Visual Rhetoric and Early Modern English Literature (Material Readings in Early Modern Culture) - Hardcover

Acheson, Katherine

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0754662837 ISBN 13: 9780754662839

Publisher: Routledge, 2013

Synopsis

Early modern printed books are copiously illustrated with charts, diagrams, and other kinds of images that represent systems of thought and ways of doing things. Visual Rhetoric and Early Modern English Literature shows how these images fostered what Elizabeth Eisenstein called brainwork related to concepts of space, truth, art, and nature, and reveals their importance to poetry by Andrew Marvell and John Milton, and Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko. The genres of illustration considered in this book include military strategy and tactics, garden design, instrumentation, Bibles, scientific schema, drawing instruction, natural history, comparative anatomy, and Aesop’s Fables. The argument produces unique insights into the ways in which visual rhetoric affected verbal expression, and the book develops novel methods of using printed images as evidence in the interpretation of the rich, strange, and beautiful literature of early modern England.

About this title

Review:

'Visual Rhetoric and Early Modern English Literature is breathtaking in its scope, taking a material, spatial, and visual approach to early modern literature. While theoretically sophisticated in its approach, the lucidly written text and lavish illustrations illuminate contemporary meanings behind the non-pictorial image in early modern texts, while at the same time developing a language for evaluating and describing them. Acheson maps this new language and knowledge onto some of the central canons of English literature, leading to some rich new interpretations of well-known works by John Milton, Andrew Marvell, and Aphra Behn. This book is a delight to read and will certainly be of use to any student or scholar of early modern mentalities.'-Angela McShane, Victoria & Albert Museum

About the Author:

Katherine O. Acheson is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Waterloo, Canada.

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0754662837
• ISBN 13: 9780754662839
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 186