Moveable types : shaping the text in early modern England
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Following an era that suffused literary works with physical meaning—through the handwriting, thread, pigment, and skin that characterize late medieval manuscripts—how did early modern writers and printers reimagine readers' engagement with their books? New critical attention to early print has shown that typography, ornament, and mise-en-page create visible aesthetics that recall the expressiveness of late medieval manuscripts. My research uncovers writers and printers engaging in a more ambitious practice by inviting nonlinear, recursive, and even tactile reading practices that invest meaning in the interactions between reader and text. The project demonstrates how "dimensional texts"—so named because they present themselves as spaces to be explored through discontinuous reading—challenge a standard narrative in which the wide dissemination of print diminishes the aura of the literary object. It revisits printed works from Anne Vaughan Locke to William Shakespeare to recover a set of practices that deliberately interpolate literary forms and material formats to invite both serial and nonserial reading. This interpolation produces an effect that I term the "kinetic metaphor, " in which disorderly reading makes palpable motifs of temporality, communion, hypnosis, or desire that the work might otherwise merely describe. In chapters on multiform texts, lyric sequences, and prose fictions, this dissertation crafts a theoretical framework that connects how writers and printers use the material text to influence reading practices. The prevalence of dimensional texts in the early modern canon indicates how print forces into view an underlying tension in literary history, in which texts may dictate meaning or invite readers to become active agents in its production. This study intervenes in this discussion by emphasizing the equal pressures that literary form and material format place upon readers, illuminating in turn how printed works negotiate the visibility and invisibility of the page.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2018; ©2018 |
| Publication date | 2018; 2018 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Beckman, Jessica Catherine |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Greene, Roland, 1957- |
| Degree supervisor | Orgel, Stephen |
| Thesis advisor | Greene, Roland, 1957- |
| Thesis advisor | Orgel, Stephen |
| Thesis advisor | Lupic, Ivan |
| Thesis advisor | Treharne, Elaine M |
| Degree committee member | Lupic, Ivan |
| Degree committee member | Treharne, Elaine M |
| Associated with | Stanford University, English Department. |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Jessica Catherine Beckman. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the English Department. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2018. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2018 by Jessica Catherine Beckman
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