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NEW
dir e c t ions
IN BOOK
history
Reading Books
and Prints as
Cultural Objects
Edited by
EVANGHELIA STEAD
New Directions in Book History
Series editors
Shafquat Towheed
Faculty of Arts
Open University
Milton Keynes, UK
Jonathan Rose
Department of History
Drew University
Madison, USA
As a vital field of scholarship, book history has now reached a stage of
maturity where its early work can be reassessed and built upon. That
is the goal of New Directions in Book History. This series will publish
monographs in English that employ advanced methods and open up new
frontiers in research, written by younger, mid-career, and senior scholars.
Its scope is global, extending to the Western and non-Western worlds
and to all historical periods from antiquity to the 21st century, includ-
ing studies of script, print, and post-print cultures. New Directions
in Book History, then, will be broadly inclusive but always in the van-
guard. It will experiment with inventive methodologies, explore unex-
plored archives, debate overlooked issues, challenge prevailing theories,
study neglected subjects, and demonstrate the relevance of book history
to other academic fields. Every title in this series will address the evolu-
tion of the historiography of the book, and every one will point to new
directions in book scholarship. New Directions in Book History will be
published in three formats: single-author monographs; edited collec-
tions of essays in single or multiple volumes; and shorter works produced
through Palgrave’s e-book (EPUB2) ‘Pivot’ stream. Book proposals
should emphasize the innovative aspects of the work, and should be sent
to either of the two series editors.
Editorial board:
Marcia Abreu, University of Campinas, Brazil
Cynthia Brokaw, Brown University, USA
Matt Cohen, University of Texas at Austin, USA
Archie Dick, University of Pretoria, South Africa
Martyn Lyons, University of New South Wales, Australia
Reading
Books and Prints
as Cultural Objects
Editor
Evanghelia Stead
Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin, Guyancourt, France
& Institut Universitaire de France, Paris, France
Cover credit: Claudio Parmiggiani, Campo dei fiori [Field of Flowers] and Delocazione
[Displacement], San Giorgio in Poggiale, Bologna; from the collections of Fondazione
Cassa di Risparmio in Bologna, Biblioteca d’Arte e di Storia di San Giorgio in Poggiale,
Genus Bononiae - Musei nella Città
1 Introduction 1
Evanghelia Stead
v
vi Contents
Part IV Epilogue
Index 279
Contributors
Alberto Milano (†) Museo Per Via, Pieve Tesino‚ Provincia di Trento, Italy
vii
List of Figures and Tables
ix
x List of Figures and Tables
Introduction
Evanghelia Stead
E. Stead (*)
Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin, Guyancourt, France
e-mail: [email protected]
E. Stead
Institut Universitaire de France, Paris, France
Fig. 1.1 Claudio Parmiggiani, Campo dei Fiori (Field of Flowers) and
Delocazione (Displacement), courtesy of the artist. Collections Fondazione Cassa
di Risparmio in Bologna, Biblioteca d’Arte e di Storia di San Giorgio in Poggiale,
Genus Bononiae—Musei nella Città
4 E. Stead
and to its books and prints suggesting novel uses and virtual potential. San
Giorgio in Poggiale today houses: Bologna’s Art and History Library, total-
ling 100,000 volumes from the 1500s to modern times; a periodical and
newspaper collection from the eighteenth century to the present; and a
photographic archive of some 60,000 prints pertaining to Bologna before
it underwent major urban change. Access from the street is through a cir-
cular wooden drum that was conceived by the architect Michele De Lucchi
(1951–) as a tower of books to exclude the city’s noise. The material and
spiritual life cycle of a printed book from production to destruction is
here complete: from paper, traditionally derived from lumber and rags, to
volumes kindled, then conceptualized. The whole building reads as a vast
metaphor, or, as Garrett Stewart would have it, a remarkable “bookwork”
(Stewart 2011). Yet these volumes are no longer orphaned codex forms
violently hijacked from their normal use, as in most of the cases studied by
Stewart. In San Giorgio, materially wrecked objects and their conceptual
reinterpretation have been relocated within a modern library’s collections.
Yet, San Giorgio is more than just an empty, echoing, cultural cell
turned operational library. The lateral walls of the ex-church shelter
a cycle of altar-like paintings by Piero Pizzi Cannella (1955–) baptised
Cathedrals, alluding to other landmarks, either imaginary cities or real
places. The library hosts conferences, talks, and cultural events, and is
today one of Bologna’s important cultural venues. As such, it is part of
the Genus Bononiae virtual network of urban museography, Bologna’s
streets serving as hallways, and its historical edifices working as exhibition
spaces with exhibits, all of which attest to the city’s contribution to the
arts and sciences.4
From a rugged past there emerges a multi-layered identity and his-
tory. Both the San Giorgio library and Parmiggiani’s material and con-
ceptual artworks address factual, physical, and symbolic representations of
cultural objects. They feature as strong emblems the way this collective
volume engages with books and prints as objects, media and metaphors.
