A reissue of the 1974 Columbia U. Press edition of the letters of Florentine humanist Poggius (1380-1459) to his friend de Niccolis regarding the rediscovery of lost classical texts. Translated (from the Latin) with notes by Phyllis Walter Goodhart Gordon. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portla

Bibliophobia is a book about material books, how they are cared for, and how they are damaged, throughout the 5000-year history of writing from Sumeria to the smartphone. Its starting point is the contemporary idea of 'the death of the book' implied by the replacement of physical books by digital media, with accompanying twenty-first-century experiences of paranoia and literary apocalypse. It traces a twin fear of omniscience and oblivion back to the origins of writing in ancient Babylon and Egypt, then forwards to the age of Google. It uncovers bibliophobia from the first Chinese emperor to Nazi Germany, alongside parallel stories of bibliomania and bibliolatry in world religions and literatures. Books imply cognitive content embodied in physical form, in which the body cooperates with the brain. At its heart this relationship of body and mind, or letter and spirit, always retains a mystery. Religions are founded on holy books, which are also sites of transgression, so that writing is simultaneously sacred and profane. In secular societies these complex feelings are transferred to concepts of ideology and toleration. In the ambiguous future of the internet, digital immateriality threatens human equilibrium once again. Bibliophobia is a global history, covering six continents and seven religions, describing written examples from each of the last thirty centuries (and several earlier). It discusses topics such as the origins of different kinds of human script; the development of textual media such as scrolls, codices, printed books, and artificial intelligence; the collection and destruction of libraries; the use of books as holy relics, talismans, or shrines; and the place of literacy in the history of slavery, heresy, blasphemy, censorship, and persecution. It proposes a theory of writing, how it relates to speech, images, and information, or to concepts of mimesis, personhood, and politics. Originating as the Clarendon Lectures in the Faculty of English at the University of Oxford, the methods of Bibliophobia range across book history; comparative religion; philosophy from Plato to Hegel and Freud; and a range of global literature from ancient to contemporary. Richly illustrated with textual forms, material objects, and art works, its inspiration is the power that books always (and continue to) have in the emotional, spiritual, bodily, and imaginative lives of readers.

"Italian Literature before 1900 in English Translation provides the most complete record possible of texts from the early periods that have been translated into English, and published between 1929 and 2008. It lists works from all genres and subjects, and includes translations wherever they have appeared across the globe. In this annotated bibliography, Robin Healey covers over 5,200 distinct editions of pre-1900 Italian writings. Most entries are accompanied by useful notes providing information on authors, works, translators, and how the translations were received. Among the works by over 1,500 authors represented in this volume are hundreds of editions by Italy's most translated authors - Dante Alighieri, [Niccoláo] Machiavelli, and [Giovanni] Boccaccio - and other hundreds which represent the author's only English translation. A significant number of entries describe works originally published in Latin. Together with Healey's Twentieth-Century Italian Literature in English Translation, this volume makes comprehensive information on translations accessible for schools, libraries, and those interested in comparative literature."--Pub. desc.

Medieval Buda in Context discusses the character and development of Buda and its surroundings between the thirteenth and the sixteenth centuries, particularly its role as a royal center and capital city of the medieval Kingdom of Hungary. The twenty-one articles written by Hungarian and international scholars draw on a variety of primary sources: texts, both legal and literary; archaeological discoveries; architectural history; art history; and other studies of material culture. The essays also place Buda in the political, social, cultural and economic context of other contemporary central and eastern European cities. By bringing together the results of research undertaken in recent decades for an English-language readership, this volume offers new insights into urban history and the culture of Europe as a whole. Contributors are János M. Bak, Zoltán Bencze, Judit Benda, István Draskóczy, Antonín Kalous, István Kenyeres, Gábor Klaniczay, András Kubinyi, József Laszlovszky, Károly Magyar, Balázs Nagy, Szilárd Papp, James Plumtree, Martyn Rady, Valery Rees, Orsolya Réthelyi, Beatrix F. Romhányi, Enikő Spekner, Péter Szabó, Katalin Szende, András Vadas, András Végh, and László Veszprémy.

As a master of his discipline, the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius has been read widely for centuries. This collection of essays by an international team of experts investigates his influence and reception in ideas, artistic forms, and building practices from antiquity to modern day. The stories of influence told in these pages suggest that it is the unbridgeable gulf between the Vitruvian text and surviving monuments that makes reading the Ten Books so endlessly compelling. The contributors to this volume offer their own, original readings, which are organized into the five sections: transmission; translation; reception; practice; and Vitruvian topics.

Originally published in two volumes in 1980, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change is now issued in a paperback edition containing both volumes. The work is a full-scale historical treatment of the advent of printing and its importance as an agent of change. Professor Eisenstein begins by examining the general implications of the shift from script to print, and goes on to examine its part in three of the major movements of early modern times - the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the rise of modern science.

Historians of Technology have failed to include the larger contribution and influence of Ctesibius’ compressor-driven Hydraulis with its pneumatic pumps, keyboard, and organ pipes in the path of critical preparatory events leading up to the ‘Latent’ Industrial Revolution. One should also realize that Ctesibius had all the parts and sub-assemblies on hand to invent the first Steam Hydraulis or Calliope, as illustrated on the front book cover of this work. From the 'Fertile Crescent' of the Persian Empire to the Hellenistic Library of Alexandria, Vitruvius writing brought the Hydraulis to the Abbey of St. Gall in 1414 during the Renaissance. Its path then took it through Italy, Germany, and the Paris of Louis XIV along the Arch of Industrial Reawakening. This was the Hydraulis 2-millennium path from Antiquity to its return reigniting the 'Latent' Industrial Revolution.