3.6. ENSAYO NO DESTRUCTIVOS POR INSPECCIÓN VISUAL
3.6.1 LA INSPECCIÓN VISUAL EN LOS PROYECTOS DE
displayed at booksellers’ shops to inform customers of new or important works available for sale.51
Recently scholars have shown that the long titles that characterised most early modern books played a significant role in assisting book buyers to identify genres through the use of generic markers on their title pages.52 As Ceri Sullavan has argued, titles were an important way of indicating genre and framing the text.53 The significance of generic terms and titles has also been established by the work of Peter Berek and Peter Blayney, who have observed that in the seventeenth century printed plays increasingly used generic names in their titles to help market their text to potential readers (Figure 1.1). 54 The reason for this, Peter Blayney has suggested, was that ‘terms such as comedy and tragedy help printers and booksellers find a market for their wares.’55
51 Mark Bland, ‘The Appearance of the Text in Early Modern England’, in Text: An Interdisciplinary Annual of Textual Studies, ed. by W. Speed Hill, Edward M. Burns, and Peter Shillingsburg (University of Michigan Press, 1998), p. 66. Dagmar Friest has described the early modern bookshop thus: ‘Bookshops and printing houses were not only a very visible and audible pysical presence in their neighbourhood with their colourful broadsides and title pages hanging by the door and the latest book titles cried out, they were also a meeting place where opinions could be exchanged and books or pamphlets debated: here the written and spoken word clashed, interchanged and reproduced itself.’ D. Freist, Governed By Opinion: Politics, Religion and Dynamics of Communication in Stuart London 1637-1645 (London: Routledge 1997), p. 117.
52
Victoria Gibbons, ‘Reading Premodern Titles: Bridging the Premodern Gap in Modern Titology’, Modern Language Review, 102 (2007), 641–53 (p. 642).
53 The modern practice of shortening early modern titles, she argues, potentially risks masking the way in which title pages provided readers with generic cues that offered instructions for how the text should be read and understood. Ceri Sullivan, ‘Disposable Elements? Indications of Genre in Early Modern Titles’, The Modern Language Review, 102 (2007), 641.
54
Evidence for the significance of generic labels can be seen in 1623 folio of Shakespeare. The publisher of the folio did not call them plays, or even works, but they announced the first printed edition of Shakespeare's plays in terms of the generic labels ‘comedies,' ‘tragedies', and ‘histories' and these classificatory terms provide the organising force of the folio. The irony of this decision being that Shakespeare had referred satirically to these generic classifications in Hamlet when he spoke of 'tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral'.
55
Peter Berek, ‘Genres, Early Modern Theatrical Title Pages, and the Authority of Print', in The Book of the Play: Playwrights, Stationers, and Readers in Early Modern England, ed. by Marta Straznicky (Michigan: Univ of Massachusetts Press, 2006), p. 160; Peter WM Blayney, ‘The Publication of Playbooks’ in A New History of Early English Drama, Ed’, John D. Cox and David Scott Kastan (New York, 1997), 383–422.
Figure 1.1: A graph showing the percentage of plays that used generic markers in their title. Source: Berek, p. 168
Looking at a sample of early modern title pages, it becomes clear that not only were generic markers necessary but the typographic layout of the title page was also done for rhetorical effect ( illustration 1.1). The title pages of A Dialogue Betwixt Sir George Booth and Sir John Presbyter (1659) or the Dialogue Concerning the Mine- Adventure (1709) demonstrate the importance of typography as in both title pages the most prominent words are ‘dialogue’ on the title page. The importance of title page typography has been substantiated by recent research on the title pages of books associated with the physician and herbalist Nicholas Culpeper.56 This work has drawn attention to the fact that printers manipulated title pages for marketing their books. They observed that ‘printers of a more unscrupulous character' fabricated new titles under the name of Culpeper. These unofficial printers notably put more emphasis on Culpeper's
56
name in their title pages then printers who published titles by Culpeper himself.57 This underscores the need to give attention to the words that are used on an early modern title page, particularly in the context of popular printed works in which the declaration of the genre of the text is often one of the most prominent features of the title (see
illustration 1.1 for examples). The implications of this are that to study a genre, such as the dialogue, through texts that identified themselves on their title page as belonging to that genre is a conceptually sound methodology.
Illustration 1.1. The title pages to Anon, A Dialogue Betwixt Sir George Booth and Sir John Presbyter, (1659) and William Shires, A Familiar Discourse, or, Dialogue
concerning the Mine-Adventure, (1709)
In constructing the database it was not enough to search titles for just the generic marker ‘dialogue’. Some dialogues did not call themselves a dialogue in their title. Izaac Walton’s The Compleat Angler or, The contemplative man's recreation (1653), for
instance, identified itself as a ‘discourse of fish and fishing’ rather then as a dialogue and
57
On piracy see Adrian Johns, The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1998), pp. 30-41. Adrian Johns, Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010).
Edmund Hickerill’s The Trimmer, his friendly debate with the Observator (1683) was in the form of a dialogue but identified itself as a ‘debate.’ Likewise, A Friendly Discourse concerning Profane, Cursing and Swearing (1697) called itself both a ‘friendly discourse’ and a ‘friendly conference.’58 Dialogues in this period were therefore called a variety of things such as ‘conferences,’ ‘friendly discourses,’ ‘debates,’ and ‘colloquies.’ As a result, when searching EEBO, ESTC and ECCO the word ‘dialogue' along with its synonyms had to be used. To refine the search terms the Historical Thesaurus was also used.59Searching the ESTC, ECCO, and EEBO for title pages that used the words ‘dialogue’, ‘conference’, and ‘debate’ provided the bulk of entries for the database.
Even so, texts that did not have the word dialogue, or a similar phrase such as ‘conversation,’ ‘debate,’ or even the word ‘between’ in the title were not likely to be picked up through keyword searches of titles. Nicholas Breton’s An Olde Mans Lesson, and a Young Mans Love (1605) for instance had no reference in its title to it being in the form of a dialogue but declared in the prefatory ‘To the reader' that ‘it is written in the manner of a Dialogue.’60 Similarly, the popular John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress did not advertise itself on its title page as being in the form of dialogue. It did, however, draw attention to the fact that it was in the form of a dialogue in its prefatory material, as John Bunyan in the epistle to the reader said:
I find that men as high as Trees will write Dialogue wise; yet no man doth them slight for writing so… Use it I may then, and yet nothing smother Truths golden Beams; Nay, by this method may make it cast forth its rayes as light as day.61 The fact that dialogues such as The Pilgrim’s Progress did not identify on the title as a dialogue meant that a method was needed to try to pick up references to dialogue in prefatory material. This required searching the full-text files from the EEBO-TCP collection and ECCO with the same keywords that were used when searching titles. Going through these results was a painstaking process as not every use of the word
58
Anon, The curates conference; or a discourse betwixt two schollers, (1641). 59
For more on the historic thesaurus and a case study on how it can be used see: ‘How to Use the Historical Thesaurus’, Oxford English Dictionary <http://public.oed.com/historical-thesaurus-of-the-oed/how-to-use-the- historical-thesaurus-of-the-oed/> [accessed 25 June 2014]; ‘What Is the Historical Thesaurus of the OED’, Oxford English Dictionary <http://public.oed.com/historical-thesaurus-of-the-oed/what-is-the-historical- thesaurus-of-the-oed/> [accessed 25 June 2014]; ‘Men, Women, and Children in the Historical Thesaurus: A Case Study’, Oxford English Dictionary <http://public.oed.com/historical-thesaurus-of-the-oed/men-women- and-children-in-the-historical-thesaurus-a-case-study/> [accessed 25 June 2014].
