Sian Echard is Professor of English and Distinguished University Scholar at the University of British Columbia and author of Printing the Middle Ages, also available from University of Pennsylvania Press.
Description
"One of the most original and substantive contributions to medieval studies I have read. Sian Echard's brilliant, detailed, and sensitive explorations of the facsimile's significance through time will change how we perceive the connections between the 'real' and the 'copy,' the present and the past." (Elaine Treharne, author of Perceptions of Medieval Manuscripts: The Phenomenal Book) "Gorgeously illustrated and conceptually groundbreaking, Facsimile invites us to reconsider books as more than static objects. They are processes as well as products, originals and copies, that shape and reshape scholarly and public views of the medieval past." (Alexandra Gillespie, author of Print Culture and the Medieval Author: Chaucer, Lydgate, and Their Books, 1473-1557) "Echard offers an important contribution to the histories of antiquarianism and the modern formation of a national British identity by means of facsimile reproduction of medieval manuscripts. Facsimile gathers a rich trove of primary sources from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and will constitute a vital resource for all future work on the subject." (Sonja Drimmer, author of The Art of Allusion: Illuminators and the Making of English Literature, 1403-1476) "Situated at the intersection of art history, literary reception studies, and the history of technology, Facsimile interweaves scholarly threads that are more often treated separately or as case studies. This book offers a new perspective on medieval manuscripts, both in its period of focus and in its elegant synthesis of multiple disciplinary and methodological frames." (Megan L. Cook, author of The Poet and the Antiquaries: Chaucerian Scholarship and the Rise of Literary History, 1532-1635)