The development of reading practices: as represented in the textual afterlife of Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ

P Philology. Linguistics;PE English

Mackay, Francesca L. ; Smith, Jeremy J.

University:University of Glasgow

Department:School of Critical Studies

关键词: Textual AfterlivesBook HistoryReading PracticesNicholas LovePunctuation Practices;   

Others  :  http://theses.gla.ac.uk/3903/1/2012mackaymphil.pdf

来源: University of Glasgow

【 摘 要 】

Using Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, a text circulated widely in manuscript and print in the late medieval and early modern periods, this thesis willexamine philological and bibliographic criteria in order to examine the history of reading and the development of reading practices during this period. It argues that the shift from public oration to silent, private reading – and the co-ordinating shifts from passive, unengaged reading to active, engaged reading, and from unskilled to skilled reading – was not a straight-forward linear development during the period under examination, but instead was a fluctuating process of co-existence, influence, and adaptation between the pre-existing and emerging reading practices.This thesis presents punctuation practices and paratextual materials as accurate indicators of the reading practices used by contemporary readers of Love’s Mirror, thereby suggesting a methodology which can be employed by future scholars of book/reading history.