In his 1987 work Paratexts, the theorist Gérard Genette established physical form as crucial to the production of meaning. Here, experts in early modern book history, materiality and rhetorical culture present a series of compelling explorations of the architecture of early modern books. The essays challenge and extend Genette's taxonomy, exploring the paratext as both a material and a conceptual category. Renaissance Paratexts takes a fresh look at neglected sites, from imprints to endings, and from running titles to printers' flowers. Contributors' accounts of the making and circulation of books open up questions of the marking of gender, the politics of translation, geographies of the text and the interplay between reading and seeing. As much a history of misreading as of interpretation, the collection provides novel perspectives on the technologies of reading and exposes the complexity of the playful, proliferating and self-aware paratexts of English Renaissance books.
Edited by:
Helen Smith (University of York),
Louise Wilson (University of St Andrews,
Scotland)
Imprint: Cambridge University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 230mm,
Width: 152mm,
Spine: 15mm
Weight: 420g
ISBN: 9781107463424
ISBN 10: 1107463424
Pages: 290
Publication Date: 06 November 2014
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Introduction Helen Smith and Louise Wilson; Part I. Orders of the Book: 1. 'Imprinted by Simeon such a signe': reading early modern imprints Helen Smith; 2. 'Intended to offenders': the running titles of early modern books Matthew Day; 3. Changed opinion as to flowers Juliet Fleming; 4. The beginning of 'The End': terminal paratext and the birth of print culture William H. Sherman; Part II. Making Readers: 5. Editorial pledges in early modern dramatic paratexts Sonia Massai; 6. Status anxiety and English Renaissance translation Neil Rhodes; 7. Playful paratexts: the front matter of Anthony Munday's Iberian Romance translations Louise Wilson; 8. 'Signifying, but not sounding': gender and paratext in the complaint genre Danielle Clarke; Part III. Books and Users: 9. Unannotating Spenser Jason Scott-Warren; 10. Reading the home: the case of The English Housewife Wendy Wall; 11. Pictures, places and spaces: Sidney, Wroth, Wilton House and the Songe de Poliphile Hester Lees-Jeffries; Afterword Peter Stallybrass; Select bibliography.
Helen Smith is Lecturer in Renaissance and Early Modern Literature at the University of York. She has published widely on early modern textual culture and is currently completing a monograph, Grossly Material Things: Women and Textual Production in Early Modern England. She is Co-Investigator on the AHRC-funded project, 'Conversion Narratives in Early Modern Europe'. Louise Wilson is a Research Associate at the University of St Andrews, where she works on the MHRA Tudor and Stuart Translations series. She was previously a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Geneva, working on Lukas Erne's forthcoming Shakespeare and the Book Trade. Louise has published on the paratexts and readerships of romance, and is currently completing a monograph entitled Humanism and Chivalric Romance in Tudor England.
Reviews for Renaissance Paratexts
'... this is a terrific volume that should be read by anyone interested in any aspect of early modern literature.' SEL Studies in English Literature
