Reading, Society and Politics in Early Modern England.(Book review)

Publication: The Modern Language Review

Publication Date: 01-JAN-06

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COPYRIGHT 2006 Modern Humanities Research Association

Reading, Society and Politics in Early Modern England. Ed. by KEVIN SHARPE and STEVEN N. ZWICKER. Cambridge, New York, and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. 2003. ix+363 pp. 50[pounds sterling]; $70. ISBN 0-521-82434-6.

Kevin Sharpe and Steven N. Zwicker describe their project as a 'history of reading or a historicizing of readers', calling for 'a true collaboration between case study and theory, between materiality and aesthetics, between social history and exegesis' (pp. 2-3).For the contributors, this frequently means an engagement with(to use Joad Raymond's terms) not 'implied or ideal readers' but 'real readers' (p. 189) who have left traces of their reading experience....

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