Print culture

Question 1

When was ‘Pierce Penniless’ published?

Answer 1

1592

Question 2

What does Anne Bradstreet say in her poem ‘The Author to her Book’ about financial reasons to print?

Answer 2

‘for thy mother, she alas is poor,
Which caused her thus to send thee out of door.’

Question 3

What does Anne Bradstreet refer to her first collection of poems as in ‘The Author to her Book’?

Answer 3

‘Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain’

Question 4

What was Anne Bradstreet’s book of poems called, and when was it first published?

Answer 4

‘The Tenth Muse’, 1650

Question 5

What does Anne Bradstreet say about being judged in print in ‘The Author to her Book’?

Answer 5

The publishers ‘to th’ press trudge, / Where errors were not lessened (all may judge)’

Question 6

What does Thomas Nashe say about himself in the letter to his printer before ‘Pierce Penniless’?

Answer 6

‘I condemn myself for nothing so much as playing the dolt in print’

Question 7

How does Pierce cynically characterise the print landscape?

Answer 7

‘every gross-brained idiot is suffered to come into print’

Question 8

How does Nashe end ‘Pierce Penniless’ by addressing booksellers?

Answer 8

‘let not your shops be infected with any such goose giblets or stinking garbage, as the jigs of newsmongers.’

Question 9

How does Nashe address the intellectual value vs the material value of pamphlets in ‘Pierce Penniless’?

Answer 9

‘learning (of the ignorant) is rated after the value of the ink and the paper’

Question 10

What does Thomas Dekker say of print publication in the opening to ‘News from Hell brought from the Devil’s Carrier’

Answer 10

‘To come to the press is more dangerous, than to be pressed to death’

Question 11

When was ‘News from hell brought by the Devil’s carrier’ published?

Answer 11

1606

Question 12

What does Milton say about bad books in ‘Areopagitica’?

Answer 12

‘they to a discreet and judicious Reader serve in many respects to discover, to confute, to forewarn, and to illustrate.’

Question 13

What does Samuel Fallon say about the use of personae in late Elizabethan literature?

Answer 13

they ‘dwell in and give life to the social realization of their structures of communication’

Question 14

When was Milton’s ‘Areopagitica’ published?

Answer 14

1644

Question 15

What does Francis Bacon say about reading in ‘Of Studies’?

Answer 15

‘Some Books are to be Tasted, Others to be Swallowed, and Some Few to be Chewed and Digested’

Question 16

What does Streamer in Baldwin’s ‘Beware the Cat’ make and then eat?

Answer 16

A ‘cake’ made of ‘gross meats’

Question 17

When was ‘Beware the Cat’ written?

Answer 17

1553

Question 18

What does a line in the margin of ‘Beware the Cat’ say aphoristically about contrasts?

Answer 18

‘Sweet meat must have sour sauce’

Question 19

What is an example of the marginalia misreading or misinterpreting Streamer’s Oration in ‘Beware the Cat’?

Answer 19

‘[A solitary man is either a God or a beast]’ when Streamer has merely retired to his roo

Question 20

What phrase of Streamer’s raises an interesting question about the veracity of prose in ‘Beware the Cat’?

Answer 20

‘a story of one piece of mine own experimenting’

Question 21

What happens to Streamer’s body after he eats the cake in ‘Beware the Cat’?

Answer 21

‘my mouth and nose purged exceedingly’

Question 22

What gloss in ‘Beware the Cat’ comments on perverse pleasure?

Answer 22

‘[Strange things are delectable]’

Question 23

What gloss raises questions of medium and message in ‘Beware the Cat’?

Answer 23

‘[Evil communication confoundeth good virtues]’

Question 24

What ability does Streamer gain after eating the cake in ‘Beware the Cat’?

Answer 24

He ‘could discern all voices, but by means of noises understand none’

Question 25

What does Streamer say you can do with a reflective glass of water in ‘Beware the Cat’?

Answer 25

‘counterfeit the moon’

Question 26

What does ‘A Short answere to the boke called Beware the Cat’ call Baldwin’s work in relation to the author?

Answer 26

‘a sick man’s blood’

Question 27

What gloss seems to satirise claims of veracity in ‘Beware the Cat’?

Answer 27

‘[Experience is an infallible persuader]’

Question 28

How does Baldwin [the editor] characterise the transcription of speech in ‘Beware the Cat’’s dedication?

Answer 28

‘I doubt whether M. Streamer will be contented that other men plow with his oxen (I mean pen such things as he speaketh)’

Question 29

How does ‘A Short answere’ characterise speech/writing in ‘Beware the Cat’?

Answer 29

‘Streamer’s excrements’

Question 30

What does Trudy Ko say about print in relation to popular forms of language and particularly oral tradition?

Answer 30

‘print can also familiarize […] through acts of translation and through textual apparatuses like parentheses and marginal glosses.’

Question 31

What does Stephen Gosson in his ‘Schoole of Abuse’ say about writers in society?

Answer 31

‘We have in Infinite Poets, and Pipers, and such peevish cattle among us in England… [who] privily encroach uppon everie mans purse.’

Question 32

How does Milton describe the publication of books pre-censorship, pre-Inquisition in ‘Areopagitica’?

Answer 32

‘the issue of the brain was no more stifled than the issue of the womb’

Question 33

How does Milton describe reading a wide variety of books, good and bad, in ‘Areopagitica’?

Answer 33

‘promiscuously read’

Question 34

What is the goal of making books more widely available, according to Milton in ‘Areopagitica?’

Answer 34

‘when not only our seventy elders, but all the Lord’s people, are become prophets.’

Question 35

What does the subtitle of ‘Dekker his Dreame’ say about interpretation?

Answer 35

‘Which being truly interpreted, is able to comfort the good, and terrify the bad’

Question 36

How does Anna Reynolds describe the material process of the book trade?

Answer 36

‘a complex network of material recycling in which unsold, rejected, and old sheets and books were reintegrated into the book trade.’

Question 37

What did the 1566 Star Chamber decree order stationers to do with books found to be ‘unlawful’?

Answer 37

‘destroied or made waste paper’

Question 38

What is the risk of thinking too materially about early modern texts and reading, according to Richards and Schurink?

Answer 38

It presents early modern reading as ‘reading in parts’

Question 39

What does ‘Areopagitica’ call a good book?

Answer 39

‘a good book is the life-blood of its master spirit’