Podcast 5: Prose and Print
In this podcast we visit the Plantin Moretus Museum in Antwerp to find out from Guy Hutsebaut what a sixteenth century printing office would have sounded like. We also learn about the importance of the voice for print-correction. Jenny considers why it is that we tend to think of the printed page as silent, while Kate explains how Nashe used literary techniques to give the impression that he was in conversation with his readers. Printing was a very European business, and James discovers that St Paul’s Churchyard, home to many print shops, was full of ‘strangers’. John explains that Nashe’s London was a thriving multi-national community, and while it needed its European printers, language-learning had an impact on print too. For example, how do you represent the silent letters of French in print?
Kate De Rycker is a research associate on the Thomas Nashe Project, and the editor of The Terrors of the Night (1594) for the collected edition. Her essay ‘Commodifying the author: The mediation of Aretino’s fame in the Harvey-Nashe pamphlet war’ is forthcoming in English Literary Renaissance.
Jenny Richards is the PI of The Thomas Nashe Project, and the editor of Have with you to Saffron Walden (1596) and The Unfortunate Traveller (1594). Her contribution is based on her forthcoming book, Voices and Books in the English Renaissance: A New History of Reading, Oxford University Press.
John Gallagher is a lecturer in History at the University of Leeds, and his contribution is based on a forthcoming essay in the Huntington Library Quarterly, ‘To heare it by mouth’: Speech & accent in early modern language-learning.’
