1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910814743703321

Autore

Salter Elisabeth <1972->

Titolo

Popular reading in English c. 1400-1600 / / Elisabeth Salter

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Manchester, UK : , : Manchester University Press, , 2017

©2012

ISBN

1-5261-3064-5

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (x, 260 pages) : illustrations; digital file(s)

Disciplina

028.9094109024

Soggetti

Books and reading - Great Britain - History - To 1500

Books and reading - Great Britain - History - 16th century

English literature - Middle English, 1100-1500 - History and criticism

English literature - Early modern, 1500-1700 - History and criticism

Literature

Prose: Non-Fiction

LITERARY CRITICISM / General

Biography & non-fiction prose

Great Britain Intellectual life 16th century

Great Britain Intellectual life 1066-1485

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (pages [235]-255) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Introduction to methods and terms -- Religious reading and reform -- Making meaning from moral reading -- Practical texts : husbandry and carving -- Fictional literature : Gawain in a Middle English miscellany -- Conclusion.

Sommario/riassunto

This book is about reading practice and experience in late medieval and early modern England. It focuses on the kinds of literatures that were more readily available to the widest spectrum of the population. Four case studies from many possibilities have been selected, each examining a particular type of popular literature under the headings 'religious', 'moral', 'practical' and 'fictional'. A key concern of the book is how we might use particular types of evidence in order to understand more about reading practice and experience, so issues of method and approach are discussed fully in the opening chapter. One distinctive



element of this book is that it attempts to uncover evidence for the reading practices and experiences of real, rather than ideal, readers, using evidence that is found within the material of a book or manuscript itself, or within the structure of a specific genre of literature. Salter attempts to negotiate a path through a set of methodological and interpretive issues in order to arrive at a better understanding of how people may have read and what they may have read. This, in turn, leads on to how we may interpret the evidence that manuscripts and early printed books provide for the ways that medieval and early modern people engaged with reading. This book will be of interest to academics and research students who study the history of reading, popular culture, literacy, manuscript and print culture, as well as to those interested more generally in medieval and early modern society and culture.