Travel literature has been understood to comment on the expectations and impressions of the traveler as they encountered foreign spaces, customs, and people. There has been an unspoken understanding, at best, that travelers who wrote their tales used these foreign spaces to engage in debates that were meaningful to their domestic audience. However, the author has been central to much of the analysis, disconnecting travel literature from other linguistic exercises that more directly offered observations that were directly rooted in domestic culture. Author-centered analysis isolates the traveler from the wider world in which they engaged. It also ignores the other voices that are inherent in the works. As the disparate kingdoms of England and Scotland began their process of unification under King James VI and I, society did not emerge as distinctly novel in a short period of time. Religious beliefs inherited from a unified Christian Europe helped travelers engage with other confessions. They also provided models to help travelers both understand their experiences and relate them to their readers. Powerful Christian ideas, such as martyrdom, pilgrimage, and shared devotion, infused the thoughts of travelers, readers, and those who brought the two together in the marketplace. The travel works relating William Lithgow's adventures at the dawn of the seventeenth century provide an exceptional opportunity to glimpse the development of a traveler's identity. They also provide the opportunity to place the various editions within the context of his domestic culture, as he was re-inculcated before once again debarking on new adventures. As England and Scotland fluctuated between a state of stronger alliance and greater distance, Lithgow became a subtle example of political and religious unity. Understanding that early modern Europeans, in general, travelers more specifically required the ability to easily adopt variant persona are critical to recognizing the protagonist of an adventure tale as a political partisan and tolerant zealot.

This study provides a new account of the evolution of the eighteenth-century British novel by reading it as a response to contemporary interest in, and self-consciousness about, print communication. During the eighteenth century, print went from being a marginal technology to being one with an increasingly wide circulation and a diverse range of applications. The pervasive adoption of print generated anxiety about its positive and negative effects, prompting a series of responses from writers. Examining the work of five British novelists from across the long eighteenth century, this dissertation investigates the influence of eighteenth-century philosophical thinking about human understanding and social interaction on the assumptions that these novelists made about the way their work would be received. In particular, this thesis explores the ways in which these novelists respond to contemporary philosophical ideas about the cognitive functions of the imagination by experimenting with the form of their work in order to generate new kinds of reception. But this study also shows that, while these five novelists drew on the tenets of eighteenth-century moral philosophy, their work exposed a number of the limitations of that philosophy by putting it into practice. Each chapter in this study focuses on a different aspect of the intersection of mediation and imagination. Chapter One considers the ways in which Locke's understanding of probability informed Richardson's attempts to promote specific affective reading practices with his epistolary fictions and editorial commentary. Chapter Two reads Sterne's manipulations of the material page in Tristram Shandy as an attempt to expose the limitations of print communication and to suggest new ways of reading that could overcome those limitations. Chapter Three examines the writing of Smith, Kames, Mackenzie, Reeve and Godwin in order to illustrate both the promise and the danger that these authors attribute to imaginative sympathy and to the reading practices that promote sympathetic reactions. Chapter Four explores Scott's experiments with a form of fiction that could collapse the distance between writing and orality in order to force readers to reevaluate the complex relationship of sound and writing in the establishment of communities in an age of print.

Theodore Stanton’s career as a literary middleman exemplifies several of the intermediary professions in book and periodical publishing that were being created and tested in the late nineteenth century in response to expanded publishing opportunities in France, Great Britain, the United States, and Canada. The need for professional middlemen between writers and publishers developed differently in each country, thus their roles and activities, the literary agent’s in particular, varied according to regional demands. Different interpretations of intellectual property in copyright laws determined the balance of power between creators and producers of texts. In turn, writers’ relative ability to control copyrights shaped the middleman’s field of endeavour. The range of professional middleman specializations is described. A case study of some American publications of Émile Zola’s novels shows the legal and logistical difficulties of transatlantic publishing in practice. In chapter 3, Stanton’s beginnings as an American newspaper correspondent in Paris precede his middleman role as editor of the European Correspondent, a weekly galley-proof service printed in English in Paris and syndicated to American newspaper editors. Stanton’s work as a European sub-editor of the North American Review and other magazines is detailed in chapter 4. As the Paris representative of Harper & Brothers from 1899, Stanton presented previously unpublished writings of Honoré de Balzac, Victor Hugo, Émile Zola, and others to American readers, also co-operating with French publishers. Case studies portray the challenges and successes of a middleman position within a large, complex enterprise. In chapter 5, a more independent Stanton arranges the simultaneous, posthumous publication of the memoirs of Eugénie, ex-Empress of France, by D. Appleton and Company in New York and London, and in four European translations. Count Maurice Fleury compiled and authored the two-volume work, which was not published in France. The manuscript took a circuitous path to publication through Stanton’s efforts to ensure authenticity, maintain exclusivity, and protect copyright. Methodological approaches of correspondence editing, bibliography, and textual criticism reveal both the processes and the results of Stanton’s mediation and illuminate how the participation of literary middlemen shaped the way French culture was received and understood in North America.

