The Rutgers British Studies Center presents:
JUDGING BOOKS IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE
This talk explores the production and circulation of judgments about books in early modern Europe. It considers early modern theories of judgment alongside the motley mix of practices – official and informal, scholarly and galant – that early modern people used to actually assess books. It explores how these judgments were circulated and repackaged, particularly by tracing the afterlives of the vicious literary judgments rendered by the converso humanist Juan Luis Vives (1493-1540); and makes suggestions about the role of these circulating judgments in establishing at least a local consensus on the value or importance of a book. It examines attempts to collect judgments by Thomas Pope Blount (1649-1697) and Adrien Baillet (1649-1706), and traces the evolution of judgmental reading from humanists and censors to late seventeenth-century book reviews and salons.
Presented by:
NOAH MILLSTONE
University of Birmingham / Institute for Advanced Study
Co-sponsored by the Rutgers Book Initiative