Abstractions of Evidence in the Study of Manuscripts and Early Printed Books
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A01=Joseph A. Dane
Author_Joseph A. Dane
Bibliographical Language
bibliographical theory
bibliography
Book Copy
Category=DSBB
century
colard
Colard Mansion
copy
descriptive
descriptive bibliography
Early Printed Books
Edition Size
EEBO Images
EETS Editions
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
fifteenth
Fifteenth Century Books
geoffrey
huntington
Huntington Copy
Ideal Copy
institutional critique in book history
ISTC
Le Jeu De Robin
library
mansion
Manuscript Table
manuscript transmission
Medieval Drama
medieval literature studies
MS Gg
Norton Facsimile
print culture analysis
STC
textual criticism
Thomas Frognall Dibdin
Towneley Cycle
Towneley Manuscript
Towneley Plays
Typographical Antiquities
Van Ess
Wakefield Master
Product details
- ISBN 9780754665014
- Weight: 453g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 18 Feb 2009
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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In this book, Joseph Dane critiques the use of material evidence in studies of manuscript and printed books by delving into accepted notions about the study of print culture. He questions the institutional and ideological presuppositions that govern medieval studies, descriptive bibliography, and library science. Dane begins by asking what is the relation between material evidence and the abstract statements made about the evidence; ultimately he asks how evidence is to be defined. The goal of this book is to show that evidence from texts and written objects often becomes twisted to support pre-existing arguments; and that generations of bibliographers have created narratives of authorship, printing, reading, and editing that reflect romantic notions of identity, growth, and development. The first part of the book is dedicated to medieval texts and authorship: materials include Everyman, Chaucer's Legend of Good Women, the Anglo-Norman Le Seint Resurrection, and Adam de la Helle's Le Jeu de Robin et Marion. The second half of the book is concerned with abstract notions about books and scholarly definitions about what a book actually is: chapters include studies of basic bibliographical concepts ("Ideal Copy") and the application of such a notion in early editions of Chaucer, the combination of manuscript and printing in the books of Colard Mansion, and finally, examples of the organization of books by an early nineteenth-century book-collector Leander Van Ess. This study is an important contribution to debates about the nature of bibliography and the critical institutions that have shaped its current practice.
Joseph A. Dane is a professor of English at University of Southern California and author of The Myth of Print Culture: Essays on Evidence, Textuality, and Bibliographical Method (2003).
