The Cambridge companion to early American literature /
Most communications are not written down. This is as true now, in a supposedly information-saturated age, as it was in early colonial America. The point stands even if we understand the Western notion of "writing" with a generously broad interpretation, as including all forms of inscribed...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Cambridge ; New York :
Cambridge University Press,
[2021].
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| Series: | Cambridge companions to literature.
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| Subjects: |
| Summary: | Most communications are not written down. This is as true now, in a supposedly information-saturated age, as it was in early colonial America. The point stands even if we understand the Western notion of "writing" with a generously broad interpretation, as including all forms of inscribed human communication. Some of what was transmitted among people of the past, consequently, we have to leave to the void or to the imagination, the uncountable facial expressions, the furtive gestures, a thousand accents, the qualities of colors, the taste of a 1628 Madeira and the movements of an Inca khipucamayoc at work. For others, we have well-elaborated historical frameworks and methods of recovery. In the fields of art history and architecture, historical performance in music and dance, theater history, material culture studies and ethnobotany, for example, ways to read much of the uninscribed have been maintained and extended. And there are other domains in which the unwritten of the past has been vectored into the present, including Indigenous communities across the Americas, the church, women's communities, annual festivals from New Orleans to Rio de Janeiro, and scholarly institutions with their many rituals and forms. |
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| Physical Description: | x, 286 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 9781108840040 1108840043 9781108793490 1108793495 |