Buchkulturen greift Interessensgebiete Reinhard Wittmanns auf und erweitert diese um internationale Perspektiven. Ein erster Schwerpunkt wird gesetzt mit Beitragen zur Theorie und Methode der Buchwissenschaft, in denen die Bedeutung der kulturgeschichtlichen Grundierung, die zentrale Rolle der Kategorie der Offentlichkeit oder die Interdependenz von Kultur und Geld reflektiert werden. Neben den methodenkritischen Beitragen umfasst der Band eine Fulle von Analysen bislang ungenutzter Quellen: Exemplarische Studien setzen sich mit der Verbreitung spanischer Konsumliteratur der dreissiger Jahre auf dem deutschen Markt oder mit pikanten, obrigkeitlich uberwachten Schlusselromanen aus Versailles auseinander. Eine andere Facette reprasentiert der Nachdruck, der in einigen deutschen Territorien zum wirkungsvollsten Transportmittel fur die neueste Literatur wurde. Weitere Schwerpunkte setzen Themen zum literarischen Leben um 1800, vor allem aber zum 20. Jahrhundert: Das Spektrum der Studien reicht von der ideologischen Instrumentalisierung uber die politische Zensur bis zum Gedenken an mutigen Widerstand gegen Unterdruckung. Die kulturelle Vielfalt der Moderne spiegelt sich in den medialen Kontexten von Zeitschrift oder Film und im zeichenhaften Gebrauch von Buchern in der Hochkultur wie in der Alltagskultur. Schliesslich werden die Traditionen des Bewahrens und Buchersammelns vom 18. bis ins 20. Jahrhundert aufgezeigt. Der Sammelband integriert so in einem reprasentativen Querschnitt aktuelle buchwissenschaftliche Ansatze, von denen auf zukunftige Forschungen vielfaltige Impulse ausgehen konnen.
Stephanie Kurschus analyses the idea of a common "European" book culture that integrates the book market as an essential aspect and employs book promotion as balancing instrument. Characteristics of book culture are identified; the resultant concept of book culture provides an overview of the values and myths ascribed to the book. Furthermore, applied book promotion measures are analyzed for their effectiveness and best practice models. Since, in a context determined by culture and market, preservation and innovation, book promotion fulfills two functions: it is to protect the unique national characteristics of book culture as well as to support its continuous development. To adapt and to advance within a changing environment is critical to the survival of book culture in the digital reality.
In Die Rifāʽīya Boris Liebrenz explores the book culture of Ottoman Syria (16th to 19th century) through a unique Damascene private library and asks about the practice of producing and transmitting knowledge, as well as the nature of the reading audience.
Women Write Back explores the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century women’s responses to texts written by well-known Enlightment figures. Hilger investigates the authorial strategies employed by Karoline von Günderrode, Ellis Cornelia Knight, Julie de Krüdener, and Helen Maria Williams, whose works engage Voltaire’s Mahomet, Johnson’s Rasselas, Goethe’s Werther, and Rousseau’s Julie. The analysis of these women’s texts sheds light on the literary culture of a period that deemed itself not only enlightened but also egalitarian.
In Episodes, Ian Maclean investigates the ways in which the book trade operated through book fairs, and interacted with academic institutions, journals and intellectual life in various European settings (Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and England) in the long seventeenth century.
Past interpreters of Kant’s thought seldom viewed his writings on politics as having much importance, especially in comparison with his writings on ethics, which (along with his major works, such as the Critique of Pure Reason) received the lion’s share of attention. But in recent years a new generation of scholars has revived interest in what Kant had to say about politics. From a position of engagement with today’s most pressing questions, this volume of essays offers a comprehensive introduction to Kant’s often misunderstood political thought. Covering the full range of sources of Kant’s political theory—including not only the Doctrine of Right, the Critiques, and the political essays but also Kant’s lectures and minor writings—the volume’s distinguished contributors demonstrate that Kant’s philosophy offers compelling positions that continue to inspire the best thinking on politics today. Aside from the editor, the contributors are Michaele Ferguson, Louis-Philippe Hodgson, Ian Hunter, John Christian Laursen, Mika LaVaque-Manty, Onora O’Neill, Thomas W. Pogge, Arthur Ripstein, and Robert S. Taylor.
This anthology explores the relationships and interdependencies between literary production and distinctions of taste by examining how the material aspects of literary texts, such as the cover, binding, typography and paper stock, reflect or even determine their cultural status. In many cases, for example, the distinctions between “highbrow” and “lowbrow” taste have little to do with the content of the texts themselves, as books often function as markers of socioeconomic status, like clothing or home décor. One might even go so far as to say that the concept of literary taste is more closely related to fashion sense than critical judgment. The anthology seeks to address this claim by examining how the tensions between consumerism and prestige reflect fundamental historical changes with regard to the development of technology, literacy and social power.
Though typically associated more with Judaism than Christianity, the status and sacrality of Hebrew has nonetheless been engaged by both religious cultures in often strikingly similar ways. The language has furthermore played an important, if vexed, role in relations between the two. Hebrew between Jews and Christians closely examines this frequently overlooked aspect of Judaism and Christianity's common heritage and mutual competition.
This book presents a varied and nuanced analysis of the dynamics of the printing, publication, and trade of music in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries across Western and Northern Europe. Chapters consider dimensions of music printing in Britain, the Holy Roman Empire, the Netherlands, France, Spain and Italy, showing how this area of inquiry can engage a wide range of cultural, historical and theoretical issues. From the economic consequences of the international book trade to the history of women music printers, the contributors explore the nuances of the interrelation between the materiality of print music and cultural, aesthetic, religious, legal, gender and economic history. Engaging with the theoretical turns in the humanities towards material culture, mobility studies and digital research, this book offers a wealth of new insights that will be relevant to researchers of early modern music and early print culture alike.
Tracing its emergence in various fields, the contributions in this volume demonstrate how the notion of impartiality is intimately implicated in epochal early modern shifts in epistemology and science, religious and political discourse, print culture, and scholarship.
Texts in Transit addresses the question what happened to texts during their production in printing houses in the fifteenth century. Lotte Hellinga finds some answers by exploring printer’s copy and proofs in diverse printing houses, covering the period 1459 -1496.
