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E-book
Author Swann, Marjorie (Marjorie E.)

Title Curiosities and texts : the culture of collecting in early modern England / Marjorie Swann
Published Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, ©2001

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Description 1 online resource (280 pages) : illustrations
Series Material texts
Material texts.
Contents Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction -- Chapter 1. Cultures of Collecting in Early Modern England -- Chapter 2. Sons of Science -- Chapter 3. The Countryside as Collection -- Chapter 4. The Author as Collector -- Epilogue: An Ornament to the Nation -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- Acknowledgments
Summary A craze for collecting swept England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Aristocrats and middling-sort men alike crammed their homes full of a bewildering variety of physical objects: antique coins, scientific instruments, minerals, mummified corpses, zoological specimens, plants, ethnographic objects from Asia and the Americas, statues, portraits. Why were these bizarre jumbles of artifacts so popular?In Curiosities and Texts, Marjorie Swann demonstrates that collections of physical objects were central to early modern English literature and culture. Swann examines the famous collection of rarities assembled by the Tradescant family; the development of English natural history; narrative catalogs of English landscape features that began to appear in the Tudor and Stuart periods; the writings of Ben Jonson and Robert Herrick; and the foundation of the British Museum. Through this wide-ranging series of case studies, Swann addresses two important questions: How was the collection, which was understood as a form of cultural capital, appropriated in early modern England to construct new social selves and modes of subjectivity? And how did literary texts--both as material objects and as vehicles of representation--participate in the process of negotiating the cultural significance of collectors and collecting? Crafting her unique argument with a balance of detail and insight, Swann sheds new light on material culture's relationship to literature, social authority, and personal identity
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes In English
Print version record
Subject Collectors and collecting -- England -- History -- 17th century
English literature -- Early modern, 1500-1700 -- History and criticism
Curiosities and wonders -- England -- History -- 17th century
Natural history -- England -- History -- 17th century
Antiquarians -- Great Britain -- Biography
LITERARY CRITICISM -- European -- English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh.
Antiquarians
Civilization
Collectors and collecting
Curiosities and wonders
English literature -- Early modern
Natural history
SUBJECT England -- Civilization -- 17th century. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85043276
Subject England
Great Britain
Genre/Form collective biographies.
Biographies
Criticism, interpretation, etc.
History
Biographies.
Biographies.
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2001027021
ISBN 9780812203172
0812203178
1283212005
9781283212007