class presentations

The week after Thansgiving, we will be discussing Eisenstein's book in two class sessions. You will also be making a brief (5 minutes each) presentation on the state of your research for you final paper. Your goal will be to describe to the class what you have learned so far, and what you plan (even tentatively) to write about in your final paper. These are the names I've assigned to each day. If you would like to switch days, let me know.

Tuesday, November 30

• Tomi
• Josh
• Brian
• Emily
• Justin
• Samir

Thursday, December 2

• Henri
• Thomas
• Lisa
• Cynthia
• Kurt

words+vision ii

On Tuesday, November 23, we will continue discussing William Blake and William Hogarth.

words+vision

Today we'll discuss engravings by William Hogarth and Songs of Innocence, by William Blake. We'll also discuss Blake's technique.

questioning the role of gutenberg

This came over the SHARP listserv today:

Nov. 12, 2004 — Johannes Gutenberg may be wrongly credited with producing the first Western book printed in movable type, according to an Italian researcher.

Presenting his findings in a mock trial of Gutenberg at the recent Festival of Science in Genoa, Bruno Fabbiani, an expert in printing who teaches at Turin Polytechnic, said the 15th-century German printer used stamps rather than the movable type he is said to have invented between 1452 and 1455.

More...

mechanical reproduction

On Tuesday, November 16th, we'll discuss William Hogarth and Walter Benjamin.

commerce

"Fashioning Gender" in The Commerce of Everyday Life.

commerce of everyday life

"Introduction" and "Periodical Papers and the Market of Public Opinion" in The Commerce of Everyday Life.

john feather on copyright

This Thursday, we'll discuss two chapters from John Feather's Publishing, Piracy, and Politics: an Historical Study of Copyright in Britain.

nice video

I recently came across this nice video online about the Firefly Press of Somerville, Massachusetts: "Letterpress puts a bite into the paper. There is a three-dimensional quality."

• Larger Video (17 MB)
• Smaller Video (7.5 MB)

Both videos require the free QuickTime player.

Kansas City is home to Hammerpress, which "specializes in fine letterpress printing and custom design work." They're located at 1919 Wyandotte, in the Crossroads District downtown. They'll be open into the evening this Friday, November 5 as part of the monthly "First Fridays" arts event.

john milton on regulation of the press

On Tuesday and Thursday of this week, we'll discuss John Milton's Areopagitica

assignments

Here, as PDFs, are two assignment sheets:

• Annotated Bibliography
• Prospectus & Final Paper

"from censorship to copyright"

Today we'll discuss John P. Feather's "From Censorship to Copyright: Aspects of the Government's Role in the English Book Trade, 1695-1775."

pamela

Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded, by Samuel Richardson.

pamela

Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded, by Samuel Richardson.

pamela

Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded, by Samuel Richardson.

pamela

Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded, by Samuel Richardson.

the dunciad, books 1 and 2

On Thursday, September 30, we will discuss books 1 and 2 of Alexander Pope's The Dunciad.

the business of print

On Tuesday, September 28, we'll discuss

• "The Problems of Independence," by David Foxon.
• "Women and the Business of Print," by Paula McDowell

johnson's "lives of the poets"

On Thursday, 9/23, we will discuss several of Samuel Johnson's literary biographies often referred to simply as The Lives of the Poets.

I've given you photocopies of the Lives I want you to read, but you might also have a look at this page by Kathleen Nulton Kemmerer, an assistant professor of English at Penn State Hazelton who:

This web site has been established to bring the Lives of the English Poets back into the context in which Johnson expected them to be read. The plan is to include the text of each preface as well as the poems that Johnson refers to. Reliable texts that already exist on the web will not in most cases be duplicated, but a hyperlinks will be available to take the reader to that work. Because this is a sizeable task, the completion of this site will take some time.

samuel johnson on richard savage

On Tuesday, 9/21, we will discuss The Life of Richard Savage by Samuel Johnson. You sould also read the "Introduction" included with your photocopies.

The original text is Samuel Johnson: The Major Works, edited and with an introduction and notes by Donald Greene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984).

darnton to speak in kc

Given that we're reading some of his work, you might be interested in this:

"The plenary speaker on Friday, October 15 at Library Research Seminar III is Robert Darnton, Shelby Cullom Davis '30 Professor of European History at Princeton. Darnton is considered a leading authority on the history of books and censorship. Many view The Business of Enlightenment: A Publishing History of the Encyclopedia (1979) as Darnton's most influential work. His book The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Prerevolutionary France, an intriguing study of clandestine libertine literature under the Old Regime, won the 1996 National Book Critics Circle Award. Other titles include George Washington's False Teeth, The Kiss of Lamourette, and The Great Cat Massacre. Before joining Princeton's history faculty in 1968, Darnton worked as a reporter for the New York Times.

