New Directions for Research and Pedagogy in Book History

University of Windsor Scholarship at UWindsor History Publications Department of History 2013 New Directions for Research and Pedagogy in Book History Leslie Howsam University of Windsor Follow this and additional works at: https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/historypub Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Howsam, Leslie. (2013). New Directions for Research and Pedagogy in Book History. Knygotyra, 60, 7-18. https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/historypub/13 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of History at Scholarship at UWindsor. It has been accepted for inclusion in History Publications by an authorized administrator of Scholarship at UWindsor. For more information, please contact [email protected]. (Online) ISSN 2345-0053. KNYGOTYRA. 2013. 60 Straipsniai NEW DIRECTIONS FOR RESEARCH AND PEDAGOGY IN BOOK HISTORY LESLIE HOWSAM University of Windsor 401 Sunset Ave, Windsor, ON N9B 3P4, Canada E-mail: [email protected] This article addresses contemporary trends in the history of the book, focusing on both research and teaching. Given the great complexity of the interdisciplinary study of book science (called ‘book history’ or ‘the history of the book’ in North America and Britain, and l’histoire du livre in France), students may be confused or overwhelmed when the subject is introduced. They may legitimately ask what they can expect to learn, and how the subject will be organized. This is especially relevant because their generation has grown up with computers and with digital texts, and also with a cultural discourse of globalization. The article considers the challenges of teaching and learning the history of the book from two points of view, both of which have produced rich results in research over the past twenty to thirty years. The first identifies each individual book as a means of communication and cultural transfer; the second incorporates “the book” as a conceptual category in larger historical narratives working from the perspectives of time and space. While both perspectives can be of value for an introduction to this protean subject, neither offers a fully satisfactory response to the challenge of producing a coherent narrative. There is a discussion of transnational approaches to the history of the book; these are compared favourably to the more limited national approach, but the scholarly impulse to undertake the latter is contextualized. The article concludes with a discussion of Digital Humanities and demonstrates how this new field of study can work collaboratively with scholars in book history. Key words: book science, book history, communication, literature, pedagogy, nation, transnational, digital humanities. To the seasoned scholar, and even to the well- by scribes and on typewriters, and also to trained postgraduate student, the history pixels on the computer or e-reader screen; it of the book is notable for its complexity. encompasses the human agency that creates, This history extends far beyond the limits mediates and appropriates the texts carried of the familiar volume form to marks on by these changing marks. This complexity stone and clay, to manuscripts produced makes generalization difficult, perhaps even 7 impossible. Even with a focus limited to authorship, publishing / editing, printing the printed book in codex format, scholars / binding / distribution, then reading and know that, ultimately, every copy of every reviewing). This “communication circuit” book printed from the fifteenth to the early starts with the author, moves on to the nineteenth century is unique, and that publisher (who has the power to make a work even the superficial uniformity of machine- public) and the editor and other mediators printed books conceals a complicated web of who collaborate with the publisher to cultural, economic and political decisions.1 design both text and book, then to printers But if every single book has its own story, and other producers (plus shippers and, in how can “book history” or “book science” be Darnton’s case, smugglers); then to readers; presented to novices as a coherent narrative? and around again, as readers influence the In this brief article, I will reflect on the next generation of writers (who are, in turn, challenges inherent in teaching and learning readers themselves) [6].2 the history of the book by considering those Many scholars have critiqued the challenges from two wide-ranging points of communication circuit model, recognizing view. The first identifies each individual book that it captures only a narrow slice, even as a means of communication and cultural of the life of a single book. (What about transfer; the second incorporates “the book” the movement of a text through time, as a conceptual category in larger historical and through various textual forms and narratives working from the perspectives material formats, for example?) In a 2007 of time and space. While I will argue that article, Darnton himself recognized this both perspectives can be of value for an shortcoming and also realized that he hadn’t introduction to this protean subject, I will left a space for the survival of the book as an also demonstrate that neither offers a fully object, collected and collectible, enduring in satisfactory response to the challenge of libraries [7]. The circuit model is a helpful finding a coherent narrative thread. way to think about how books, especially printed ones, come into being. It highlights I the elements of the creation story borne Students in North America and Britain are by each individual book. For students and often introduced to thinking about the book scholars new to the field, it provides a useful in historical context by learning what Robert reminder of how the several elements and Darnton suggested many years ago: to processes are typically connected, but the visualize a circuit that delineates the processes model still doesn’t capture the full complexity of composition, mediation, production, of the collective history of the book as a and reception (in modern western terms, material object that supports a written text. 1 For a cogent argument of these problems, see 2 For textbooks, see Finkelstein and McCleery Dane [4, 192]. [8; 9]. 8 The communication circuit carries book”, conceptualized as an abstract entity, an implicit bias in favour of modern functions in a given society (or as a medium individualist concepts of authorship and of communication between societies) than in publishing, concepts which also underpin the mechanics of particular texts or specific the disciplinary conventions marking the objects. But despite the fact that disciplinary boundaries of literary, bibliographical, and habits of mind are so powerful, it is not historical research. In Old Books & New possible fully to separate any of the three Histories: An Orientation to Book & Print aspects of the book from either of the others. Culture Studies I offered an analysis of Although everyone who defines their research contemporary scholarship by highlighting and scholarship in terms of “book history” or the productive tensions among the several “book science” uses all of these approaches, academic disciplines within which it is the set of assumptions from the discipline practiced [12]. In North America and the in which they received their intellectual United Kingdom, at least, most of the formation is likely to dominate. scholars who identify themselves in terms In any case, there are more than three of “book history” locate their work in one disciplines in the twenty-first-century of three disciplines and one of three related academia with an interest in “the book” – and perspectives. Bibliographers look at “the many of these are concerned with the workings book” primarily as a discrete material object; of texts and books in contemporary society, literary scholars think of “the book” in terms and with modern media. The disciplines of a specific written text; and historians think of cultural studies and communication of “the book” in more abstract terms as a kind studies are inclined to use a more theoretical of social or cultural transaction. It is difficult language than many historians of the book to match Darnton’s processes of composition, feel comfortable with, such as the work of mediation, production and reception with Freidrich Kittler [17]. Those disciplines the three core disciplines, since each process tend to think of “the book” in terms of a can be thought of from several disciplinary transaction or exchange, while emphasizing perspectives, and each discipline approaches larger patterns of communication, and this the various processes in different ways. contributes to an enriched conceptualization The balance of interests can be viewed as of the study of book culture as inherently a metaphorical coin – it is impossible to interdisciplinary. separate the bibliographical object from the Both the communication circuit literary text, or the text from the book as they and the critique in terms of disciplinary are two sides of the same coin. But when boundaries share the tendency artificially you come to the historian’s special interest, to compartmentalize separate aspects of the the biblio-coin is used for exchange [14]. history of the book, aspects that actually Historians are more interested in how “the interact with each other. Reading and 9 reception are not only shaped by mediation; science, of the management of information, they also help publishers and booksellers – and of the historical discipline itself. There is mediators

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