increasingly clear that he serves his Duke in other ways, most closely as a procurer. The Duke is known for his wicked ways, which apparently involve much wenching (and worrying on the part of his Cardinal brother).
There's a final important pair, a young married couple named Bianca and Leantio. Leantio has just stolen the noble Bianca from her rich parents, secretly married her, and the play opens with her introduction to his Mother. Leantio's terrified that someone will steal his new bride away, and attempts to keep her locked in the family home. Given that set up, of course the Duke sees her during a procession in the first Act.
Whew. Ok -- so how does Livia work her "magic"? She convinces Isabella that her mother slept with a famous Spaniard, thus Isabella's uncle isn't really her uncle. Isabella agrees to marry Adam Sandler's ancestor to facilitate her proposed adultery with her beloved-"not"-Uncle.
Guardiano has Livia invite Leantio's mother over for a game of chess; while they play, Guardiano proposes to show Bianca Livia's art. She finds some rather "lively" art indeed -- the Duke is waiting in an upper gallery, where he proceeds to rape the young bride. Leanto's Mother loses the game. Coming back down stairs, Bianca comes to terms with her new state as a fallen woman. Her reasoning is a bit baffling without some background in EM ideas of purity, but she decides to become the Duke's mistress -- not many other options are left to her.
In the third act, the Duke throws a banquet, and invites Bianca. This is when Leantio discovers she's no longer his sweet young bride. The Banquet is ostensibly so that the Ward may "meet" Isabella (although she's seen him already). She is put through her paces (singing, dancing -- with her Uncle), and then the Ward has a dance with her. At the National, this was pure comic slapstic -- her dance with her uncle was beautiful, and the Ward's utterly painful to watch. Meanwhile, the banquet has thrown a kink in Livia's plans. She's fallen in love. At the ripe "old" age of 39, she falls for Leantio. She provides him an "out" from the Duke's galling offer; he'll avoid the job offered by his cuckold and take the "job" of house-boy for this rich widow. The production I saw had him outfitted in a pewter silk suit for the second half of the show. It was ostentatious.
What could go wrong, you say? Everyone's paired up you say? Well, Leantio can't leave Bianca alone. At the beginning of the fourth act, he comes by to "gloat" - in a really sad way - about his new position as kept-boy. Unfortunately, the Duke sees him, and it occurs to the Duke that if he can kill off Hubby, he can legally marry his mistress, which would conveniently get his sermonizing brother the Cardinal off his back. So he arranges a hit on Leantio, by telling Hippolito that his sister is doing the pool boy, so to speak.
Killing Leantio unravels everything. Livia, broken hearted, informs Isabella (and her enfianced) that she's been sleeping with her Uncle. After this outburst and it's fall-out, it comes to light that the Duke used Hippolito when his hasty marriage becomes known. The family "makes up" and plot to hurt the Duke by throwing a masked Ball in "honor" of his nuptuals. Isabella and Hippolito don't realize how very hurt Livia is, however. She fully intends to kill *everybody*.
At the wedding of Bianca and the Duke, the Cardinal attempts to interrupt things. He thinks Bianca is unfit for lawful marriage, having been a mistress. Bianca and the Cardinal banter about religion, the Duke marries her anyways.
The rest of the play consists of an elaborate masque, which as the National Theatre presented it was a whirling mass of death. I haven't seen a better orchestrated fight sequence (on a revolving stage!) since the Kill Bill movies. Bianca prepares a poisoned cup for the Cardinal, but the Duke ends up drinking it. According to the stage directions, Isabella dies from "flaming fold" thrown in her lap -- the production simplified this into strangling. Guardiano falls through a trap door, as if to hell. In the production, Livia was killed twice: the first time, one of her servants dressed as her is accidentally killed in her place. It seems the stage directions only require once, though. Hippolito is shot (but fights on for a number of lines). Bianca finally kills herself, drinking from the same poisoned cup that kills the Duke.
The Cardinal is left Last Man Standing, and is able to deliver a moralizing bit on Sin. It's only four lines long though, so it doesn't impede too heavily on the bloodbath you've just witnessed.
I don't know exactly how I'd teach this yet. I think pairing it with R&J would be fantastic, actually, given the number of star-crossed lovers and how delightfully raunchy it is. It has some really good points about the things women do *to women* which can be a nice balance for a Women In Literature course, which has the unfortunate tendency to veer towards victimology as students overly simplify complex historical situations. And it's just a fun play, with more bufooning than one expects in a bloody revenge tragedy, mixed with some actual sweet emotions from characters like Livia, who in a simpler play would be purely evil.