60 Nicholas Breton, An Olde Mans Lesson, and a Young Mans Love (1605), p. ii. 61
‘dialogue' in the prefatory material was a dialogue. Authors in their prefaces would often situate their work with other works and would refer to dialogues to which they were responding. Robert Barclay's William Michel Unmasqued (1672), for instance, was written in response to ‘Arguments… used in [William Michel’s] Dialogue’ and Richard Baxter wrote an essay in response to ‘the Popish Dialogue and many others’ that had accused him of ‘plotting a new war.’62 This meant that every result had to be manually checked to see if it was a dialogue, or was referring to a dialogue.63 The pay-off for this effort, however, was considerable because it meant that works which refer to themselves as being made ‘dialogue wise' in the prefatory material could be identified.
The EEBO-TCP and ECCO searches also threw up the keywords in chapter headings and prefaces. Edward Ward’s Matrimony Unmask’d (1714), for instance, did not state in its title or preface that it was in the form of a dialogue, but its chapter titles identified that it was a series of dialogues ‘between a pert lady and her spouse.'64 Searching the full text of EEBO and ECCO also found dialogues that were contained within a section of a book, such as the dialogue ‘ A Black Rod' that was included in the book The Captive-Captain (1665).65 Books that contained dialogues within them were often collections of poetry, misscellanies, or educational works. A series of dialogues was included in Margaret Cavendish’s Poems and Fancies (1653), for instance, and the misscellany The Academy of Complements included model dialogues that instructed readers how ‘to woe a coy, scornful maid’ and ‘how to salute a friend newly arrived from a journey.’66 Searching the full-text files for generic markers, although laborious, meant that the varied and rich ways in which dialogue was incorporated within early modern print could be captured within the database. The result of this will be seen in chapter five that will show how the dialogue was a form that engaged with and was incorporated within, a wide variety of literature during this period.
62 Robert Barclay, William Michel Unmasqued, Or, The Staggering Instability of the Pretended Stable Christian Discovered His Omissions Observed, and Weakness Unvailed : In His Late Faint and Feeble Animadversions by Way of Reply to a Book Intituled Truth Cleared of Calumnies : Wherein the Integrity of the Quakers Doctrine Is the Second Time Justified and Cleared from the Reiterate, Clamorous but Causeless Calumnies of This Cavilling Catechist, (1672).
63 This was a labour intensive process because the word ‘dialogue’ featured in over 7,000 texts in the period 1600-1740.
64
Edward Ward, Matrimony unmask'd; or, the comforts and discomforts of marriage display'd. By the author of Aminidab; or, the Quaker's vision. (1714), p. 1.
65
Richard Braithwaite, The captive-captain, or, The restrain'd cavalier drawn to his full bodie in these characters ... presented and acted to life in a suit of durance, an habit suiting best with his place of residence. (1665) pp. 101-112
66
The result of searching titles and full-text files is a database of 3,077 dialogues. This is almost certainly not every dialogue published; it is, however, the most
comprehensive collection of texts that identify themselves as a dialogue either in their title or their prefatory material. As with any catalogue of books, this database cannot be seen as being definitive; however, the systematic approach taken in identifying and cataloguing them means that the statistics generated from this database of dialogues can be seen as fairly robust. Obviously, these statistics must be understood with the caveat that they are limited to telling us about texts that identified themselves as being a dialogue; but such self-identification means an extensive corpus that is relatively free from definitional problems and can tell us something about the history of the genre.
Distant Reading
The challenge of creating a database of dialogues was how to approach this vast collection of texts. With a database that has a total of 372,067 pages, to read them all closely would take around 9,000 hours.67 Instead, the approach taken in this thesis was to utilise a methodology that has been advocated by Franco Moretti that he has coined ‘distant reading.’68 Moretti's argument is that close reading of texts can only provide insight into a tiny fraction of literature. As he argues, even reading a large corpus of 200 texts closely is still only a small fraction of all the literature that was published. To comprehend the history of literature, Moretti suggests, requires an approach that can look at literature as a collective system that incorporates a variety of perspectives. As he says: