Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Palgrave Macmillan

Engaging Words

The Culture of Reading in the Later Middle Ages

  • Book
  • © 2000

Overview

Authors:
  1. Laurel Amtower
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Part of the book series: The New Middle Ages (TNMA)

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this book

Log in via an institution
eBook USD 79.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book USD 99.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book USD 99.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access

Licence this eBook for your library

Institutional subscriptions

Table of contents (7 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xi
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Introduction

    • Laurel Amtower
    Pages 1-16

  3. The Reading Public

    • Laurel Amtower
    Pages 17-43

  4. The Image of the Book: Mediating the Aesthetics of Reader Response

    • Laurel Amtower
    Pages 45-77

  5. Authorized Readers, or, Reading Authority

    • Laurel Amtower
    Pages 79-120

  6. The Ethics of Reading

    • Laurel Amtower
    Pages 121-144

  7. Textual Subjects

    • Laurel Amtower
    Pages 145-181

  8. Conclusion

    • Laurel Amtower
    Pages 183-187

  9. Back Matter

    Pages 189-243
    Download chapter PDF
Back to top

Keywords

About this book

Acts of reading appear everywhere in the late Middle Ages, from the margins of Books of Hours to self-portraits of authors in their studies. What relevance did this image have for the late medieval imagination? Engaging Words is an interdisciplinary study on the conception of reading in late medieval society. Beginning with an examination of the social conditions that produced a viable reading public, the book proceeds to examine popular tastes, the interrelationship between manuscript form and content, and finally the theory and poetry of late medieval authors. By drawing on images from late medieval culture as well as from historical documents and literary texts, Engaging Words shows how reading became a cultural metaphor in the late Middle Ages that transformed the way the Western world thought about identity and social roles.

Reviews

"...this brave project is fascinating..." - Alison Frazier, Libraries & Culture

"...substantial in scope...it calls on various disciplines to weave a large and intriguing argument about the understanding of reading from the High to the Late Middle Ages." - History:Reviews of New Books

"Amtower succeeds in showing a sophisticated, varied, and often-ironic sense of reading as a metaphor for all manner of comprehension in late-medieval art and literature." - Choice

About the author

Laurel Amtower is Associate Professor of English at San Diego State University.

Bibliographic Information

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Back to top

Search

Navigation