A Readable Earlier Renaissance

Literature Compass, 2006

"Readability" of several kinds is a problem in Renaissance or early modern literature. One way to enhance the readability of early modern texts is to adjust the (admittedly artificial) period boundary that begins the traditional "Renaissance." Unlike the historically-based boundaries of regnal years (1485, 1509), a slightly earlier date, 1476, implies a conception of "Renaissance" that takes as its pivotal starting point the establishment of the printing press in England. The earlier date thus refocuses our analysis of the period to systems of production, distribution, and reception that directly create and shape Renaissance literature. Such an adjustment also accomplishes a wider category challenge, since the literature of the early print period is qualitatively different from the more familiar literature of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods. This essay explains that to shift the starting point of inquiry about "Renaissance" is to challenge the whole period concept and to invite new critical narratives about the period that will make it more "readable" in several senses (legible, historically comprehensible, lisible, literally accessible, etc.). The essay also reviews similar, recent, challenges to other critical concepts in early modern studies: to authorship, genre, theme, canon, method. Such challenges have been generative of greater "readability" and growth in the field. What's unread ultimately becomes unreadable. Many Renaissance bestsellers are nearly unreadable now, in several senses, 1 and a "Renaissance" literary canon limited to the now-readable is, at least in part, an effect of normal human cognitive processes. As Piaget explained, we can only assimilate what we can recognize, that for which we have mental concepts and categories in place. 2 Over time, likewise, canons include, and critics discuss, that literature for which we have concepts, organizing categories, and critical vocabularies. What isn't edited, taught, reprinted in paperback, alluded to, translated, filmed, parodied, or banned fades away like brown ink on washed paper. However, some small adjustments to our organizing categories can have surprisingly large effects, not only on the readability and continued presence of specific texts in the canon, but also, on our ways of thinking about and "reading" the whole field. I'd like to continue, in this slightly different direction, our Editors' initial interrogation of perhaps the central organizing category of our discipline

This paper describes how Renaissance print culture gave rise to a new literary ideal: precocity.

2016

Renaissance Quarterly, 2010

This study examines the dissemination of knowledge via the evolution of the books and printing during the Late Medieval and Early Renaissance periods as it intersects with the Roman Catholic Church's suppression of knowledge through the control of book ownership, printing, translation, and reading. It also considers pivotal events such as the Protestant Reformation and the growing wave of religious decent that significantly altered both the religious and intellectual landscape. Thus, the focus of the study is to establish a tangible connection between advances in book production that took place during the transitionary period between the high and late medieval periods, the formation of the Renaissance, and the ways in which various changes in the religious milieu impacted these trends. Although many studies exist that separately examine the history of the book during the period and the history of the Roman Catholic Church, few have sought to uncover a connection between the two and their intersection. The questions posed represent a noteworthy gap in knowledge that exists between the study of the book as a physical object (codicology) and the academic disciplines of history and religious studies. By employing an interdisciplinary framework to examine the intersection of various competing religious and secular forces as they relate to book production and use, we will gain a better understanding of the vast power and influence of the book during this crucial period. Through an examination of the available primary sources as well as material taken from texts written by scholars of medieval and Renaissance history, codicology, the history of the book, and religious studies, this study uncovers an observable casual connection between advances in book production during the High and Late Middle Ages, a growing literate culture-spurred on by vast changes in the

Renaissance Quarterly, 2016