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The Prehistory of the Book

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Jessica Brantley
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Extract

Tout, dans l'inscription littéraire médiévale, paraît échapper à la conception moderne du texte, à la pensée textuaire.

—Bernard Cerquiglini, Éloge de la variante (42)

Everything about medieval literary inscription seems to elude the modern conception of the text, of textual thought.

The history of the book is everywhere. Intersecting with the thoroughgoing historicism that has dominated scholarly conversation in the last several decades, the study of material texts has flourished in all fields of literary study. An already vast bibliography is growing exponentially as graduate courses in the history of the book proliferate, universities establish centers for those who study material texts, presses publish series dedicated to book history, and more and more scholars recognize the fascination of studying anything “… and the book.” This field of inquiry has been newly codified, not only within numerous institutional structures but also in the most etymological sense, for codify ultimately derives, through code, from codex. Scholars of book history are eager to excavate the codes that are embedded within the codex—that is, more generally, the systems of thought that are both revealed and created by the physical structures through which ideas are expressed. Their true subject is neither the disembodied poem floating free of its material support nor the nuts and bolts of quiring and print runs but “the sociology of texts,” in D. F. McKenzie's memorable phrase (Bibliography). The history of the book thus offers scholars their own kind of system, for it draws methodologies together with theories in a particularly compelling way.

Type
Theories and Methodologies
Information
PMLA , Volume 124 , Issue 2 , March 2009 , pp. 632 - 639
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2009

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