Friday, June 25, 2010
Interdisciplinarity isn't just a word that Word can't recognize: sometimes departments can't either...
Howsam, Leslie. Old Books and New Histories: An Orientation to Studies in Book and Print Culture. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2006. [Relevance: a place to start]
It is somewhat comforting to note that Leslie Howsam begins her first chapter by pointing out that “This vast scope and these blurred boundaries mean that no one can ever be an expert on all its [book history’s] aspects” (3). The committee can’t expect me to know it all – Howsam says so! With the scope and disunity of the “field” – from printed books to electronic texts, medieval manuscripts, modern notebooks; studies of reading, printing, publishing; Ancient Rome to last year in New York – of course no one agrees on the most basic terminology. Howsam identifies three major disciplines in dialogue: history, bibliography, and literature, and then proceeds to triangulate from these more formalized fields the fuzzy interdisciplinary areas between them.
The interdisciplinarities Howsam maps in chapter 2 have been both my joy and my frustration since my undergraduate honors thesis. The region between History and Literature is the provenance of cultural history, literary history, print culture studies, and cultural studies; between history and bibliography the realm of the studies of print houses. Having been “raised” a historian, I find that I still identify with the axes which pivot on that point of Howsam’s triangle, even if I have jumped the departmental fence, as it were. The real value of these first two chapters is in the way Howsam fleshes out this amorphous region between disciplines: by giving examples of studies she feels are material to shaping the field, the second chapter can function as something of a control for my larger project. If the purpose of preliminary examinations in the field of History of Text Technologies is to prove that I have a sense of the field in which I hope to contribute, this snap shot of the field as of 2006 provides a number of nice starting places, and I will likely return to it at the end of this project to see what articles may fill in perceived gaps.
More directly valuable is the concise comparison of “Models of the Book’s Place in History,” in chapter 3, which compares a number of visual and rhetorical models for conceptualizing the function of books (defined loosely in some, and more stringently in others, but primarily physical objects) in human society at more or less specific points of location and time. Beginning with Robert Darnton’s “Communication Circuit Model” from 1982 and it’s critique by Thomas Tanselle, followed by Thomas Adams and Nicolas Barker’s 1993 “Book-Centered Model,” which emphasizes the material object’s influence on humans at various stages, rather than the human influence on the material object. This chapter reflects the three-fold nature of the previous two, in which Darnton’s (historical) model is contrasted by Adams and Barker’s (bibliographical) model and finally rounded out by Peter McDonald’s “Critique from Literary Studies” (1997). While I tend to favor the tangible nature of Adams and Barker’s argument, Howsam notes McDonald’s nod towards Pierre Bourdieu’s cultural theory, and while I wouldn’t attempt to distill it at this fourth level of critique, I find what she presents compelling and will seek out his theory directly in future reading. Ok, so this third chapter has a fourth model, and doesn’t fit completely neatly into the trifold formula of the others. James Secord’s “The Histories of the Book and of Science” (2000) connects the conceptualizations of scientific experiment and the event(s) that constitute authorship, print, and reading. This model, rather than being purely a model of the place of the book in society, is a conceptualization of the idea of the book as a methodology, or, as Howsam phrases it, “using the book as an intellectual approach and a way to open up interpretive possibilities” (45).
While these and the final two chapters in Howsam’s book are a review of the literature, they provide a cogent synopsis of the state of the field, up to fairly recently. She’s a bit more optimistic than I currently am about the problems inherent in “matters of communication” between disciplines -- a lack of shared vocabulary (indeed, the use of the same word to mean fundamentally, if fractionally, different things) is a fairly large stumbling block to easy interdisciplinarity. In the fifth chapter, she gives a nod towards resistance to interdisciplinary techniques in the three fields, particularly history, which challenges book history to justify a place for itself in the academic landscape where territory is well defended.
It is somewhat comforting to note that Leslie Howsam begins her first chapter by pointing out that “This vast scope and these blurred boundaries mean that no one can ever be an expert on all its [book history’s] aspects” (3). The committee can’t expect me to know it all – Howsam says so! With the scope and disunity of the “field” – from printed books to electronic texts, medieval manuscripts, modern notebooks; studies of reading, printing, publishing; Ancient Rome to last year in New York – of course no one agrees on the most basic terminology. Howsam identifies three major disciplines in dialogue: history, bibliography, and literature, and then proceeds to triangulate from these more formalized fields the fuzzy interdisciplinary areas between them.
