In this seminar we will focus on the beginning of printing in England, mainly covering the period from the 1470s to the 1530s, that is, from the first printer-publisher in England, William Caxton and his contemporaries, to his successors in the first decades of the sixteenth century. At the centre of our discussion will be William Caxton in his various roles as printer-publisher and bookseller, but also as an editor of late medieval literary works in English (e.g. by Geoffrey Chaucer and Thomas Malory) as well as a literary critic in his paratexts on the one hand, and as a translator of (mainly, though not exclusively) French works on the other hand. Theoretical concepts of cultural mobility and cultural transfer with a special focus on the role of translators as cultural intermediaries like Caxton will be combined with a closer analysis of their impact on an early literary book market in a developing English print culture. We will also have to consider the changed role of an ongoing (though limited and specialised) manuscript production after the so-called ‘first media revolution’ initiated by Johannes Gutenberg in Mainz by printing with movable type and discuss the far-reaching consequences of the transition from a medieval scribal to an early modern print culture.
- Lehrende/r: Gabriele Müller-Oberhäuser