The History and Future of the Book

Schedule (Fall & Winter 2009–2010)

SECTION 1. Introduction

F Sept 4

Introduction to the History & Future of the Book
M Sept 7 Labour Day: No class

W Sept 9

Discussion: What does "the book" mean to our culture?

Slides

This isn't required reading, but this article from the Boston Globe will likely come up today: administrators at Cushing Academy in New England have have decided to discard all their books: "'When I look at books, I see an outdated technology, like scrolls before books,' said James Tracy, headmaster of Cushing and chief promoter of the bookless campus."

F Sept 11

Lecture: "The Shape of the Book"

M Sept 14

The Shape of New Media

W Sept 16

The Effects of Media

F Sept 18

Memory, Wisdom, Consciousness and the Technologies of Writing 1

Not required reading, but I've just discovered a recent post by Kevin Kelly (co-founder of Wired magazine), which does a terrific job of re-presenting the issues from a decade ago from both sides, along with commentary on the current debate with Carr: The Fate of the Book.

M Sept 21

Memory, Wisdom, Consciousness and the Technologies of Writing 2

  • Plato, excerpt from "Phaedrus" (Click on PHAEDRUS at the bottom; search for for the following text: "SOCRATES: But there is something yet to be said of propriety and impropriety of writing" and read to the end)

SECTION 2. Understanding new forms of digital literature: Electronic Poetry, Web 2.0, DRM

W Sept 23

Electronic Poetry I

This is not required reading but you might find it interesting to compare the e-text above with a pdf of the book version of Soliloquy.

F Sept 25

Electronic Poetry II

  • William Gibson, Agrippa (a book of the dead)

As described by the Electronic Literature Organization: "Originally published in 1992, AGRIPPA (A BOOK OF THE DEAD) was a limited edition art book that contained double-column pages of DNA code laid out to allude to the Gutenberg Bible, copperplate aquatint etchings by Dennis Ashbaugh alluding to DNA gel patterns (some overprinted with antique newspaper advertisements of technological artifacts), and a "disappearing" poem about memory, family, youth, and mechanisms by William Gibson (on a read-once-only, self-encrypting diskette). During the rise of the Internet and Web in the early 1990s, the poem and book were read as marking a symbolic transition from the codex book to digital media. But in all this time, the physical book itself has rarely been seen."

M Sept 28

Agrippa (a book of the dead) cont'd

W Sept 30

Electronic Poetry III

YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES

F Oct 2

YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES cont'd

M Oct 5

Penguin's Foray into Digital Publishing

  • Hard Times, written by Matt Mason and designed by Nicholas Felton

W Oct 7

F Oct 9

Essay #1 Due

Web 2.0 Introduction, or What's this "Web 2.0"? And what's it doing in my English Literature class?

  • lecture and discussion
M Oct 12 Thanksgiving Day: no class

W Oct 14

Web 2.0: Blogs & Vlogs

F Oct 16

Web 2.0: Diy-broadcasting, Bittorrents

M Oct 19

Web 2.0: Social Networking & Folksonomies

W Oct 21

Web 2.0: Wikis & Knowledge

  • BOOK DEBATE: pick a side and either defend Wikipedia as a democratic source of knowledge, or lambaste it as a pathetic jumble of misinformation. Make sure you know how you define the following:
    • democratic
    • knowledge

F Oct 23

DRM I : Controlling Readers/Viewers

M Oct 26

DRM II: Controlling Creativity

  • Lawrence Lessig, pp. 17-79 (section on Piracy) in Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity (download the pdf here)

It's not required reading, but it's very interesting reading: "RIAA v. The People: Five Years Later," a report published by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on the outcomes of five years of the recording industry suing American people.

