Month: July 2008

> An earlier post joked about “cockroaches of the book“. Then I was thinking not about scurrying little pests but about printed waste. But I don’t want to overlook the relevance of critters to early modern books, so: what do you see in the image above? Tiny little black circles? Did you guess? They are worm holes, the traces of where little bookworms ate their way through this book (you might recognize it as the 1527 Bible I’ve discussed before). Read more about wormholes in ABC for Book Collectors:

>Over on the wonderful blog Got Medieval is a discussion about what terms define the medieval period and about the slipperiness between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. What are the seven terms that define the Middle Ages? According to Got Medieval’s students, “knights, things found on or around knights, and peasants” (my summary really doesn’t do that classroom exercise justice; it’s well worth reading). Got Medieval offers his own list, based on his tag cloud: “Beowulf, King Arthur, Marginalia, Manuscripts, the Bayeux Tapestry, Popes, and Latin.” A recurring feature on the blog is “Mmm… Marginalia“, a highly entertaining look at medieval marginalia. I certainly wouldn’t want to argue that marginalia or manuscripts should not be strongly associated with the medieval period. But what about books? The first book printed with moveable type was Johannes Gutenberg’s Bible, completed in 1455. Given the complexity of the task, it’s likely that Gutenberg…

> In my last post, I mentioned Hamlet’s practice of commonplacing, or recording things of note in his writing tablets. I want to return to Hamlet to look at commonplacing from a slightly different angle–not what is written, but what is written upon. Below is the first part of the speech from which I quoted before. For context, you should know that Hamlet is speaking to himself after his first encounter with his father’s ghost and during which the ghost exhorted Hamlet to “Remember me.” Remember thee?Ay, thou poor ghost, whiles memory holds a seatIn this distracted globe. Remember thee?Yea, from the table of my memoryI’ll wipe away all trivial fond records,All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,That youth and observation copied thereAnd thy commandment all alone shall liveWithin the book and volume of my brainUnmixed with baser matter. . . . .(Hamlet, Arden3, 1.5.95-104) Hamlet’s description of…