Posts Categorized: Fellows

Getting Dressed with the Hermaphrodites

July 14, 2020 | By Guest Author

A guest post by Kathleen Long (Editor’s Note: You can read Kathleen’s previous post, Dining with the Hermaphrodites, for a discussion of another aspect the novel.) The inhabitants of the island depicted in the 1605 French novel, The Island of Hermaphrodites, live in a decidedly material world. They do not believe in anything truly spiritual, including the immortal soul, heaven or hell, or divinity in any celestial rather than earthly form.… Continue Reading

Following the Trail of Counterfeits in the Folger’s Reformation Collection

May 7, 2020 | By Guest Author

A guest post by Drew Thomas Among the many collections at the Folger, besides its magnificent Shakespeare Collection, is the Stickelberger Collection of Reformation Tracts. This valuable collection, purchased by the Folger in 1977, was compiled by the Swiss writer and collector Emmanuel Stickelberger (1884-1962). Combined with the previously acquired collection of Reformation pamphlets from the library of Sir Thomas Phillips (1792-1872), the Folger’s Reformation holdings make it a leading center of Reformation resources in North America.… Continue Reading

Marks in Manuals

April 16, 2020 | By Guest Author

A guest post by Bénédicte Miyamoto Are these manuals I spy in the workshop? It is impossible to read the spines of the books in the illustration of an artist’s workshop in Salomon de Caus’s 1612 La perspectiue: auec la raison des ombres et miroirs. They are stored in early-modern fashion, with their fore-edges facing outward. Was their content actually taught in the workshop?… Continue Reading

Hooked on Book Furniture…

April 14, 2020 | By Guest Author

… corners, clasps (and other interesting metal parts of a book)! A guest post by Dawn Hoffmann What makes these little (and some not so tiny) metal parts so intriguing? Why were they put on these books and who might have made them? How did the artisans get the materials and tools to make them? What kinds of metal are the pieces made of?… Continue Reading

Dining with the Hermaphrodites: Courtly Excess and Dietary Manuals in Early Modern France

March 10, 2020 | By Guest Author

A guest post by Kathleen Long In 1605, a satirical novel, now known under the title L’Isle des Hermaphrodites (The Island of Hermaphrodites) was circulating on the streets of Paris. It was very popular at the time, according to contemporary accounts, and it was republished several times in the eighteenth century. Since its first publication, it has been read as being a criticism of the excesses of the French court during the reign of Henri III.… Continue Reading

“Lusty” sack possets, fertility, and the foodways of early modern weddings

February 13, 2020 | By Guest Author

A guest post by Sasha Handley Take ye yolks of 14 Egs & six whites & boyle them very well strain them into a pewter Bason put a quarte of a pint of Sack to them a grated nutmeg a little senemond [cinnamon] as much white shuger as you thinke fitt sett them upon a chafin dish of charcoles keep it stiring till it is prety hot lett a quart of milke boyle up upon the fier put a peece of butter and two sponefulls of shuger in it when the egs are hott power in the milke upon them then cover it up presently close and lett it stand a quarter of an hower then sett it upon a cold stone This recipe for “sack posset,” dating to c.1672, can be found in the recipe book of Constance Hall in the Folger Shakespeare Library.… Continue Reading

Sizing Shakespeare’s Sonnets

January 14, 2020 | By Guest Author

A guest post by Faith Acker I still remember the first rare book I handled in a library. It was Thomas Caldecott’s copy of the Shake-speares Sonnets. Neuer before imprinted (Thomas Thorpe, 1609) a beautiful quarto that Caldecott presented to the Bodleian Library in 1833, and that the Bodleian allowed me to hold and read while I was working on my M.Litt.… Continue Reading

The Eighteenth-Century Manuscript Verse Miscellany

January 7, 2020 | By Guest Author

A guest post by Betty Schellenberg Recently I’ve been exploring the very active literary lives of eighteenth-century lower gentry and middle-class individuals. Many of these socially obscure people not only composed and exchanged verse in manuscript form within their own social networks, but also copied out and arranged contemporary poetry that they found in printed sources. My primary evidence for this is the manuscript verse miscellany.… Continue Reading

A Dictionary for Don Quixote

November 12, 2019 | By Guest Author

A guest post by Kathryn Vomero Santos For scholars interested in the history of translation and language learning in early modern England, signs of use in books designed to teach their users how to read, speak, or write in another language are especially exciting. Annotations, corrections, and translations in the margins and fly leaves can offer a glimpse, partial though it may be, into the purposes and processes for acquiring another tongue.… Continue Reading

Learning to Weep: Early Modern Readers Reading Saint Peters Complaint (1595)

October 18, 2019 | By Guest Author

A guest post by Clarissa Chenovick Devotional weeping was serious business in early modern England. In an impressive array of bestselling print sermons and spiritual treatises, preachers and writers of varied religious persuasions exhort their hearers and readers to weep, sigh, and groan over their sins, and their audiences seem to have complied—or tried to comply—-with enthusiasm. We are familiar with the idea that medieval and Counter-Reformation Catholics embraced bodily expressions of penitence, including intensive weeping, but early modern Protestants also emphasize the value of devotional weeping.… Continue Reading