Theodore Stanton’s career as a literary middleman exemplifies several of the intermediary professions in book and periodical publishing that were being created and tested in the late nineteenth century in response to expanded publishing opportunities in France, Great Britain, the United States, and Canada. The need for professional middlemen between writers and publishers developed differently in each country, thus their roles and activities, the literary agent’s in particular, varied according to regional demands. Different interpretations of intellectual property in copyright laws determined the balance of power between creators and producers of texts. In turn, writers’ relative ability to control copyrights shaped the middleman’s field of endeavour. The range of professional middleman specializations is described. A case study of some American publications of Émile Zola’s novels shows the legal and logistical difficulties of transatlantic publishing in practice. In chapter 3, Stanton’s beginnings as an American newspaper correspondent in Paris precede his middleman role as editor of the European Correspondent, a weekly galley-proof service printed in English in Paris and syndicated to American newspaper editors. Stanton’s work as a European sub-editor of the North American Review and other magazines is detailed in chapter 4. As the Paris representative of Harper & Brothers from 1899, Stanton presented previously unpublished writings of Honoré de Balzac, Victor Hugo, Émile Zola, and others to American readers, also co-operating with French publishers. Case studies portray the challenges and successes of a middleman position within a large, complex enterprise. In chapter 5, a more independent Stanton arranges the simultaneous, posthumous publication of the memoirs of Eugénie, ex-Empress of France, by D. Appleton and Company in New York and London, and in four European translations. Count Maurice Fleury compiled and authored the two-volume work, which was not published in France. The manuscript took a circuitous path to publication through Stanton’s efforts to ensure authenticity, maintain exclusivity, and protect copyright. Methodological approaches of correspondence editing, bibliography, and textual criticism reveal both the processes and the results of Stanton’s mediation and illuminate how the participation of literary middlemen shaped the way French culture was received and understood in North America.

This dissertation studies visual artifacts associated with early modern theatre and book culture, and through them examines acts of communication in the marketplace. These artifacts, illustrated play-text title pages from the period 1600 to 1660, provide scholars with an opportunity to better understand the discursive power of theatre and subjects associated with drama in seventeenth-century London. This work offers a set of case studies that demonstrate how title page imagery and its circulation can contribute to our understanding of contemporary theatre culture, and addresses questions of intention, production and distribution. As well, it offers insights into early modern modes of constructing visualization. These artifacts served not only as visual reminders or interpretations of the dramatic works they represented, but were also used as powerful marketing tools that enhanced the cultural capital of the plays throughout London. The title pages were used as posters, tacked to the walls of the booksellers’ shops; the woodcuts were also repurposed, and incorporated into other popular publications such as broadside ballads, which retold the plots of the plays in musical form and were sold on city street corners. These connections raise questions about early modern forms of marketing used by publishers, and challenge the widely accepted belief that images held little value in the society and in the culture of print of the period. In addition, the distribution of these illustrations challenges the widespread conviction that early modern English culture was iconophobic, and suggests that seventeenth-century English society embraced rather than spurned visual media. Methodologically, this study is built on the foundations laid by scholars of English theatre and print culture. Within those fields, however, it has been customary to view these title page illustrations as inferior forms of representation, especially in comparison to their continental counterparts. By using tools from visual rhetoric to expand on how and what these images communicate, I am able to show the important functions they performed, and the distinct and playful way they represent complex relationships between stage and page, audience and performance, reading and spectating. These readings, in turn, enrich our historical understanding of the cultures of print and theatre, and build upon our knowledge of the interactions between these rich and important fields. Each chapter explores theoretical and contextual questions that pertain to some aspect of each illustration, as well as examining whether individual illustrations can inform us further about early modern theatrical performance practices. The introduction surveys the relevant field and introduces the theoretical resources that will be used in the subsequent chapters. Chapter Two examines the 1633 edition of Arden of Faversham and the question of whether the action in the illustration pertains to the play or to a broadside ballad that appeared in the same year. The third chapter provides a theoretical analysis of the performance of violence in the woodcut for The Spanish Tragedy, and how emphatic elements in the image may demonstrate the influence of theatrical performance upon the artist. Chapter Four explores the relationship between the title page of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay and the concept of celebrity in relation to the Tarltonesque clown character who dominates the action of the image. Chapter Five considers the problematic relationship between theatre, politics and satire in the competing engraved title pages for A Game at Chess. The conclusion draws together the findings, and points to other aspects of early modern print and theatre cultures to which they pertain.

