The study : the inner life of Renaissance libraries / by Andrew Hui.

05038nam a2200325 a 4500

vtls000176169

IIMBL

20250402092500.0

240624s2024    njua     b    001 0 eng 

$a 9780691243320 $q (hardback) $c Rs.2713.47

$9 9780691243337 $q (ebook)

$a 202504020925 $b mansur $y 202502031223 $z mansur

$a 027.109 $b HUI $2 23

$a Hui, Andrew, $d 1980- $e author.

$a The study : $b the inner life of Renaissance libraries / $c by Andrew Hui.

$a Princeton : $b Princeton University Press, $c 2025

$a xiii, 303 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : $b illustrations (some color) ; $c 25 cm

$a Includes bibliographical references and index.

$a Part I. Bibliophilia -- Antiquity Face to Face -- Invention of the Studiolo -- Bookishness and Sanctity -- Antiquity Face to Face -- How to Build a Library with Montaigne -- Part II. Bibliomania -- Ark, Abyss, Abundance -- The World as Text -- The Tempest as Wunderkammer -- Faustus in His Study -- Epilogue: The Wordless Library

$a "With the advent of the printing press in Europe, the possibility of assembling a personal library became more and more attainable for the cultural elite. In this book, Andrew Hui traces the historical development of the Renaissance studiolo, a personal study and library, from Petrarch to Montaigne, considering literary representations of the studiolo in Rabelais, Cervantes, Shakespeare, and Marlowe as well as its presence in the visual arts. He explores the ways in which Renaissance writers and scholars engaged with these personal libraries, both real and imaginary, as places for research and refuge, and the impact of their legacy on writers of our own age, such as Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino. Hui is interested in how these workspaces shaped the interior lives of their occupants, and how the bookish sanctuary they offered was cast as both a remedy and a poison for the soul. Painters of the period, for example, depicted such Biblical figures as the Virgin Mary and St. Jerome in studies surrounded by books, and some writers extolled the studiolo as a space for salutary self-reflection. But other writers suggested that too much time spent reading and amassing books could lead to bibliomania: it drove Don Quixote to madness, Faustus to perdition, Prospero to exile. Individual chapters focus on the invention of the studiolo as seen through Federico da Montefeltro's Gubbio Studiolo and Raphael's School of Athens; Rabelais's parodies of erudition and classification; the transformation of private study into self-conscious spectacle in The Tempest; and more. While primarily drawing on works from Renaissance Europe, the chapters range across time and geography, incorporating a more global and comparative approach by drawing on texts from the classical tradition of China. Throughout the book, Hui weaves in accounts of his own life with books and libraries, arguing that to study the history of reading, scholars must also become aware of their own history of readings"-- $c Provided by publisher.

$a "A uniquely personal account of the life and enduring legacy of the Renaissance library. With the advent of print in the fifteenth century, Europe's cultural elite assembled personal libraries as refuges from persecutions and pandemics. Andrew Hui tells the remarkable story of the Renaissance studiolo-a "little studio"-and reveals how these spaces dedicated to self-cultivation became both a remedy and a poison for the soul. Blending fresh, insightful readings of literary and visual works with engaging accounts of his life as an insatiable bookworm, Hui traces how humanists from Petrarch to Machiavelli to Montaigne created their own intimate studies. He looks at imaginary libraries in Rabelais, Cervantes, Shakespeare, and Marlowe, and discusses how Renaissance painters depicted the Virgin Mary and St. Jerome as saintly bibliophiles. Yet writers of the period also saw a dark side to solitary reading. It drove Don Quixote to madness, Prospero to exile, and Faustus to perdition. Hui draws parallels with our own age of information surplus and charts the studiolo's influence on bibliographic fabulists like Jorge Luis Borges and Umberto Eco.Beautifully illustrated, The Study is at once a celebration of bibliophilia and a critique of bibliomania. Incorporating perspectives on Islamic, Mughal, and Chinese book cultures, it offers a timely and eloquent meditation on the ways we read and misread today"-- $c Provided by publisher.

$a Private libraries $x History $y 1400-1600.

$a Humanists $x Books and reading $x History $y To 1500.

$a Private libraries $x History.

$a Books and reading $x History.

$a Learning and scholarship $x History.

$a Bibliophilia $x History.

$a Bibliomania $x History.

$a VIRTUA               

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