1st Edition

The Typographic Imaginary in Early Modern English Literature

By Rachel Stenner Copyright 2019
216 Pages
by Routledge

216 Pages 5 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

216 Pages 5 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

The typographic imaginary is an aesthetic linking authors from William Caxton to Alexander Pope, this study centrally contends. Early modern English literature engages imaginatively with printing and this book both characterizes that engagement and proposes the typographic imaginary as a framework for its analysis. Certain texts, Rachel Stenner states, describe the people, places, concerns, and... Read more

Contents





List of Figures v



Acknowledgements vi



Note on Quotation vii



Abbreviations viii





Introduction: Print and the Difference it Makes 1



Implications 7



Critical Mapping 16



Cases 26





Chapter 1: Instructional Texts and Print Symbolism: Christopher Plantin, Hieronymus Hornschuch, and Joseph Moxon 51



Processes 55



People 69



Conclusion 77





Chapter 2: An Emergent Typographic Imaginary in William Caxton’s Paratexts 86



Life in Literature, Diplomacy, and Commerce 88



The Benefits of Printing in Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye 90



Imagined Typographic Space 96



Reorganising Continuity: Mirrour of the World 104



Conclusion 112





Chapter 3: Robert Copland, Thomas Blague, and the Printer-Author Dialogue 124



Printer-Author Dialogue and its Mutations 126



Characterising the Printer: Gatekeepers of the Press 130



Print and Metacommunication: Uses of the Dialogue Form 145



Conclusion 153





Chapter 4: Protestant Printing and Humanism in Beware the Cat: Undoing Printing 164



Protestant Printer and Humanist Scholar 168



Dead Bodies and Printer’s Devils 174



Printing and Penning 178



Conclusion 183





Chapter 5: George Gascoigne and Richard Tottel: Negotiating Manuscript and Print in the Poetic Miscellany 193



Typographic Value in the Prefatory Poses of A Hundreth Sundrie Flowres 199



The Benefits of Printing in The Posies of George Gascoigne Esquire 209



Conclusion 215





Chapter 6: Edmund Spenser’s Early and Mid Career: Public Image and Machine Horror



223



Early Career Self-Presentation: The Shepeardes Calender and Three Proper, and Wittie, Familiar Letters 225



Monstrous Typographic Fertility in The Faerie Queene 232



Resonant Errour in ‘The Teares of the Muses’ 244



Conclusion 247





Chapter 7 St Paul’s Churchyard and the Meanings of Print: Pierce Penilesse His Supplication to the Divell 259



Nashe’s Mosaic of the Print Trade 266



Waste and Matter 274



The Figurative Authority of Print 280



Conclusion 282





Conclusion: Love and Loathing in Grub Street 289



Biography

Rachel Stenner lectures in Renaissance Literature at the University of Sheffield, UK.