This study examines the mutually constitutive relationship between the print culture of the late nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire and the framework of social, cultural and political transformations in which that culture operated. This study crosses traditional disciplinary lines between literary studies and intellectual history by arguing for the modification of one of the central premises of modernization theory: the existence of an overtly masculine political public sphere standing in contrast to a supposedly nonpolitical feminine domestic and private sphere. By examining newspapers, magazines, journals, and novels, which reflected the emergence of communities of readers, I show that the print culture became central to the mediation and diffusion of themes in public discourse; and furthermore, I show that it diminished the separation between the public and private spheres as it penetrated into the domestic space and was used to insert issues from the private sphere into the public domain. Arguing that Ottoman intellectuals saw the novel as an instrument to disseminate their political, social, and cultural agendas, I examine Henüz On Yedi Yaşında (Only Seventeen Years Old; 1882) by Ahmet Mithat Efendi, focusing on how gender, ethnicity, and sexuality in early Turkish novels were imagined and represented. Based on my research in Ottoman and Turkish archives between 2004 and 2006, I show how women’s journals ensured the visibility of Ottoman women as writers in the public sphere. Women’s journals established a real intellectual community of women writers and readers who between them overtly introduced a feminist agenda into the public sphere. As part of my project of recovering the cultural work women's novels did within the political arena of nineteenth century Ottoman society, I also discuss the forgotten life and works Fatma Aliye Hanım, one of the first Ottoman woman novelists, analyzing two of her novels, Muhâdarât (1891-92) and Refet (1897). Finally, I explore the reasons why several Ottoman women writers were forgotten after the establishment of the Turkish Republic and why they are not included in the Turkish literary canon today. / text

This study provides a new account of the evolution of the eighteenth-century British novel by reading it as a response to contemporary interest in, and self-consciousness about, print communication. During the eighteenth century, print went from being a marginal technology to being one with an increasingly wide circulation and a diverse range of applications. The pervasive adoption of print generated anxiety about its positive and negative effects, prompting a series of responses from writers. Examining the work of five British novelists from across the long eighteenth century, this dissertation investigates the influence of eighteenth-century philosophical thinking about human understanding and social interaction on the assumptions that these novelists made about the way their work would be received. In particular, this thesis explores the ways in which these novelists respond to contemporary philosophical ideas about the cognitive functions of the imagination by experimenting with the form of their work in order to generate new kinds of reception. But this study also shows that, while these five novelists drew on the tenets of eighteenth-century moral philosophy, their work exposed a number of the limitations of that philosophy by putting it into practice. Each chapter in this study focuses on a different aspect of the intersection of mediation and imagination. Chapter One considers the ways in which Locke's understanding of probability informed Richardson's attempts to promote specific affective reading practices with his epistolary fictions and editorial commentary. Chapter Two reads Sterne's manipulations of the material page in Tristram Shandy as an attempt to expose the limitations of print communication and to suggest new ways of reading that could overcome those limitations. Chapter Three examines the writing of Smith, Kames, Mackenzie, Reeve and Godwin in order to illustrate both the promise and the danger that these authors attribute to imaginative sympathy and to the reading practices that promote sympathetic reactions. Chapter Four explores Scott's experiments with a form of fiction that could collapse the distance between writing and orality in order to force readers to reevaluate the complex relationship of sound and writing in the establishment of communities in an age of print.

