1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910794558103321

Autore

Greteman Blaine

Titolo

Networking print in Shakespeare's England : influence, agency, and revolutionary change / / Blaine Greteman

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Stanford, California : , : Stanford University Press, , [2021]

©2021

ISBN

1-5036-2799-3

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (257 pages)

Collana

Stanford Text Technologies

Disciplina

094.20942

Soggetti

Social networks - History - England - 17th century

Book industries and trade - History - England - 17th century

Early printed books - Social aspects - England - 17th century

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Cover -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- Note on Quotations -- INTRODUCTION -- 1 Methods and Data -- 2 A Small New World: Fire, Infection, and Sudden Change in the English Print Network -- 3 Hubs in the Network: Nicholas Okes and the Making of Infectious Information -- 4 Radical Betweenness: Eleanor Davies and Mary Cary -- 5 Weak Ties and the Making of a Strong Poet: John Milton's Early Publishers -- EPILOGUE: Future Directions in Networking the Past -- Notes -- Index.

Sommario/riassunto

In Networking Print in Shakespeare's England, Blaine Greteman uses new analytical tools to examine early English print networks and the systemic changes that reshaped early modern literature, thought, and politics. In early modern England, printed books were a technology that connected people—not only readers and writers, but an increasingly expansive community of printers, publishers, and booksellers—in new ways. By pairing the methods of network analysis with newly available digital archives, Greteman aims to change the way we usually talk about authorship, publication, and print. As Greteman reveals, network analysis of the nearly 500,000 books printed in England before 1800 makes it possible to speak once again of a "print revolution," identifying a sudden tipping point at which the early modern print



network became a small world where information could spread in new and powerful ways. Along with providing new insights into canonical literary figures like Milton and Shakespeare, data analysis also uncovers the hidden histories of key figures in this transformation who have been virtually ignored. Both a primer on the power of network analysis and a critical intervention in early modern studies, the book is ultimately an extended meditation on agency and the complexity of action in context.