The interdisciplinarities Howsam maps in chapter 2 have been both my joy and my frustration since my undergraduate honors thesis. The region between History and Literature is the provenance of cultural history, literary history, print culture studies, and cultural studies; between history and bibliography the realm of the studies of print houses. Having been “raised” a historian, I find that I still identify with the axes which pivot on that point of Howsam’s triangle, even if I have jumped the departmental fence, as it were. The real value of these first two chapters is in the way Howsam fleshes out this amorphous region between disciplines: by giving examples of studies she feels are material to shaping the field, the second chapter can function as something of a control for my larger project. If the purpose of preliminary examinations in the field of History of Text Technologies is to prove that I have a sense of the field in which I hope to contribute, this snap shot of the field as of 2006 provides a number of nice starting places, and I will likely return to it at the end of this project to see what articles may fill in perceived gaps.
More directly valuable is the concise comparison of “Models of the Book’s Place in History,” in chapter 3, which compares a number of visual and rhetorical models for conceptualizing the function of books (defined loosely in some, and more stringently in others, but primarily physical objects) in human society at more or less specific points of location and time. Beginning with Robert Darnton’s “Communication Circuit Model” from 1982 and it’s critique by Thomas Tanselle, followed by Thomas Adams and Nicolas Barker’s 1993 “Book-Centered Model,” which emphasizes the material object’s influence on humans at various stages, rather than the human influence on the material object. This chapter reflects the three-fold nature of the previous two, in which Darnton’s (historical) model is contrasted by Adams and Barker’s (bibliographical) model and finally rounded out by Peter McDonald’s “Critique from Literary Studies” (1997). While I tend to favor the tangible nature of Adams and Barker’s argument, Howsam notes McDonald’s nod towards Pierre Bourdieu’s cultural theory, and while I wouldn’t attempt to distill it at this fourth level of critique, I find what she presents compelling and will seek out his theory directly in future reading. Ok, so this third chapter has a fourth model, and doesn’t fit completely neatly into the trifold formula of the others. James Secord’s “The Histories of the Book and of Science” (2000) connects the conceptualizations of scientific experiment and the event(s) that constitute authorship, print, and reading. This model, rather than being purely a model of the place of the book in society, is a conceptualization of the idea of the book as a methodology, or, as Howsam phrases it, “using the book as an intellectual approach and a way to open up interpretive possibilities” (45).
While these and the final two chapters in Howsam’s book are a review of the literature, they provide a cogent synopsis of the state of the field, up to fairly recently. She’s a bit more optimistic than I currently am about the problems inherent in “matters of communication” between disciplines -- a lack of shared vocabulary (indeed, the use of the same word to mean fundamentally, if fractionally, different things) is a fairly large stumbling block to easy interdisciplinarity. In the fifth chapter, she gives a nod towards resistance to interdisciplinary techniques in the three fields, particularly history, which challenges book history to justify a place for itself in the academic landscape where territory is well defended.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
A place to start
Lerer, Seth. “Epilogue: Falling Asleep over the History of the Book.” PMLA 121.1 (Jan 2006): 229–234.
I expected this to be a polemic against the New Boredom, but I was drastically mistaken. It’s a love-song to the printed book, placing the reader in a position of power “over” the physical object, rather than “in front of” a screen, discussing the impossibility of curling up with a computer or electronic reader. The only part of that disparity in inclination that Lerer does not discuss is the likelihood of damaging something by falling asleep on one’s electronic device (yourself or the device); instead he focuses on the aesthetic detractions of such a past time. For much of this article, he treats the importance of studies of the physical object itself lightly, instead focusing heavily on the importance of post-production human interaction with texts (readers, anthologizers, teachers), spending the largest percentage of the article on the makers and consumers of anthologies. While I realize the space of this epilogue is limited, and given its scope it is perforce breezy and not able to treat any specific element in depth, I wish he’d pushed a little harder on the question of why there is so close a connection between Book History studies and canonicity.
