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A Readable Earlier Renaissance: Small Adjustments, Large Changes
Author(s) -
Coldiron A. E. B.
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
literature compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.158
H-Index - 4
ISSN - 1741-4113
DOI - 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2005.00198.x
Subject(s) - readability , the renaissance , period (music) , theme (computing) , literature , point (geometry) , narrative , history , field (mathematics) , renaissance literature , early modern period , aesthetics , art , computer science , linguistics , art history , philosophy , operating system , geometry , mathematics , archaeology , pure mathematics
“Readability” of several kinds is a problem in Renaissance or early modern literature. One way to enhance the readability of early modern texts is to adjust the (admittedly artificial) period boundary that begins the traditional “Renaissance.” Unlike the historically‐based boundaries of regnal years (1485, 1509), a slightly earlier date, 1476, implies a conception of “Renaissance” that takes as its pivotal starting point the establishment of the printing press in England. The earlier date thus refocuses our analysis of the period to systems of production, distribution, and reception that directly create and shape Renaissance literature. Such an adjustment also accomplishes a wider category challenge, since the literature of the early print period is qualitatively different from the more familiar literature of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods. This essay explains that to shift the starting point of inquiry about “Renaissance” is to challenge the whole period concept and to invite new critical narratives about the period that will make it more “readable” in several senses (legible, historically comprehensible, lisible , literally accessible, etc.). The essay also reviews similar, recent, challenges to other critical concepts in early modern studies: to authorship, genre, theme, canon, method. Such challenges have been generative of greater “readability” and growth in the field.