Reading Books and Prints as Cultural Objects

This book contributes significantly to book, image and media studies from an interdisciplinary, comparative point of view. Its broad perspective spans medieval manuscripts to e-readers. Inventive methodology offers numerous insights into visual, manuscript and print culture: material objects relate to meaning and reading processes; images and texts are examined in varied associations; the symbolic, representational and cultural agency of books and prints is brought forward. An introduction substantiates methods and approaches, ten chapters follow along media lines: from manuscripts to prints, printed books, and e-readers. Eleven contributors from six countries challenge the idea of a unified field, revealing the role of books and prints in transformation and circulation between varying cultural trends, ‘high’ and ‘low’. Mostly Europe-based, the collection offers book and print professionals, academics and graduates, models for future research, imaginatively combining material culture with archival data, cultural and reading theories with historical patterns. 

“This fascinating collection will be of interest to many VPR readers for its emphasis on the methodologies of studying text and image in the broad context of print (and manuscript) culture. It provokes those of us working in the orbit of nineteenth-century periodicals to think more comparatively about our approaches to the media we research.” (Mark W. Turner, Victorian Periodicals Review, Vol. 53 (1), 2020)“Evanghelia Stead’s Reading Books and Prints as Cultural Objects will be welcomed by Book Studies scholars for its modeling of a material approach to reading that crosses chronologies, geographies, and media. A truly interdisciplinary collection, there is much here to provoke, challenge, and inspire future studies.” (Lorraine Janzen Kooistra, Quaerendo, Vol. 49, 2019)“It offers a stimulating interdisciplinary perspective on the function of books and prints, spanning a broad period from medieval manuscript to digital work. … Reading Books and Prints as Cultural Objects is a very rich and insightful interdisciplinary approach.” (Fabienne Gaspari, Interfaces, Vol. 42, 2019)

Evanghelia Stead is Fellow of the Institut Universitaire de France and Comparative Literature Professor at the University of Versailles-Saint-Quentin (UVSQ), France. She runs the TIGRE seminar at the École Normale Supérieure, Paris, France. She has published extensively on print culture, iconography, reception, myth, the fin-de-siècle, and the ‘Thousand and Second Night’ literary tradition.