Manuscripts, Market and the Transition to Print in Ducal Brittany

FAIN: FT-55512-07

Diane E. Booton
President and Fellows of Harvard College (Cambridge, MA 02138-3800)

My book seeks to understand the forces of local production and the artistic, literary and economic influences on the making of handwritten and early printed books in late-medieval Brittany by studying codicological, typographical and illustrative evidence, archival documentation and historical sources. I shall also study issues of patronage and acquisition to discern changing patterns of manuscript and book collecting and how the literary tastes of the regional nobility evolved over time and to examine on how printers and booksellers might have responded to potential buyers. This book brings together a wide array of sources to deepen our understanding not only of these objects, but of the society that produced, acquired and valued them.

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Manuscripts, Market and the Transition to Print in Late Medieval Brittany (Book)
Title: Manuscripts, Market and the Transition to Print in Late Medieval Brittany
Author: Diane E. Booton
Abstract: Manuscripts, Market and the Transition to Print in Late Medieval Brittany surveys the production and marketing of non-monastic manuscripts and printed books over 150 years in late medieval Brittany, from the accession of the Montfort family to the ducal crown in 1364 to the duchy's formal assimilation by France in 1532. Brittany, as elsewhere, experienced the shift of manuscript production from monasteries to lay scriptoria and from rural settings to urban centers, as the motivation for copying the word in ink on parchment evolved from divine meditation to personal profit. Through her analysis of the physical aspects of Breton manuscripts and books—parchment and paper, textual layouts, scripts and typography, illumination and illustration—Diane Booton exposes previously unexplored connections between the tangible cultural artifacts and the society that produced, acquired and valued them. Innovatively, Booton's discussion incorporates archival research into the prices, wages and commissions associated with the manufacture of the works under discussion to shed new light on their economic and personal value.
Year: 2010
Primary URL: http://www.ashgate.com
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780754666233
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

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