Used books : marking readers in Renaissance England / / William H. Sherman

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910781732903321
• Autore: Sherman William H.
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Philadelphia : , : University of Pennsylvania Press, , [2010]; ©2008
• ISBN: 1-283-21206-4; 9786613212061; 0-8122-0344-5
• Edizione: [1st paperback ed.]
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (282 p.)
• Collana: Material Texts
• Disciplina: 028.9094209031
• Soggetti: Renaixement - Anglaterra; Notes marginals - Anglaterra - Història - S. XVI; Llibres i lectura - Anglaterra - Història - S. XVI; Llibres electrònics
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references (p. [232]-249) and index.
• Nota di contenuto: Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Preface -- Part I. Of Marks and Methods -- Chapter 1. Introduction: Used Books -- Chapter 2. Toward a History of the Manicule -- Chapter 3. Reading the Matriarchive -- Part II. Reading and Religion -- Chapter 4. ''The Book thus put in every vulgar hand'': Marking the Bible -- Chapter 5. An Uncommon Book of Common Prayer -- Part III. Remarkable Readers -- Chapter 6. John Dee's Columbian Encounter -- Chapter 7. Sir Julius Caesar's Search Engine -- Part IV. Renaissance Readers and Modern Collectors -- Chapter 8. Dirty Books? Attitudes Toward Readers' Marks -- Afterword. The Future of Past Readers -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- Acknowledgments
• Sommario/riassunto: In a recent sale catalog, one bookseller apologized for the condition of a sixteenth-century volume as "rather soiled by use." When the book was displayed the next year, the exhibition catalogue described it as "well and piously used [with] marginal notations in an Elizabethan hand [that] bring to life an early and earnest owner"; and the book's buyer, for his part, considered it to be "enlivened by the marginal notes and ; comments." For this collector, as for an increasing number of cultural historians and historians of the book, a marked-up copy was more interesting than one in pristine condition.William H. Sherman recovers a culture that took the phrase "mark my words" quite literally. Books from the first two centuries of printing are full of marginalia and other signs of engagement and use, such as customized bindings, traces of food and drink, penmanship exercises, and doodles. These marks offer a vast archive of information about the lives of books and their place in the lives of their readers.Based on a survey of thousands of early printed books, Used Books describes what readers wrote in and around their books and what we can learn from these marks by using the tools of archaeologists as well as historians and literary critics. The chapters address the place of book-marking in schools and churches, the use of the "manicule" (the ubiquitous hand-with-pointing-finger symbol), the role played by women in information management, the extraordinary commonplace book used for nearly sixty years by Renaissance England's greatest lawyer-statesman, and the attitudes toward annotated books among collectors and librarians from the Middle Ages to the present.This wide-ranging, learned, and often surprising book will make the marks of Renaissance readers more visible and legible to scholars, collectors, and bibliophiles

Lovesick Japan : sex, marriage, romance, law / / Mark D. West

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910817942103321
• Autore: West Mark D
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Ithaca, : Cornell University Press, 2011
• ISBN: 0-8014-6150-2; 0-8014-6102-2
• Edizione: [1st ed.]
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (271 p.) : illustrations
• Disciplina: 306.810952
• Soggetti: Sex customs - Japan; Love - Japan; Marriage - Japan; Divorce - Japan; Japan Social life and customs
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references and index.
• Nota di contenuto: Judging -- Love -- Coupling -- Private sex -- Commodified sex -- Divorce.
• Sommario/riassunto: In Lovesick Japan, Mark D. West explores an official vision of love, sex, and marriage in contemporary Japan. A comprehensive body of evidence-2,700 court opinions-describes a society characterized by a presupposed absence of physical and emotional intimacy, affection, and personal connections. In compelling, poignant, and sometimes horrifying court cases, West finds that Japanese judges frequently opine on whether a person is in love, what other emotions a person is feeling, and whether those emotions are appropriate for the situation.Sometimes judges' views about love, sex, and marriage emerge from their presentation of the facts of cases. Among the recurring elements are abortions forced by men, compensated dating, late-life divorces, termination fees to end affairs, sexless couples, Valentine's Day heartbreak, "soapland" bath-brothels, and home-wrecking hostesses.Sometimes the judges' analysis, decisions, and commentary are as revealing as the facts. Sex in the cases is a choice among private "normal" sex, which is male-dominated, conservative, dispassionate, or nonexistent; commercial sex, which caters to every fetish but is said to ; lead to rape, murder, and general social depravity; and a hybrid of the two, which commodifies private sexual relationships. Marriage is contractual; judges express the ideal of love in marriage and proclaim its importance, but virtually no one in the court cases achieves it. Love usually appears as a tragic, overwhelming emotion associated with jealousy, suffering, heartache, and death.