In this video Professor Cathy Shrank and Dr Adam Smith discuss the 1551 edition of Thomas More’s ‘Utopia’.
With over 400 years of history, country house literature offers us the opportunity to consider the many different forms in which literature has appeared over centuries. What constitutes literature? How is it presented? What form and materials is it made from? How do these forms change and what effect does this have on the way we buy it, read it and, crucially, interpret it. These questions are often associated with a field of study known as ‘Book History’ or ‘History of the Book’. This teaches us what can be learned when we consider the book as an object and artefact. It contemplates the ‘material conditions’ of literature.
In this video, Cathy and Adam discuss the circumstances surrounding the publication of More’s ‘Utopia’ and the different ways in which it was presented to readers before commenting on how it might prove useful when first considering the literature of the English country house.
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