Coventry Premoderns Spring Lecture 2022: Professor Adam Smyth ‘Material texts in early modern England: the case of waste paper’

Event details

Join us on 13th June, from 3:00 pm, when we launch Coventry Premoderns with the Spring Lecture by Professor Adam Smyth.

In this paper, Professor Smyth explores the materiality of early modern texts by focusing on the use of waste paper in book-making: that is, on fragments of older printed books used in the binding of newer printed books. What can we do with, and how can we think about, these recycled pieces of forgotten texts? Professor Smyth will use waste paper to make a broader case for thinking anew about the materiality of texts.

Adam Smyth is Professor of English Literature and the History of the Book at Balliol College, Oxford. He works on the connections between literature and material texts, particularly in the 16th and 17th centuries. He is the author of four books, most recently Material Texts in Early Modern England (Cambridge University Press 2018), and is co-editor of four essay collections, including Book Parts with Dennis Duncan (Oxford University Press, 2019). His next book, The Book: A Story in Thirteen Extraordinary Lives, is forthcoming with Bodley Head.

All welcome! For further information, including online joining information, get in touch with research.icc@coventry.ac.uk

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