W Oct 28

DRM III: Creative Commons

  • Cory Doctorow, "Printcrime" from Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present (choose from a variety of file types: PDF is good for printing; html is good for reading in your browser; plain text is good if you don't care about formatting)

SECTION 3. Orality

F Oct 30

Old English Literature: From Oral (?) to Written Narrative

  • Anonymous, Beowulf, 1100 AD (Prologue to Chapter XXVI (at top left, choose THE TEXT and then MODERN TEXT and then Chapter -> Prologue; Click on NEXT at top right to advance through the chapters)
  •  "The Beowulf Manuscript" (choose "HISTORY" then "MANUSCRIPT")

Some Psychodynamics of Orality (from Walter Ong's Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word)

M Nov 2

Old English Literature: From Oral (?) to Written Narrative (cont'd)

W Nov 4

Old English Literature: From Oral (?) to Written Narrative (cont'd)

F Nov 6

Old English Literature: From Oral (?) to Written Narrative (cont'd)

SECTION 4. Manuscript Culture: Reading & writing the Medieval book

M Nov 9

From the Scroll to the Codex Book

  • Henry Petroski, "From Scrolls to Codices" [Readings Package]
  • just for fun: Medieval Helpdesk
W Nov 11 Remembrance Day: no class

F Nov 13

Making Medieval books

M Nov 16

Middle English literature: lyric poetry

Before we discuss these poems, we'll start with a lecture on the cultural/historical background of Medieval scribes, writing, and authorship.

Here are some notes on Lyric Poetry.

W Nov 18

Middle English literature: lyric poetry cont'd

F Nov 20

Middle English literature: lyric poetry cont'd

M Nov 23

Essay #2 Due

The Medieval Page: viewing of the Otto Ege Medieval Manuscript Collection at the U of S Library Special Collections

Group one (last name A through K): go to the main library, 3rd floor

W Nov 25

The Medieval Page: viewing of the Otto Ege Medieval Manuscript Collection at the U of S Library Special Collections

Group two (last name L through Z): go to the main library, 3rd floor

F Nov 27

Middle English literature: Chaucer's Canterbury Tales

M Nov 30

Middle English literature: Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and fabliaux

To cite this work, please cite the original edition:

Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Miller’s Tale.” The Canterbury Tales. Ed. Michael Murphy. n.d. 21 January 2008 http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/webcore/
murphy/canterbury/canterbury.htm.

 

Here are the notes on Chaucer.

W Dec 2

Middle English literature: Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and fabliaux (cont'd)

F Dec 4

Middle English literature: Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and fabliaux (cont'd)

Have a Great Holiday!

M Jan 4

Research Assignment Seminar: instructions for doing your online research project. PLEASE DO NOT SKIP THESE CLASSES: THIS IS A DIFFICULT ASSIGNMENT AND YOU RISK THROWING AWAY MARKS IF YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND HOW TO DO IT.

W Jan 6

instructions for doing your online research project cont'd

SECTION 5. 15th-century Print Culture: the Dawn of the "Gutenberg Era" and the Rise of Humanism

F Jan 8

Gutenberg, the Bible & the rise of the English language

  • Alister McGrath, "Introduction," "Unknown to the Ancients: The New Technology," "The Rise of English as a National Language," "The First Printed English Bibles" [Readings Package]

if you're interested: the British Library's beautiful facsimiles of the first two Bibles printed by Gutenberg

M Jan 11

Elizabeth Eisenstein, "The Emergence of Print culture in the West" [RP]

W Jan 13

The Book and English Nationalism: William Caxton's Editions of Chaucer

SECTION 6. The 16th & 17th Centuries: Renaissance Print Culture

F Jan 15

16th-century private books & 17th-c. public books

M Jan 18

16th-century private books & 17th-c. public books (cont'd)

  • John Donne, "To His Mistress Going to Bed" (likely written between 1593 and 1596; published 1669)
  • to get a sense of the cosmology of Donne's time, have a look at one of the most popular books of 16th-century Europe, Petrus Apanius' Cosmographia: see info about the book (with inferior images); and beautiful images from an edition that sold on eBay last year.

W Jan 20

16th-/17th-century printed books & public authors: William Shakespeare

F Jan 22

16th-/17th-century printed books & public authors: William Shakespeare (cont'd)

  • from this pdf of the first folio: "To the Reader," "Epistle Dedicatory," "To the Great Variety of Readers" and "To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author"

M Jan 25

Research Assignment due

16th-/17th-century printed books & public authors: William Shakespeare (cont'd)

W Jan 27

17th-century printed books & public authors: Ben Jonson
Ben Jonson, epigrams from The Works of Ben Jonson (1616)

  • I:  "To The Reader"
  • II:  "To My Book"
  • III:  "To My Bookseller"
  • IV:  "To King James"

Here's a beautiful facsimile of the first edition of Jonson's Works. Here's the title page at its largest resolution.

F Jan 29

17th-century printed books & public authors: Ben Jonson

M Feb 1

17th-century words in print: the carmen figuratum

  • George Herbert, "Easter Wings" as it has appeared in 20th-century editions
  • the original "Easter Wings" as it appeared in manuscripts and in the 1633 edition of The Temple

SECTION 7. the 18th century: Capitalism, Novels & the Rise of Commercial Print Culture

W Feb 3

18th-Century print culture & the rise of capitalism

F Feb 5

Control and Copyright

Here's a pdf of Regulation of the press overview (Henry VIII to George I).

M Feb 8

William Blake's illuminated poetry

W Feb 10

William Blake's illuminated poetry (cont'd)

F Feb 12

William Blake's illuminated poetry (cont'd)

Feb 15 - Feb 20: Midterm Break

SECTION 8. 19th Century: "Romantic" vs. "Mechanic" print culture

M Feb 22

19th century: books and knowledge/nostalgia

If you're curious to see a facsimile of the original manuscript in Keats' handwriting, be sure to see John Keats: Original Manuscript Images

It's not required reading but here is the complete text of George Chapman's translation of The Odysseys of Homer (1614–16).

W Feb 24

Charles Dickens and serial fiction

  • Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
    • Chapters 1 and 2 (December 1, 1860)
    • Chapter 59 (August 3, 1861)

F Feb 26

Charles Dickens and serial fiction (cont'd)

M Mar 1

Dime novels (and penny dreadfuls)

This is not required reading, but if you're in the mood for a penny dreadful, you can read Varney the Vampire; or, The Feast of Blood at the University of Virginia Library Electronic Text Center.

W Mar 3

Dime novels (and penny dreadfuls) (cont'd)

F Mar 5

Mark Twain™

Slides from class: Reviews of Huckleberry Finn (more on the contemporary reaction to this book is available at Stephen Railton's Mark Twain in His Times)

M Mar 8

Mark Twain™ (cont'd)

W Mar 10

Emily Dickinson's handmade poetry books

F Mar 12

Emily Dickinson's handmade poetry books (cont'd)

SECTION 9. The 20th Century: Mass Culture

M Mar 15

Essay #3 due

The 20th-Century paperback phenomenon

W Mar 17

Pulp fiction

F Mar 19

Pulp fiction (cont'd)

M Mar 22

20th-century book clubs

  • Janice Radway, "A Feeling for Books: The-Book-of-the-Month-Club, Literary Taste, and Middle-Class Desire" [Readings Package]

W Mar 24

Mass distribution, censorship, and freedom to read

F Mar 26

The library of Babel: human knowledge at the height of book culture

  • Jorge Luis Borges, "The Library of Babel" [Readings Package]

M Mar 29

The library of Babel: human knowledge at the height of book culture (cont'd)

W Mar 31

Secondary orality: 20th c. storytellers

  • Thomas King, "The Garden Court Motor Motel" [Readings Package]
F Apr 2 Good Friday: no class

M Apr 5

Secondary orality: 20th c. storytellers cont'd

Thomas King stories recording

W Apr 7

Closure