In contrast John Guillory’s argument that canons are not composed of individual works, but of assembled value sets that form a literary system, Lerer argues that the history of the book “itself may qualify the claim. Much speculation on the idea of the canon, and in fact much of literary history as a whole, still goes on as if literary works were somehow unbound to the physical objects that house them. Books are objects, though, and canonization is as much a process of se¬lecting space as of selecting value” (231-232). Setting aside the problem of prioritizing space as an issue and then, at the end of the article, dismissing electronic formats on purely aesthetic grounds, I’m not entirely sure that I fully buy the argument that canon-status follows purely from space issues. This seems most applicable to the study of anthologies from a specific period, say early to mid nineteenth century to the late twentieth.
Are questions of the study of Canonization and the study of Book History a chicken and an egg problem? Do scholars examine canonical works because we’re inherently interested in the material history of canonicity (and as a byproduct, reifying the canon), as Lerer explains the study of Anthologies (using, for his example, the 1950 Oxford Book of American Verse), or does the canon itself blind us to other positibilities? Does this focus on Canonical works amount to a teleological view of the history of the book? What about the Also Rans? What about failures? Are they too numerous to be interesting? Can a story be defined by the negative space around it – ie, a piece of canonical literature by its companions on the shelves, the medical books, the trashy ballads, the pious stories that no one reads anymore?
Or is it just that we focus on the current canon, or currently accepted deviations from it (non-canonical works by women, or subject peoples, or children, etc -- and those only at risk of being pidgeonholed), because that is what the Academy currently demands, and we would all like jobs at some point?
I expected this to be a polemic against the New Boredom, but I was drastically mistaken. It’s a love-song to the printed book, placing the reader in a position of power “over” the physical object, rather than “in front of” a screen, discussing the impossibility of curling up with a computer or electronic reader. The only part of that disparity in inclination that Lerer does not discuss is the likelihood of damaging something by falling asleep on one’s electronic device (yourself or the device); instead he focuses on the aesthetic detractions of such a past time. For much of this article, he treats the importance of studies of the physical object itself lightly, instead focusing heavily on the importance of post-production human interaction with texts (readers, anthologizers, teachers), spending the largest percentage of the article on the makers and consumers of anthologies. While I realize the space of this epilogue is limited, and given its scope it is perforce breezy and not able to treat any specific element in depth, I wish he’d pushed a little harder on the question of why there is so close a connection between Book History studies and canonicity.
In contrast John Guillory’s argument that canons are not composed of individual works, but of assembled value sets that form a literary system, Lerer argues that the history of the book “itself may qualify the claim. Much speculation on the idea of the canon, and in fact much of literary history as a whole, still goes on as if literary works were somehow unbound to the physical objects that house them. Books are objects, though, and canonization is as much a process of se¬lecting space as of selecting value” (231-232). Setting aside the problem of prioritizing space as an issue and then, at the end of the article, dismissing electronic formats on purely aesthetic grounds, I’m not entirely sure that I fully buy the argument that canon-status follows purely from space issues. This seems most applicable to the study of anthologies from a specific period, say early to mid nineteenth century to the late twentieth.
Are questions of the study of Canonization and the study of Book History a chicken and an egg problem? Do scholars examine canonical works because we’re inherently interested in the material history of canonicity (and as a byproduct, reifying the canon), as Lerer explains the study of Anthologies (using, for his example, the 1950 Oxford Book of American Verse), or does the canon itself blind us to other positibilities? Does this focus on Canonical works amount to a teleological view of the history of the book? What about the Also Rans? What about failures? Are they too numerous to be interesting? Can a story be defined by the negative space around it – ie, a piece of canonical literature by its companions on the shelves, the medical books, the trashy ballads, the pious stories that no one reads anymore?
Or is it just that we focus on the current canon, or currently accepted deviations from it (non-canonical works by women, or subject peoples, or children, etc -- and those only at risk of being pidgeonholed), because that is what the Academy currently demands, and we would all like jobs at some point?
Redirecting
I originally started this blog as an assignment for a class on digital humanities. Now, however, I'm going to borrow a page out of the playbook of several scholars smarter than myself, and use it as a place to discuss the readings I must do over the next four and a half months before I take my Prelims exam.
The content will be mostly book history, bibliography, and a few strands of Early Modern history and literature. I don't really expect anyone will want to read it, but hopefully doing it this way will both keep me accountable, and help with my own retention of the material.
So here it goes.
The content will be mostly book history, bibliography, and a few strands of Early Modern history and literature. I don't really expect anyone will want to read it, but hopefully doing it this way will both keep me accountable, and help with my own retention of the material.
So here it goes.
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