The Myth of Print Culture is a critique of bibliographical and editorial method, focusing on the disparity between levels of material evidence (unique and singular) and levels of text (abstract and reproducible). It demonstrates how the particulars of evidence are manipulated in standard scholarly arguments by the higher levels of textuality they are intended to support.
The individual studies in the book focus on a range of problems: basic definitions of what a book is; statistical assumptions; and editorial methods used to define and collate the presumably basic unit of...
The Myth of Print Culture is a critique of bibliographical and editorial method, focusing on the disparity between levels of material eviden...
In this book, Joseph Dane critiques the use of material evidence in studies of manuscript and printed books by delving into accepted notions about the study of print culture. He questions the institutional and ideological presuppositions that govern medieval studies, descriptive bibliography, and library science. Dane begins by asking what is the relation between material evidence and the abstract statements made about the evidence; ultimately he asks how evidence is to be defined. The goal of this book is to show that evidence from texts and written objects often becomes twisted to support...
In this book, Joseph Dane critiques the use of material evidence in studies of manuscript and printed books by delving into accepted notions about the...
Students of English literature now rarely receive instruction in versification (theory or practice) at either the undergraduate or the graduate level. The Long and the Short of It is a clear, straightforward account of versification that also functions as an argument for a renewed attention to the formal qualities of verse and for a renewed awareness of the forms and traditions that have shaped the way we think about English verse. After an introduction and discussion of basic principles, Joseph A. Dane devotes a chapter to quantitative verse (Latin), syllabic or isosyllabic verse (French),...
Students of English literature now rarely receive instruction in versification (theory or practice) at either the undergraduate or the graduate level....
The new history of the book has constituted a vibrant academic field in recent years, and theories of print culture have moved to the center of much scholarly discourse. One might think typography would be a basic element in the construction of these theories, yet if only we would pay careful attention to detail, Joseph A. Dane argues, we would find something else entirely: that a careful consideration of typography serves not as a material support to prevailing theories of print but, rather, as a recalcitrant counter-voice to them.
In "Out of Sorts" Dane continues his examination of the...
The new history of the book has constituted a vibrant academic field in recent years, and theories of print culture have moved to the center of muc...
An ambitious theoretical work that ranges from the age of Socrates to the late twentieth century, this book traces the development of the concepts of irony within the history of Western literary criticism. Its purpose is not to promote a universal definition of irony, whether traditional or revisionist, but to examine how such definitions were created in critical history and what their use and invocation imply.
Joseph A. Dane argues that the diverse, supposed forms of irony--Socratic, rhetorical, romantic, dramatic, to name a few--are not so much literary elements embedded in texts,...
An ambitious theoretical work that ranges from the age of Socrates to the late twentieth century, this book traces the development of the concepts ...
Written as a sailing chronicle, Dogfish Memory is the story of the search for an authentic Maine, a Maine of the past, whether historical or simply imagined, and a Maine of the present, one experienced by both permanent residents and seasonal ones summerfolk. Joseph Dane is both. He has worked on commercial fishing boats as a local and he has sailed the coast for years like those who are from away. Dogfish Memory tells the story of how his often conflicting Maines are intertwined. Authentic Maine is elusive; stories and even photographs of a past Maine often contradict the memories of those...
Written as a sailing chronicle, Dogfish Memory is the story of the search for an authentic Maine, a Maine of the past, whether historical or simply im...
"As bibliographers or book historians, we perform our work by changing the function of the objects we study. We rarely pick up an Aldine edition to read one of the classical texts it contains. . . . Print culture, under this notion, is not a medium for writing or thought but a historical object of study; our bibliographical field, our own concoction, becomes the true referent of the objects we define as its foundation." From the Introduction
What is a book in the study of print culture? For the scholar of material texts, it is not only a singular copy carrying the unique traces of...
"As bibliographers or book historians, we perform our work by changing the function of the objects we study. We rarely pick up an Aldine edition to...
