Reading Revolutions  
The Politics of Reading in Early Modern England

by Kevin Sharpe

This fascinating book - the first comprehensive study of reading and politics in early modern England - examines how texts of that period were produced and disseminated and how readers interpreted and were influenced by them. Based on the voluminous reading notes of one gentleman, Sir William Drake, the book shows how readers formed radical social values and political ideas as they experienced civil war, revolution, republic and restoration.

By analysing the strategies of Drake's reading practices, as well as those of several key contemporaries (including Jonson, Milton, and Clarendon), Kevin Sharpe demonstrates how reading in the rhetorical culture of Renaissance England was a political act. He explains how Drake, for example, by reading and rereading classical and humanist works of Tacitus, Machiavelli, Guicciardini, and Bacon, became the advocate of dissimulation, intrigue, and realpolitik. Authority, Sharpe argues, was experienced, reviewed and criticized not only in the public forum but in the study, on the page and in the imagination of early modern readers.

review

                Peasant Juho Valtonen's (1856-1930) diaries.

Photo by Åke Nygård

Book Culture from Below – The Eighteenth Annual Conference of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP).

The Fortunes of the Courtier

The European Reception of Castiglione's Cortegiano


By Peter Burke
Polity Press, 1996

An exploration of how readers over the years have responded to a well-known Renaissance text, the Courtier by Castiglione.


Table of Contents

List of Plates.

Preface and Acknowledgements.
Abbreviations.

1. Tradition and Reception.

2. The Courtier in its Time.

3. The Courtier in Italy.
4. The Courtier Translated.

5. The Courtier Imitated.

6. The Courtier Criticized.

7. The Courtier Revived.

8. The Courtier in European Culture.
Appendix 1 Editions of the Courtier, 1528-1850.
Appendix 2 Readers of the Courtier before 1700.
Bibliography.
Index.

"The Fortunes of the Courtier is an important contribution to intellectual history and to the history of the book. It demonstrates how bibliography, textual criticism, and library history can illuminate the mentality of an age."–Magill's Literary Annual 1997

Castiglione's Cortegiano, or the Courtier, is one of the best-known texts of the Italian Renaissance. When it first appeared in 1528, the Courtier was widely read as a guide to contemporary conduct. Its popularity led to its publication in six languages in twenty different European centers in the sixteenth century alone. While the text itself has been studied very carefully in recent years as the embodiment of the spirit of the High Renaissance, its multitude of readers, spread over the world, has received much less attention. In this engaging study Peter Burke explores how readers over the years have responded to the Courtier.

Because it was read so widely in Europe, the Courtier affords Burke an ideal test case for the diffusion and reception of ideas. From Poland and Hungary to England, Portugal, and even the New World, he takes us on a fascinating tour of the courts, libraries, and reading rooms of Europe in search of Castiglione's idea of the perfect courtier. He shows how changing responses to the Courtier, both positive and negative, reveal changing social values and how regional variations in its reception reflect the emerging cultural map of early modern Europe. His evidence includes printing history, translations, marginalia, and records of sale and possession. He concludes with a discussion of the later fortune of the Courtier, including its role in the "civilizing process" and its curious appeal to writers as different as Samuel Johnson and W. B. Yeats.

Informed by Burke's considerable knowledge of printing and publishing history, this book contributes to our growing understanding of the history of the book and to our knowledge of the Renaissance and its reception.

The Book of the Courtier

Baldesar Castiglione



in  Penguin Classics

Cavallo, Guglielmo
Η ανάγνωση στο Βυζάντιο
Μετάφραση: Σμαράγδα Τσοχανταρίδου και Paolo Odorico
Αθήνα: Άγρα, 2008
ISBN: 9789603257417

Το Βυζάντιο, σε αντίθεση με τη Δύση, εξαφανίστηκε κάτω από την οθωμανική επέλαση παρασύροντας μαζί του τον ελληνικό Μεσαίωνα: μας είναι γνωστό αποκλειστικά από τις γραπτές μαρτυρίες που άφησαν οι συγγραφείς του. Αλλά τα έργα τους συντέθηκαν για ένα αναγνωστικό κοινό, που τα είχε για προσωπική του χρήση. Εξού και η ανάγκη να καθορίσουμε τον βυζαντινό αναγνώστη: ποια είναι η κοινωνική του θέση, ποια η στάση του απέναντι στο βιβλίο, ποιες οι ικανότητες και ποιες οι δυνατότητες να οικειοποιηθεί το γραπτό κείμενο; Ποια είναι η πνευματική του προετοιμασία; Ποιος διάβαζε στο Βυζάντιο; Πώς γινόταν η ανάγνωση; Υπήρχαν δίκτυα κυκλοφορίας του βιβλίου, συγκεντρώσεις ανάγνωσης από κοινού; Διάβαζαν δυνατόφωνα ή χαμηλόφωνα; Υπήρχαν διαφορές ανάμεσα στους αναγνώστες ανάλογα με την κοινωνική τους προέλευση;

Θεμελιώδη ερωτήματα για την κατανόηση του βυζαντινού πολιτισμού και της παιδείας του, στην οποία επιδόθηκε ο Γκουλιέλμο Καβάλλο, ένας από τους πιο επιφανείς ειδικούς στον τομέα της βυζαντινολογίας και της ελληνικής κωδικολογίας. Τα σεμινάρια, που πραγματοποίησε το 2003 στη Σχολή Ανώτατων Σπουδών στις Κοινωνικές Επιστήμες του Παρισιού, βρίσκουν εδώ τη γραπτή τους έκφραση και εγκαινιάζουν τη σειρά των Βυζαντινών Mαθημάτων, που σκοπό έχουν να θέσουν στη διάθεση των ιστορικών και των ερευνητών ένα εργαλείο εργασίας για τη διάδοση και τη γνώση του πολιτισμού του ελληνικού Μεσαίωνα.