Description
Book SynopsisIn Printing the Middle Ages Siân Echard looks to the postmedieval, postmanuscript lives of medieval texts, seeking to understand the lasting impact on both the popular and the scholarly imaginations of the physical objects that transmitted the Middle Ages to the English-speaking world. Beneath and behind the foundational works of recovery that established the canon of medieval literature, she argues, was a vast terrain of books, scholarly or popular, grubby or beautiful, widely disseminated or privately printed. By turning to these, we are able to chart the differing reception histories of the literary texts of the British Middle Ages. For Echard, any reading of a medieval text, whether past or present, amateur or academic, floats on the surface of a complex sea of expectations and desires made up of the books that mediate those readings.
Each chapter of Printing the Middle Ages focuses on a central textual object and tells its story in order to reveal the h
Trade Review
"Sian Echard is recognized as one of the leading figures in the study of the transition of medieval authors into print. This book is a well-informed, scholarly, and timely contribution to the current interest in the history of the book."-Helen Cooper, Cambridge University
