Look and Feel: Early New England Books
Listen to the lecture “Look and Feel: Early New England Books” in the media player below or directly on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Listen on Spotify or Apple Media.
Transcript of lecture:
Quick links to sources: while it is difficult to obtain a photo of the version of Mather’s book discussed in the lecture, you can check out some digitized books from the Puritans in the Allison Library’s collection
As a reminder, the learning goals of the lecture are:
…for learners to be able to describe either some different sizes of Puritan books, what they were made of, or the designs on their covers; and to identify one way that Puritan books tell us more about Puritan culture or their media.
Discussion questions and forum:
- What do you think about Brown’s idea that the physical experience of reading can embody religious piety? Do you agree with this or not and why? What are some details about Puritan books that might support or refute his points?
- Perform a phenomenology of reading on smartphones. What does the physical experience of reading on a smartphone reveal about people today? Analyze these statements: If the physical experience of opening a book intensifies the religious experience—the feeling of animal skin and the blind-tooling on the skin marking a certain beginning—then the smartphone, far from intensifying, seems to diminish the experience. When we use it we get the same feeling or texture almost all the time, no matter the text, and there are not as many embossed patterns for one’s hand to feel.
Respond to these discussion questions (or other topics of your choosing, relating to the lectures) here: