Contexts for Circulation

Abstract

Abstract Books at the universities and the Inns of Court, and within households and professional circles, were transmitted through material and textual exchanges that made up the physical and conceptual fabric of these places. Books have connective properties and a social life. They can be passed hand to hand, sent via others, and read and performed and, as such, bring people together within environments that, in turn, are defined by these social uses of the book. Attention to contexts of circulation allows us to understand how books are not self-contained textual objects; rather their meaning is distributed across time and space and changes as they move through networks of transmission. Within these environments, textual material was put to different uses and connected people and places through reading, performance, and acts of making and remaking in ways which prompt a reconsideration of the media through which texts were transmitted.