The Library Research Seminar will be held in Kansas City, MO at the Fairmont Hotel."

response to student feedback

Last week I asked you to write me what questions you have about what we've covered so far, or what things were still unclear. I've responded to these questions in an email to the course listserv, and I've also posted them here

the nature and history of reading

On Thursday, 9/16, we'll discuss "First Steps Toward a History of Reading," by Robert Darnton, and "Procuring Books and Consuming Texts: The Reading Experience of a Sheffield Apprentice, 1798," by Stephen Colclough.

the nature and history of authorship

On Tuesday, 9/14, we'll discuss "What Is an Author?" by Michel Foucault and "Figures of the Author" by Roger Chartier.

the meaning of "ur"

From the Oxford English Dictionary online:

repr. G. (also MHG., OHG.) ur-, denoting ‘primitive, original, earliest,’ as ur-Hamlet, -origin, -stock, etc. See also URHEIMAT, URSCHLEIM, URSPRACHE, URTEXT.
G. ursprache (= primitive language) has been freq. used in recent English philological works.

[1864 MAX MÜLLER Lect. Sci. Lang. (1871) II. 133 The most troublesome of all vowels, the neutral vowel, sometimes called Urvocal, better Unvocal.] 1889 JACOBS Caxton's Aesop I. 37 Any light he can throw on the Ur-origin of the Fables. 1901 BOAS Kyd's Wks. p. xlv, The Ur-Hamlet may have contained a number of these borrowings. 1926 A. MØLLER tr. Pedersen's Israel I. I. 245 The word shm is found in all Semitic languages and belongs to the absolutely certain ur-semitic components. 1927 A. H. MCNEILE Introd. to Study of New Testament iii. 50 It was an Ur-Evangelium, a primitive written Gospel, some say in Hebrew, some in Aramaic, on which our Gospels were based. 1937 O. JESPERSEN Analytic Syntax 142 Some well-known students of language who even call this [sc. ‘S is P’] the ‘urform’ of sentences. 1943 V. NABOKOV in Atlantic Monthly May 69/2 The dreadful vulgarity, the Ur-Hitlerism of those ludicrous but vicious organisations. 1947 AUDEN Age of Anxiety (1948) ii. 46 For Long-Ago has been Ever-After since Ur-Papa gave The Primal Yawn that expressed all things. 1949 F. FERGUSSON Idea of Theater i. 26 An enactment of the Ur-Myth of the year~god. 1950 Psychiatry XIII. 168/2 The concept of ur-language and ur-symbolism is of particular importance in Freud's thought. 1964 C. S. LEWIS Discarded Image iv. 54 Plato's ur-Freudian doctrine of the dream as the expression of a submerged wish. 1966 Punch 9 Nov. 718/2 Above is Leonardo da Vinci's design for an ur-tank. 1971 Astrophysics & Space Sci. X. 363 (heading) Orientation of galaxies and a magnetic ‘urfield’. 1977 Listener 31 Mar. 416/1 The importance of the folk example which he [sc. Bartók] argued to be one of the ur-sources of music. 1979 Ibid. 14 June 831/1 Sir Nikolaus Pevsner's ur-history, Pioneers of Modern Design. 1983 Sunday Tel. 13 Mar. 14/6 Russell Hoban is an ur-novelist, a maverick voice that is like no other.

reconsidering darnton and others

On Thursday, 9/9 we'll discuss "A New Model for the Study of the Book" by Adams and Barker.

Post your questions and answers regarding this reading by clicking on the "comments" link below.

online discussion sign-up sheet

• Thursday, 9/9: Questions: Henri; Answers: Thomas
• Thursday, 9/16: Questions: Kurt; Answers: Emily, Thomas
• Thursday, 9/23: Questions: Thomas; Answers: Henri, Lisa
• Thursday, 9/30: Questions: Josh; Answers: Kurt, Brian
• Tuesday, 10/5: Questions: Thomasena; Answers: Tim, Samir
• Thursday, 10/14: Questions: Justin; Answers: Cynthia, Lisa
• Tuesday, 10/19: Questions: Samir; Answers: Thomsena, Josh
• Thursday, 10/21: Questions: Tim; Answers: Justin, Kurt
• Thursday, 10/28: Questions: Cynthia; Answers: Thomasena, Brian
• Tuesday, 11/2: Questions: Emily; Answers: Cynthia, Tim
• Thursday, 11/11: Questions: Lisa; Answers: Samir, Henri
• Thursday, 11/18: Questions: Brian; Answers: Emily, Justin