Welcome, one and all, to Carnivalesque 48, the early modern edition! As should come as no surprise, some of the most interesting posts on early modern studies in the last few months have come from two sources. Both Mercurius Politicus (written by Nick Poyntz) and diapsalmata (Whitney Anne Trettien) routinely have fabulous posts; I’ll single out a couple here, but really, their blogs are worth reading regularly. Mercurius’s Killing Noe Murder discusses Edward Sexby’s 1648 pamphlet justifying the murder of Cromwell; part of Nick’s concern is the production and distribution of the pamphlet, a theme he takes up in a broader examination of the rise of newsbooks in The Great Game. There is some more material book history over at diapsalmata, where Whitney has been looking at the practice of cut-ups in a series of posts. The first draws connections between early modern commonplacing, Dada cut-ups, and digital poetry–a great…
Month: March 2009
Carnivalesque nominations: time’s a tickin’!
If you haven’t already done so, get your blog post nominations in for Carnivalesque 48, the early modern edition! If you’ve come across–or if you’ve written–a great blog post that concerns the period 1500 to 1800, please let me know about it by emailing me or by using the nomination form. I’ll be posting my edition this weekend, so get your suggestions in now! I assume most of you recognize the image I’ve used to illustrate my theme of time’s a tickin’–it’s Abraham Lincoln’s watch, recently opened up by the Smithsonian to reveal messages inscribed on the underside of the watch movement. It seemed appropriate for this post not simpy because it demonstrates the passage of time, nor because it lets me demonstrate my fondness for things pertaining to Lincoln, although it does do both of those things wonderfully. But it also gestures toward something that I am not usually…
pointing to Carnivalesque submissions
A quick but important announcement first: I am hosting the next early modern edition of Carnivalesque. Please nominate your favorite early modern blog posts by using the Carnivalesque nomination form, commenting here, or by emailing me directly (you can find my email address through my profile). The no-holds-barred Carnival fun and wisdom is scheduled for publication on March 21st, so get me pointed in the right direction now! And that last bit is my not very subtle transition to the lovely pictures below. I promised my last commenter that I would follow up that great pointing forefinger (or Fonz’s thumb, depending on your tastes) with some more examples. So here’s another great set of pointing fingers, this time complete with fancy ruffles. This is from a 1475 commentary on Aristotle–again, more commentary on commentary, as we saw with the Boethius. Some genres of writing would seem to invite more…
looking at Boethius
I failed to include any pretty pictures in my last post, so now I give you this: It’s a page opening from Boethius’s De consolatione philosophiae, printed in 1498 in Venice. Actually, that’s a completely inadequate description of what we’re looking at. And that’s one of the reasons I like this image–there is a lot to see when you look at this book. For starters, there is the text in the large font, printed in several blocks over the two pages. That text is Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, written around AD 524 while Boethius is imprisoned and awaiting trial for treason, for which he was to be executed. It was a highly influential piece in the medieval and early modern worlds, one that was studied and passed on in manuscripts and, eventually, printed texts. (You can find an online edition and an English translation at the University of Virginia Library’s…
accessing and looking at books
My last couple of posts on “navigating the information landscape” and “democratizing early english books” have gotten a number of links and comments–it’s great to have such thoughtful feedback, and I wanted to use this post to clarify some of my thoughts. This series of posts has been prompted by Robert Darnton’s latest essay in the New York Review of Books on “Google and the Future of Books.” Darnton’s call for the need to create a Digital Republic of Learning led me to wonder what it would mean to democratize access to early modern books. Does access to those books equal understanding those books? Perhaps. But not necessarily. As I argue in my last post, early modern books look different from modern books in ways that alienate us from the books and from their texts. There is a lot going on in Darnton’s piece that I don’t address in my…