The Typographic Imaginary in Early Modern English Literature

217 Pages·2018·5.108 MB·English

by  Rachel Stenner

The Typographic Imaginary in
Early Modern English Literature
The Typographic Imaginary in Early Modern English Literature contributes
to the understanding of how printing changed early modern English literary
culture. Rachel Stenner discusses printers’ manuals; William Caxton’s
paratexts; Robert Copland’s dialogues; the prose fictions of William
Baldwin, George Gascoigne and Thomas Nashe; and the courtly poetry of
Edmund Spenser. This study argues that early modern English literature
engages imaginatively with printing and generates a particular aesthetic: the
typographic imaginary.
Rachel Stenner lectures in Renaissance Literature at the University of
Sheffield, UK.
Material Readings in Early Modern Culture
Series editor: James Daybell
Plymouth University, UK
Adam Smyth
Balliol College, University of Oxford, UK
The series provides a forum for studies that consider the material forms of texts as
part of an investigation into the culture of early modern England. The editors invite
proposals of a multi- or interdisciplinary nature, and particularly welcome proposals
that combine archival research with an attention to theoretical models that might
illuminate the reading, writing, and making of texts, as well as projects that take
innovative approaches to the study of material texts, both in terms of the kinds of
primary materials under investigation, and in terms of methodologies. What are the
questions that have yet to be asked about writing in its various possible embodied
forms? Are there varieties of materiality that are critically neglected? How does form
mediate and negotiate content? In what ways do the physical features of texts inform
how they are read, interpreted and situated?
Recent in this series:
The Elizabethan Top Ten
Defining Print Popularity in Early Modern England
Edited by Andy Kesson and Emma Smith
Print Letters in Seventeenth-Century England
Politics, Religion, and News Culture
By Gary Schneider
Singing the News
Ballads in Mid-Tudor England
By Jenni Hyde
Text, Food And The Early Modern Reader
Eating Words
By Jason Scott-Warren and Andrew Zurcher
Reading Drama in Tudor England
By Tamara Atkin
The Typographic Imaginary
in Early Modern English
Literature
Rachel Stenner
First published 2019
by Routledge
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© 2019 Taylor & Francis
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has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-1-4724-8042-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-55185-2 (ebk)
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This book is dedicated to Indiana, Joseph, and Jane.

Contents
List of figures ix
Acknowledgements x
Note on quotation xi
Abbreviations xii
Introduction: print and the difference it makes 1
Implications 5
Critical mapping 11
Cases 17
1 Instructional texts and print symbolism: Christopher
Plantin, Hieronymus Hornschuch, and Joseph Moxon 32
Processes 35
People 46
Conclusion 51
2 An emergent typographic imaginary in William
Caxton’s paratexts 56
Life in literature, diplomacy, and commerce 59
The benefits of printing in Recuyell of the
Historyes of Troye 60
Imagined typographic space 64
Reorganising continuity: Mirrour of the World 71
Conclusion 76
3 Robert Copland, Thomas Blague, and the
printer–author dialogue 83
Printer–author dialogue and its mutations 84
Characterising the printer: gatekeepers of the press 89
Print and metacommunication: uses of the
dialogue form 98
Conclusion 104
viii Contents
4 Protestant printing and humanism in Beware the Cat:
undoing printing 110
Protestant printer and humanist scholar 112
Dead bodies and printer’s devils 116
Printing and penning 120
Conclusion 122
5 George Gascoigne and Richard Tottel: negotiating
manuscript and print in the poetic miscellany 128
Typographic value in the prefatory poses of A Hundreth
Sundrie Flowres 132
The benefits of printing in The Posies of George Gascoigne
Esquire 139
Conclusion 142
6 Edmund Spenser’s early and mid-career: public image and
machine horror 147
Early career self-presentation: The Shepheardes Calender
and Three Proper, and Wittie, Familiar Letters 148
Monstrous typographic fertility in The Faerie Queene 153
Resonant Errour in ‘The Teares of the Muses’ 161
Conclusion 163
7 St Paul’s Churchyard and the meanings of print: Pierce
Penilesse His Supplication to the Diuell 169
Nashe’s mosaic of the print trade 173
Waste and matter 179
The figurative authority of print 183
Conclusion 184
Conclusion: love and loathing in Grub Street 188
Index 197
Figures
1.1 ‘Typographus’ woodcut by Joost Amman from The Book
of Trades (1568). © Trustees of the British Museum (1904,
0206.103.20) 40
1.2 Woodcut from La Grante Danse Macabre des Hommes
et des Femmes (The great dance of death), printed by
Matthias Hus in Lyons, 1499. © The British Library Board
(I.B.41735, G.1) 45
2.1 William Caxton’s Advertisement (1477). © The Huntington
Library, San Marino, California (Z232.C38, A3) 57
2.2 Engraving from Elizabeth Woodville’s copy of William
Caxton’s Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye (1473). © The
Huntington Library, San Marino, California (62222) 67
3.1 Detail of a page from Everyman, printed by John Skot
in 1528. © The Huntington Library, San Marino,
California (14195) 86
3.2 Detail of the first page of Robert Copland’s dialogue in
William Neville’s The Castell of Pleasure (1530). © The
Huntington Library, San Marino, California (49038) 87