2 options
Book destruction from the medieval to the contemporary / edited by Gill Partington and Adam Smyth.
Kislak Center for Special Collections - Furness Shakespeare Library (Van Pelt 628) Z659 .B66 2014
Available
- Format:
- Book
- Series:
- New directions in book history
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Book burning--History.
- Book burning.
- Books--Mutilation, defacement, etc--History.
- Books.
- Libraries--Destruction and pillage--History.
- Libraries.
- Altered books--History.
- Altered books.
- Waste books--History.
- Waste books.
- Books--Psychological aspects.
- History.
- Libraries--Destruction and pillage.
- Books--Mutilation, defacement, etc.
- Physical Description:
- xi, 216 pages ; 23 cm.
- Place of Publication:
- Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire ; New York, NY : Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
- Summary:
- The book is a common, everyday object, yet its destruction has become over loaded with potent symbolism. 'Book burning' has become a shorthand for barbarism, philistinism and intolerance. But is there another story to be told here, which is lost amid the overheated rhetoric and knee-jerk responses? Book Destruction, a collection of essays by scholars and interviews with artists, approaches the fraught topic from a new angle. It sets such dominant attitudes and platitudes alongside an important but occluded counter-narrative, addressing the cutting, burning, pulping, defacing and tearing of books from the medieval period to our own age. What are the motivations and reasons for these acts, and what cultural meanings have been attached to them? How does destruction relate to recycling, reuse, to collage and quotation? When do acts of destruction become moments of creativity? A surprising new picture emerges of a wide range of practices, undertaken in diverse contexts and for different ends. Book jacket.
- Contents:
- Burning sexual subjects : books, homophobia and the Nazi destruction of the Institute of Sexual Sciences in Berlin / Heike Bauer
- Burning to read : Ben Jonson's library fire of 1623 / Adam Smyth
- From books to Skoob, or, Media theory with a circular saw / Gill Partington
- The complete works of Franz Kafka burned : an interview with Ross Birrell / Adam Smyth, Gill Partington and Ross Birrell
- Belligerent literacy, bookplates, and graffiti : Dorothy Helbarton's book / Anthony Bale
- Doctoring Victorian literature
- A Humument : an interview with Tom Phillips / Adam Smyth, Gill Partington and Tom Phillips
- Miss Cathy's riven th' back off 'Th' helmet uh salvation' : representing book destruction in mid-Victorian print culture / Stephen Colclough
- Waste matters : Charles Dickens's Our mutual friend and nineteenth-century book recycling / Heather Tilley
- Aesthetics of book destruction / Kate Flint
- Kindle : recycling and the future of the book : an interview with Nicola Dale / Adam Smyth, Gill Partington and Nicola Dale.
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- Local Notes:
- Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.
- ISBN:
- 9781137367655
- 1137367652
- OCLC:
- 881655933
The Penn Libraries is committed to describing library materials using current, accurate, and responsible language. If you discover outdated or inaccurate language, please fill out this feedback form to report it and suggest alternative language.