This dissertation studies visual artifacts associated with early modern theatre and book culture, and through them examines acts of communication in the marketplace. These artifacts, illustrated play-text title pages from the period 1600 to 1660, provide scholars with an opportunity to better understand the discursive power of theatre and subjects associated with drama in seventeenth-century London. This work offers a set of case studies that demonstrate how title page imagery and its circulation can contribute to our understanding of contemporary theatre culture, and addresses questions of intention, production and distribution. As well, it offers insights into early modern modes of constructing visualization. These artifacts served not only as visual reminders or interpretations of the dramatic works they represented, but were also used as powerful marketing tools that enhanced the cultural capital of the plays throughout London. The title pages were used as posters, tacked to the walls of the booksellers’ shops; the woodcuts were also repurposed, and incorporated into other popular publications such as broadside ballads, which retold the plots of the plays in musical form and were sold on city street corners. These connections raise questions about early modern forms of marketing used by publishers, and challenge the widely accepted belief that images held little value in the society and in the culture of print of the period. In addition, the distribution of these illustrations challenges the widespread conviction that early modern English culture was iconophobic, and suggests that seventeenth-century English society embraced rather than spurned visual media. Methodologically, this study is built on the foundations laid by scholars of English theatre and print culture. Within those fields, however, it has been customary to view these title page illustrations as inferior forms of representation, especially in comparison to their continental counterparts. By using tools from visual rhetoric to expand on how and what these images communicate, I am able to show the important functions they performed, and the distinct and playful way they represent complex relationships between stage and page, audience and performance, reading and spectating. These readings, in turn, enrich our historical understanding of the cultures of print and theatre, and build upon our knowledge of the interactions between these rich and important fields. Each chapter explores theoretical and contextual questions that pertain to some aspect of each illustration, as well as examining whether individual illustrations can inform us further about early modern theatrical performance practices. The introduction surveys the relevant field and introduces the theoretical resources that will be used in the subsequent chapters. Chapter Two examines the 1633 edition of Arden of Faversham and the question of whether the action in the illustration pertains to the play or to a broadside ballad that appeared in the same year. The third chapter provides a theoretical analysis of the performance of violence in the woodcut for The Spanish Tragedy, and how emphatic elements in the image may demonstrate the influence of theatrical performance upon the artist. Chapter Four explores the relationship between the title page of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay and the concept of celebrity in relation to the Tarltonesque clown character who dominates the action of the image. Chapter Five considers the problematic relationship between theatre, politics and satire in the competing engraved title pages for A Game at Chess. The conclusion draws together the findings, and points to other aspects of early modern print and theatre cultures to which they pertain.

This thesis seeks to examine the relationship between occult religion and the global circulation of texts. For some time now, scholars have rejected the secularism thesis or the idea that there has been a decline of religion in the post-Enlightenment period. Today, we largely accept that religion did not actually decline or disappear but, rather, it has changed form. Religion shifted from traditional religious institutions to become an aspect of aesthetic culture, available through the commercial economy. My work explores how the relationship between the book and commercial religion emerged and evolved during the long nineteenth century. Occultism has long been viewed as an aspect of the rise of secular society following the Enlightenment. This thesis proposes a new lens through which we can view the evolution of occultism, seeing it as a response to growth in global networks of empire and the commercialization of religion through the printed word. It explores how the nature of the transmission of occultism shifted, particularly during the final decades of the nineteenth century. Antoine Faivre’s foundational text Access to Western Esotericism (1994) put forward the concept of the transmission of occultism as something that occurs between a disciple and an initiate. My thesis, however, argues that the widening of print activity and literacy expanded the opportunities for initiation into magic to occur more broadly, changing the nature of who could become an initiate. As such, secrecy around magic became redefined. It shifted from being a pursuit of the literate elite to something that was widely available. This analysis is delivered in four chapters. The introduction examines the relationship between literature and nineteenth-century occultism. It also discusses the influence of globalization. Chapter one discusses the occult in post-revolutionary France and the influence of Egyptian orientalism on French occultism. Chapter two addresses Victorian occultism and discusses the context of a growing Victorian literary industry. Chapter three addresses the Theosophical Society as an agent of globalized and commercialized religion. It also addresses the importance of British imperialism in India. Finally, chapter four discusses the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and the resurgence of Egyptian orientalism and elitism in British occultism.

This thesis focuses on the flourishing music-publishing industry in England in the second half of the seventeenth century, and examines its relationship to and influence on the activities of professional musicians. Music publishing as a commercial entity developed in England during this period, particularly, but not exclusively, through the endeavours of the Playford family. By placing the printed music books within the social and cultural contexts in which they were produced, this thesis explores the consequences of printing on the musical text, understanding the purposes for which the printed book was created and how different functions of print affected the musical texts that they contained. A detailed examination of the printed music sources sheds light on how publication (including posthumous publication) related to the image and status of the composer, and draws attention to the interaction between public music-making, compositional activity and music publishing during this period. Through an investigation of the contemporary printed outputs of five case-study composers - William Lawes, Henry Lawes, Matthew Locke, Henry Purcell and John Blow - this thesis explores the individual nature of the composers' relationships with the printed music book trade and how their contemporary printed outputs relate to their overall compositional output. This is followed by a detailed analytical study of specific compositions by the five case-study composers, examining both contemporary manuscript and printed sources, in order to determine to what extent the commercial print market influenced professional musical creativity. Different versions of compositions of certain genres, particularly secular vocal works, were disseminated via print as opposed to manuscript, and these alternative versions appear to have been instigated by both composers and stationers. This approach to examination of contemporary sources calls for the contextual consideration of sources and the musical texts within them.