Hence the referential analogy, by way of introduction, to the recurrent
phenomena this book investigates.
We set out to retrace here, across books and prints, cultural stories
analysed in context and retold. The extreme, the growing value, even the
perishable quality of cultural objects, all register and reflect the passage
of time, the rise and fall of trends, the changes in purpose, the shifting
functions. As tangible and symbolic embodiments of culture, books and
prints both mean and matter. They point to many uses, whether factual,
1 INTRODUCTION 5
the multi-layered scenes that are read involving other readings. Reading
embedded in material culture is prolonged by electronic reading: on the
one hand, digital texts are consumed by contemporary readers; on the
other, e-text providers monitor this very readership in turn to constitute
reading communities or gather representative samples for advertisement
campaigns from the information collected electronically.
Furthermore, this book extends former publications on books stud-
ied alongside images. The 2002 special issue “Reading with Images in
Nineteenth-Century Europe” showed that images in books fully partake
in literary reading: they enable the author to write with images; they
empower the reader through visual spurs; and they endow the book itself
with a spectacular dimension (Stead ed. 2002). Images may relate to the
text structurally, indicate peak moments, or connect with other images
(just as texts do in intertextuality). The 2014 special issue of Word &
Image on “Imago & Translatio” looked into the translation of literary
works in Europe alongside artistic rendition, simultaneously considering
transfer from language to language and from language to images from
the late eighteenth to the twentieth century, while discussing circula-
tion patterns and publishing tendencies. This gave rise to a self-imposed
methodology, at the crossroads of Literature and Art History, Semiotics
and Translation Studies, as well as Visual Culture and Literature Studies
(Stead and Védrine eds. 2014).
Expanding on these investigations, several chapters in this volume
explore reading with images from the Middle Ages to modern times,
while one chapter examines how prestige prints encounter the book.
Reading with images depends on additions (ornament, insert plates,
in-text images) or self-standing prints. It may give rise to various book
genres. Frequently understood as illustration (i.e. explanation, demon-
stration, or illumination), such limitative branding may be misleading
when texts decked with images produce intricate intersemiotic relations,
expand or contradict textual meaning. The relevance of the term “illus-
tration” may also be challenged. There may be many books within a
single book, as there are many meanings and dimensions within a given
print. And when “artworks on paper” (drawings, engravings, litho-
graphs, reproductions) circulate extensively between countries, then
media and art history are further enriched.
Books and prints are, however, not just objects or media. An impor-
tant part of their life relates to the imagination. As Ernst Robert Curtius
famously showed, books and writing, as symbols, play a seminal part in
14 E. Stead
with the biblical stories (devils defaced). However small, the Montpellier
booklet well reflects the extensive power of books.
Chapter 4 leafs through depictions of reading in Italy and Germany.
Michael Stolz considers reading scenarios in Europe from late antiq-
uity to early humanism. His investigation extends from Saint Augustine
(reading Saint Paul and Antonius’s vita) to early German humanists
(reading in their libraries) via Petrarch returning to Saint Augustine
and reading Boccaccio, who himself leads on to Chaucer and Christine
de Pizan. Thanks to the contrapuntal pattern of otium/negotium, inti-
mate considerations and private, self-reliant, intention supplement
social exchange and the interaction of ideas in cultural representations
of reading: remembered reading, reading embedded in other reading
scenes, hasty reading accompanied by commentary, translation, pub-
lic assessment, as well as multiple cross-referencing. This bustling activ-
ity highlights the antecedence of performances that current automated
feats sometimes advertise as very modern. The swift interchange of ideas
is not just mental but again also physical, as signalled by the use of the
Latin verb currere (to run), pairing physicality and concept. As the com-
mon denominator of circulation and commerce (negotium), movement
reminds us that Hermes, messenger of the gods, is equally the wing-
footed god of trade. Interestingly, in the wake of early humanist transac-
tions, a new awareness of fiction emerges when Sigismund Gossembrot
opts for the ‘other’ truth to be found in poets’ works and invention as
opposed to religious verity. Is not Hermes, though, the god of wily fib-
bers as well? Should he not be seen as the deity of make-believe?
A detail in Stolz’s essay provides the transition from Part I to Part II,
which turns to images and circulation. The humanist Hermann Schedel
comments, when reading, on retexere (“weaving anew”—a further bond
between textual reading and interlacing) by lining up functions com-
monly attributed to images, particularly illustration: retexere is explained
as “clarifying”, “denuding”, or “exposing”, “reporting omitted things”,
“making obvious” or “public”, and, most fittingly, as “opening”.
What, then, would images add to reading processes? As already
pointed out, the objects of study in Part II could not be more antitheti-
cal: on the one hand, pricey and elaborate engravings are seen to con-
fer the highest praise and honour; on the other hand, studying low-cost,
broadly distributed imagery can provide genuine insight into widespread
uses and tendencies. Substantial material differences enhance the social
and technical aspects: the expensive prints embrace the book format in
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brother's return, and other stories
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Author: A. L. O. E.
