The fear of oblivion obsessed medieval and early modern Europe.
Stone, wood, cloth, parchment, and paper all provided media onto
which writing was inscribed as a way to ward off loss. And the task
was not easy in a world in which writing could be destroyed,
manuscripts lost, or books menaced with destruction. Paradoxically,
the successful spread of printing posed another danger, namely,
that an uncontrollable proliferation of textual materials, of
matter without order or limit, might allow useless texts to
multiply and smother thought. Not everything written was destined
for the archives; indeed, much was written on surfaces that allowed
one to write, erase, then write again.In "Inscription and Erasure,"
Roger Chartier seeks to demonstrate how the tension between these
two concerns played out in the imaginative works of their times.
Chartier examines how authors transformed the material realities of
writing and publication into an aesthetic resource exploited for
poetic, dramatic, or narrative ends. The process that gave form to
writing in its various modes--public or private, ephemeral or
permanent--thus became the very material of literary invention.
Chartier's chapters follow a thread of reading and interpretation
that takes us from the twelfth-century French poet Baudri of
Bourgueil, sketching out his poems on wax tablets before they are
committed to parchment, through Cervantes in the seventeenth
century, who places a "book of memory," in which poems and letters
are to be recopied, in the path of his fictional Don Quixote.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!