Vernacular Books and Their Readers in the Early Age of Print (c. 1450–1600)

Vernacular Books and Their Readers in the Early Age of Print (c. 1450–1600)
Author: Anna Dlabačová
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 432
Release: 2023-09-14
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9004520155

'The Open Access publishing costs of this volume were covered by the Dutch Research Council (NWO), Veni-project “Leaving a Lasting Impression. The Impact of Incunabula on Late Medieval Spirituality, Religious Practice and Visual Culture in the Low Countries” (grant number 275-30-036).' This volume explores various approaches to study vernacular books and reading practices across Europe in the 15th-16th centuries. Through a shared focus on the material book as an interface between producers and users, the contributors investigate how book producers conceived of their target audiences and how these vernacular books were designed and used. Three sections highlight connections between vernacularity and materiality from distinct perspectives: real and imagined readers, mobility of texts and images, and intermediality. The volume brings contributions on different regions, languages, and book types into dialogue. Contributors include Heather Bamford, Tillmann Taape, Stefan Matter, Suzan Folkerts, Karolina Mroziewicz, Martha W. Driver, Alexa Sand, Elisabeth de Bruijn, Katell Lavéant, Margriet Hoogvliet, and Walter S. Melion.

Tracts of Action

Tracts of Action
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 335
Release: 2024-07-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004683380

This volume offers the user a guide to the neglected field of how-to books. How do I make soap? How do I dye textiles? What ingredients do I need for a effective remedy? How can one find and mine mineral resources, how does one make pewter cups or a good meal? Practical information of this kind, on distillation, medicine, dyeing, cosmetics, glassmaking, ceramics, metallurgy and many other subjects, flooded the book market in the first centuries of printing. As varied as these subjects are the research questions that we might ask: How do you learn practical skills from a book? Why were these books so popular, who used them and how, and can they even be considered to be a clearly defined genre? The aim of this volume, which emerged from a conference at the Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel, is to find out which patterns characterise the genre of how-to books or “Rezepte-Büchlein”. It also aims to contribute to the clarification of terms for a genre, that operates under labels such as “Books of Secrets” and "recipe books" or, in German-speaking countries, "Kunst- und Wunderbuch" or “nützlich büchlein”. Some key issues addressed in the book include the traces of book use, the media shift from manuscript to print, the interaction between text and image, and the praxeological dimension of practical books. Self-help literature not only made it possible for interested laypersons to obtain information from all possible fields of knowledge, largely independent of institutional and educational environments; as "tracts for action" they differed from other genres in that they were consistently oriented towards implementation.

Vernacular Books and Their Readers in the Early Age of Print (C. 1450-1600)

Vernacular Books and Their Readers in the Early Age of Print (C. 1450-1600)
Author: Anna Dlabačová
Publisher: Intersections
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2023
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9789004520141

This volume explores approaches to study vernacular books and reading practices across Europe in the 15th-16th centuries. It highlights connections between vernacularity and materiality from distinct perspectives: real and imagined readers, mobility of texts and images, and intermediality.

Inwardness, Individualization, and Religious Agency in the Late Medieval Low Countries

Inwardness, Individualization, and Religious Agency in the Late Medieval Low Countries
Author: Rijcklof Hofman
Publisher: Brepols Publishers
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2019-11-30
Genre: Benelux countries
ISBN: 9782503585390

Recent scholarship on the Middle Ages has highlighted the importance of individualistic tendencies in devotion in both the lay world and religious communities. This interaction between individualization and religious agency has been scrutinized in numerous studies, focusing on the beginnings during the so-called 'Twelfth-Century Renaissance', and further development in the later medieval and early modern periods. However, there has hitherto been relatively little scholarship on the phenomenon in the Devotio Moderna: the flourishing of more personalized forms of devotion in north-western Europe during the later Middle Ages. The essays in this volume redress this gap by exploring the processes of inwardness and the emergent individualization of religious practices in the late medieval Low Countries. The essays explore issues including the early impact of the printing press on devotion; meditational aids such as identification with Christ, prayer cycles, practices of remembrance, and devout songs; and the tension between inner devotion and the ideal of communal piety in male and female religious communities. They also discuss some leading individuals of the Devotio movement. By addressing the Devotio Moderna and its contexts - the emergence of inwardness, individualization, and religious agency in the late medieval Low Countries and surrounding areas - the essays in this volume help to enhance and expand our knowledge of devotion in the late Middle Ages, both in lay circles and in religious communities, and they show the distinct contribution of the Low Countries to the European phenomenon of more personalized forms of devotion.

The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola

The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola
Author: Terence O'Reilly
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 349
Release: 2020-10-20
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004429751

In The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius Loyola: Contexts, Sources, Reception, Terence O’Reilly examines the historical, theological and literary contexts in which the Exercises took shape.

“The” Red Jews

“The” Red Jews
Author: Andrew Colin Gow
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 444
Release: 1995
Genre: History
ISBN: 9789004102552

The German legend of the Red Jews, a medieval conflation of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel with the biblical destroyers Gog and Magog, articulated throughout the Middle Ages and well into the sixteenth century a fundamentally antisemitic strain of popular apocalypticism. This undigested piece of medievalia disappeared as more strictly biblical narratives of the End replaced medieval myth. As a result, the Red Jews have not been noticed by modern historians though they were a universally-known feature of German apocalyptic belief for over three centuries.

Christian Hebraism in the Reformation Era (1500-1660)

Christian Hebraism in the Reformation Era (1500-1660)
Author: Stephen G. Burnett
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 365
Release: 2012-01-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004222480

The Reformation transformed Christian Hebraism from the pursuit of a few into an academic discipline. This book explains that transformation by focusing on how authors, printers, booksellers, and censors created a public discussion of Hebrew and Jewish texts.

The Book in the Renaissance

The Book in the Renaissance
Author: Andrew Pettegree
Publisher:
Total Pages: 421
Release: 2010
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780300110098

The dawn of print was a major turning point in the early modern world. It rescued ancient learning from obscurity, transformed knowledge of the natural and physical world, and brought the thrill of book ownership to the masses. But, as Andrew Pettegree reveals in this work of great historical merit, the story of the post-Gutenberg world was rather more complicated than we have often come to believe. The Book in the Renaissance reconstructs the first 150 years of the world of print, exploring the complex web of religious, economic, and cultural concerns surrounding the printed word. From its very beginnings, the printed book had to straddle financial and religious imperatives, as well as the very different requirements and constraints of the many countries who embraced it, and, as Pettegree argues, the process was far from a runaway success. More than ideas, the success or failure of books depended upon patrons and markets, precarious strategies and the thwarting of piracy, and the ebb and flow of popular demand. Owing to his state-of-the-art and highly detailed research, Pettegree crafts an authoritative, lucid, and truly pioneering work of cultural history about a major development in the evolution of European society.