Reading, Society and Politics in Early Modern England

This book charts the changes in reading habits that reflect broader social and political shifts in early modern England.

Kevin Sharpe (Edited by), Steven N. Zwicker (Edited by)

9780521824347, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 10 July 2003

374 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.5 cm, 0.72 kg

Review of the hardback: 'This book is provocative and informative.' Sixteenth Century Journal

This book ranges over private and public reading, and over a variety of religious, social, and scientific communities to locate acts of reading in specific historical moments from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. It also charts the changes in reading habits that reflect broader social and political shifts during the period. A team of expert contributors cover topics including the processes of book production and distribution, audiences and markets, the material text, the relation of print to performance, and the politics of acts of reception. In addition, the volume emphasises the independence of early modern readers and their role in making meaning in an age in which increased literacy equaled social enfranchisement and interpretation was power. Meaning was not simply an authorial act but the work of many hands and processes, from editing, printing, and proofing, to reproducing, distributing, and finally reading.

List of illustrations
List of contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction: discovering the Renaissance reader Kevin Sharpe and Steven N. Zwicker
Part I. The Material Text: 1. Errata: print, politics, and poetry in early modern England Seth Lerer
2. Abandoning the capital in eighteenth-century London Richard Wendorf
Part II. Reading as Politics: 3. 'Boasting of silence': women readers and the patriarchal state Heidi Brayman Hackel
4. Reading revelations: prophecy, hermeneutics and politics in early modern Britain Kevin Sharpe
Part III. Print, Politics and Performance: 5. Performances and playbooks: the closing of the theatres and the politics of drama David Scott Kastan
6. Irrational, impractical and unprofitable: reading the news in seventeenth-century Britain Joad Raymond
Part IV. Reading Physiologies: 7. Reading bodies Michael Shoenfeldt
8. Reading and experiment in the early Royal Society Adrian Johns
Part V. Reading Texts in Time: 9. Martial, Jonson and the assertion of plagiarism Joseph Loewenstein
10. The constitution of opinion and the pacification of reading Steven N. Zwicker
11. Cato's retreat: fabula, historia and the question of constitutionalism in Mr Locke's anonymous Essay on Government Kirsie M. McClure
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 [DSBD]