Old Books and New Histories
Subtitle: An Orientation to Studies in Book and Print Culture
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Published: September 25, 2006
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 128
ISBN-13: 9780802091963
Subjects: Literary studies: general; Publishing industry; History - General History; Literary Criticism; Literature - Classics / Criticism; Books & Reading; Publishing; History / General; History; Books; Histoire; Livres
Description: "Studies in the culture and history of the book are a burgeoning academic specialty. Intriguing, rigorous, and vital, they are nevertheless rooted within three major academic disciplines - history, literary studies, and bibliography - that focus respectively upon the book as a cultural transaction, a literary text, and a material artefact. Old Books and New Histories serves as a guide to this rich but sometimes confusing territory, explaining how different scholarly approaches to what may appear to be the same entity can lead to divergent questions and contradictory answers." "Rather than introduce the events and turning points in the history of book culture, or debates among its theorists, Leslie Howsam uses an array of books and articles to offer an orientation to the field in terms of disciplinary boundaries and interdisciplinary tensions. Howsam's analysis maps studies of book and print culture onto the disciplinary structure of the North American and European academic world."--Jacket.