Rachel Stenner. The Typographic Imaginary in Early Modern English Literature

Abstract

The material turn in literary studies has drawn our attention to the objects of literary production, both formal and physical. Not only materialist and object-oriented focuses on the physical properties of paper, ink, punches, letter-cases, and the corkscrewing press itself, but also the legacy of historicism’s attention to forms and genres outside of traditional literary categories have kindled new studies of recipes, ballads, jests, sententiae, and other shorter genres as well as husbandry manuals, conduct books, miscellanies, sammelbände, and other printed collections. As stolid as a table or a wheel when not in use, a book nevertheless may differ from other objects in that its use constitutes a reactivation process in readers’ minds, one involving mental processes like judgment, emotion, and imagination among others. A table is designed, measured and made, and then has dinner laid upon it. A book is designed, printed and bound, and then lights out into the reader’s imagination, reinstantiating itself there in a process both material and immaterial.