For next week's class, please read:
From Studies in Bibliography
Description of Descriptive Bibliography : G. Thomas Tanselle (Vol 45: 1992) [pp. 1-30]
From Google Books
Volume 1 in Latin
The 1889 Grolier Club edition of Richard DeBury's "Philobiblon"
Volume 2 in English
The 1889 Grolier Club edition, English Translation
Read the Tanselle article closely and take notes. We'll have a full discussion based on its central ideas.
You can choose to read DeBury's text in its entirety (I recommend browsing), but for this writing assignment focus on one particular chapter. Take the title of that chapter and use it as the title for your original 200-300 word essay that takes the same subject but treats it through your eyes in the present time. Type this essay single-spaced and bring it to class with you next week or post it in the comments section below.
Questions, as always, to: csmith@corcoran.org
Of the Manner of Distributing our Books to Students
ReplyDeleteIn accordance with state law each child must attend school until the age of sixteen. They must take classes of general education including: English, mathematics, history & science. As state budget allows, each student is given a textbook in class at the beginning of each semester. A number is given to each book and assigned to the student giving them the responsibility for this book. They must bring this book to each class and are supposed to read the assigned pages.
The student crams these books into their overstuffed book bag to carry back and forth from school and home. In the course of the semester these books may be thrown around, papers scattered inside, with inappropriate drawings and notes drawn on the pages.
If the state cannot afford to pay for new textbooks the student may share the textbook with other students. This creates a situation where the student may not bring the text home with them or may have an assigned night to do all of their reading.
Students may also check out books for research or pleasure in the library. Each book is catalogued and in the computer system. When the student checks out the book they have an allotted time period to enjoy. If the time has passed for the book to be returned the student will be charged a late fee for each day overdue. If the book continues to be late the student will be charged for the entire cost of the book.
After the end of grade school the student may continue onto college where they now must pay for their own texts. These books are overpriced to get the most from these special students who choose to continue their love of education.
Does every reader have physical reading habits that follow them through life? Do you get comfortable with literature and sit upright at a desk with theory? Do you read before going to sleep and fall asleep mid-sentence? Do you take the jacket of a hardcover off before opening it? Do you reach to turn the page well before it has be read or do you wait until the page is finished to reach and flip?
ReplyDeleteOf course we all have reading habits. The way we read is the way we read. If we are readers enough to think about how we read, we are probably readers enough to be annoyed by the way others read. Of course it probably takes someone dog-earing a book in your view to prompt the self-examination. Now I have never seen, nor do I ever want to see, this: “some stiff-necked youth sluggishly seating himself for study, and while the frost is sharp in the winter time, his nose, all watery with the biting cold, begins to drip. Nor does he deign to wipe it with his cloth until he has wet the book spread out before him with the vile dew.” De Bury uses this and other examples of how not to treat a book in order to drive his point home: students should be “taught most clearly that not even that which is least in the care of books should be neglected.” In other words, the development of good reading habits is of the upmost important. But are good reading habits important for more reasons than the integrity of the book?
I wonder if the reading habits particular to a person (good, bad and inconsequential) effects how they absorb the content of what they are reading. Can this be likened to descriptive bibliography? Is descriptive bibliography to the history of a book, what reading habits are to the comprehension of a reader? In A Description of Descriptive Bibliography, Tanselle argues the general trend of “increasing attention to physical details for their own sake, the increasing recognition of the necessity for recording the physical characteristics of artifacts as the first step in reading the past through those artifacts.” I would bet that the first step to understanding what we are reading is to examine how we are physically reading. And if you do have bad reading habits like those De Bury brings to attention, then what does this say about how you are learning?
Who ought to be special lovers of Bookss, of Fragments of his Register
ReplyDeleteHe is obsessed
Some have said
But maybe he is not alone in this
Love
Is the word that gets you closer
Does he really read all those books
Doubtful
Honestly he can’t, who would?
I don’t trust it
Someone living surrounded by that many words
Who would, how could you?
Suspicious, really
We have preferred
We have caused
Lovers of books to go into hiding
Constructing trapped doors
And hidden rooms in bookcases
And in libraries, booksellers’ chambers
They, smug huddled over pages
Read by candle light, sunlight found too scalding
When thinking about knowledge, or the world of the ideas, we relate the verb “to seek” to the process of explore and identify concepts in order to solve our questions. For hundreds of years, these results were found in a printed format but in the information Era there is a new dominant platform for this process known as the Internet.
ReplyDeleteWe use the verb "to google" as the XXI century version of “to seek”, referring to answers that are now commonly found on the Internet. For instance, "to google" where is displayed the Gernica of Picasso means the same as "to search" that information in a city guide, and both “to google” and “to seek” evoke a feeling of restlessness. The way of seeking the information is different but they result in the same end.
"To google" is a term that has been adapted by the lexicon and the Merriam-Webster Dictionary in the last 10 years. Internet users are comfortable using the term and it has been identified in daily conversation, business and academia. Even though this modern tool is a quick shortcut that has displaced the encyclopedia, the results could be just as accurate.
However, these two terms have their own circumstances and their particular uses. It would be out of context, for example, to use the word "to google" to describe the Don Quixote´s hunt for Dulcinea; because it would harm the beauty of literature and phonetics employed by Cervantes in 1600. In an academic or informational text, by contrast, the use of the term “to google” would be suitable.
Timing and context become great influences when translating or recreating a text for either informational purposes or the understanding of a seminal novel.