Overview

Through portraits of readers and their responses to texts, Reading Practice reconstructs the contours of the knowledge economy that shaped medicine and science in early modern England. Reading Practice tells the story of how ordinary people grew comfortable learning from commonplace manuscripts and printed books, such as almanacs, medical recipe collections, and herbals. From the turn of the fifteenth century to the close of the sixteenth century, these were the books English people read when they wanted to attend to their health or understand their place in the universe. Before then, these works had largely been the purview of those who could read Latin. Around 1400, however, medical and scientific texts became available in Middle English while manuscripts became less expensive. These vernacular manuscripts invited their readers into a very old and learned conversation: Hippocrates and Galen weren't distant authorities whose word was law, they were trusted guides, whose advice could be excerpted, rearranged, recombined, and even altered to suit a manuscript compiler's needs. This conversation continued even after the printing press arrived in England in 1476. Printers mined manuscripts for medical and scientific texts that they would publish throughout the sixteenth century, though the pressures of a commercial printing market encouraged printers to package these old texts in new ways. Without the weight of authority conditioning their reactions and responses to very old knowledge, and with so many editions of practical books to choose from, English readers grew into confident critics and purveyors of natural knowledge in their own right. Melissa Reynolds reconstructs shifting attitudes toward medicine and science over two centuries of seismic change within English culture, attending especially to the effects of the Reformation on attitudes toward nature and the human body. Her study shows how readers learned to be discerning and selective consumers of knowledge gradually, through everyday interactions with utilitarian books.

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9780226823621

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Reviews

“Drawing upon middle English almanacs, prognostications, charms, medical and household recipes, and guides to daily prayer, Reading Practice upends a narrative that views practical guides and written recipes as the self-evident outcome of hands-on experience. Reynolds argues instead that, from the 1400s to the 1600s, English readers came to appreciate natural knowledge and experience through engaging with words and texts, not through work in the kitchen and workshop. Reynolds insightfully picks her way through the tumultuous advent of Reformation, the spread of printing, burgeoning lay literacy, and expanding markets to tell a complex story about the often-counterintuitive interplay between words and experience, natural and divine, manuscripts and print, and new and old knowledge in early modern England.” -- Pamela H. Smith, author of From Lived Experience to the Written Word: Reconstructing Practical Knowledge in the Early Modern World

“Drawing upon middle English almanacs, prognostications, charms, medical and household recipes, and guides to daily prayer, Reading Practice upends a narrative that views practical guides and written recipes as the self-evident outcome of hands-on experience. Reynolds argues instead that, from the 1400s to the 1600s, English readers came to appreciate natural knowledge and experience through engaging with words and texts, not through work in the kitchen and workshop. Reynolds insightfully picks her way through the tumultuous advent of Reformation, the spread of printing, burgeoning lay literacy, and expanding markets to tell a complex story about the often-counterintuitive interplay between words and experience, natural and divine, manuscripts and print, and new and old knowledge in early modern England.” -- Pamela H. Smith, author of From Lived Experience to the Written Word “Reynolds vividly reconstructs the experiences of ordinary men and women as they accessed and used these texts in manuscript and in print. She deftly illuminates their skills in navigating the sales pitches of competing printers and in inserting their own voices into a long tradition of blending textual authorities and direct experience.” -- Ann Blair, author of Too Much to Know

Author Information

Melissa Reynolds is assistant professor of early modern European history at Texas Christian University.

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