Description
Book SynopsisKnowing Books examines a variety of eighteenth-century sources that deploy language to emphasize their status as physical objects and their circulation as commodities. In Lupton's account, these texts use this device to enhance their appeal as entertaining objects, making them part of an ongoing tradition of self-conscious media.
Trade Review"
Knowing Books demonstrates how ideas can be shaped by the physical form in which they are conveyed. It recovers historical reactions to new technologies and the way in which those new processes were inscribed in writing. It is a study of mediation registered in discourse and as such is a notable extension of the recent characterization of the Enlightenment as a 'media event.'" *
TLS *
"Compellingly argued, original in its approach and insights, thoroughly researched, and ranging widely in the theoretical voices it invokes,
Knowing Books opens up fresh ways of thinking about the eighteenth century. The project capitalizes on some of the most exciting work in the fields of book history, media studies, materiality, and 'thing theory,' and applies it to a body of texts until recently slighted in traditional literary histories of the period." * Lynn Festa, Rutgers University *