Language: English
BROTHER'S RETURN
AND OTHER STORIES.
BY
A. L. O. E.,
London:
T. NELSON AND SONS, PATERNOSTER ROW.
1886.
CONTENTS.
THE BROTHER'S RETURN
"I COULD have been sure that John's house stood here,"
murmured Ralph Daines to himself as he looked around. "I
know that it stood by the turn of a road, just as one came
in sight of the church, and that it had a clump of trees in
front, just like these before me. Ah! Well, well," he added,
"it's more than twenty years since I turned away from my
brother's door—turned away in anger—and twenty years
will bring changes. Perhaps I've mistaken the place, after
all. I stayed but a short time with John, so that I never
knew his home well. In twenty years, one may forget; yes,
one may forget a spot, but there are some things which
never can be forgotten, however long we may live."
"Was there not once such a house on the plot of waste land
behind me?"
"I dun no," repeated the child, who was scarcely four years
old.
"Wait a bit, little one," said Ralph. "You may perhaps have
heard of Mr. Daines as 'Long John,' for he often went by
that name!"
The little girl raised her sunburnt arm and pointed towards
the church which appeared at a little distance.
The eyes of the child brightened. She let the stranger lift
her over the stile, and kiss her, and gaze in her face—saying
that her eyes were just like her father's. She then tripped
merrily along by his side, and in reply to Ralph's questions,
told him that her name was Mary, and that sometimes she
was called Polly. She did not know whether she had any
other name, but she knew that she was Long John's little
child, for all the folk knew that.
Great was the surprise of the child to see the burst of grief
to which her quiet, grave companion gave way. The little
one knew not how great had been her own loss; her childish
tears for her father had long since been dried; to her, there
was no deep sadness in the peaceful churchyard, or the
grassy mound on which daisies grew. Mary wondered why
the tall stranger should fall on his knees by the mound, and
bury his face in his hands, and sob as if he were a child.
Mary knew not what a bitter thing it is to repent too late of
unkindness shown to a brother; to wish—but to wish in vain
—to recall words which should never have been spoken,
deeds which should never have been done.
SOFTLY outside Mary's cottage fell the rain, the gentle April
rain; and round and round went the wheel within the
cottage, where Mary sat at her spinning. Never did her
husband wear a pair of socks that was not of Mary's
spinning and knitting. The hum of the cottager's busy wheel
was a pleasant sound; and cheerful and bright looked
Mary's face as she busily spun her blue yarn.
But the face of her son Jemmy was neither cheerful nor
bright, as he sat, with his crutches beside him, in front of
the fire, with his back turned towards his mother. First
Jemmy yawned, then yawned again, and then he took to
sighing; and his sigh had so dreary a sound, that it drew
the attention of Mary.
"Well, the accident to your leg was a great trouble; but the
poor leg is getting better,—the doctor says that you will
soon throw your crutches away," observed Mary cheerfully;
and round again went her wheel.
"Oh! The blessed rain, which will do the country such good!"
interrupted his mother.
"I daresay that it only wants a little water," said Mary. "See
how the spring shower is making the fields and hedges
green! Your poor prisoner in the flowerpot has not had a
drop to drink since yesterday, when you brought it home.
Have you any more troubles, my boy?" The question was so
playfully asked, that Jemmy felt rather ashamed of his
sighing and grumbling.
"It was not dying when he gave it; I've seldom seen a
prettier flower. Have you no other kind deeds to
remember?" asked his mother.
"And you chose to think more of the penny lost than of the
shilling received! How fond some people are of choosing the
black yarn!" cried Mary.
"I can remember something for you, then. Who taught you
reading and spelling yesterday afternoon?"
"Yes, she has shown kindness to you every day for the last
ten weeks, and therefore you have forgotten to think of it
as kindness at all. O Jemmy, Jemmy. Here is a sad choosing
of the black yarn instead of the blue!"
And in the jug all the time had been lying the water which
was all that was needed to make the delicate plant revive,
stretch out again its curling leaves, and lift up its drooping
blossoms. Jemmy felt pleasure in watering his flower; to do
so, he thought, was almost like giving drink to a thirsty
animal.
"WELL, uncle, and if I did kick the little beast, what of that?
He's only a dog, a mere shepherd's dog," said Steenie
Steers, in a tone of contempt, as he looked down on the
rough little creature that had crouched for protection beside
the chair of his master, Farmer Macalpine.
"Is her head better? How did she sleep last night?" inquired
the farmer.
"I suppose that you did not go on your stroll without your
breakfast; you must have seen your aunt then," said
Macalpine, in his rather snappish manner.
"I wasn't down to breakfast till old Aunt Bess had done
hers, and gone out," answered Steenie. "I was up late last
night at the Burnsides," added the boy, with a yawn.