Person: Blair, Ann
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Blair, Ann
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Publication The 2016 Josephine Waters Bennett Lecture: Humanism and Printing in the Work of Conrad Gessner(Cambridge University Press (CUP), 2017) Blair, AnnI discuss how printing affected the practice of scholarship by examining the working methods of Conrad Gessner (1516–65), a prolific humanist, bibliographer, and natural historian. Gessner supplemented his revenue as city physician in Zurich through his publishing activities. He hailed printing, along with libraries to preserve the books, as crucial to the successful transmission of learning to the distant future. Gessner also used printing as a kind of social media: to reach readers rapidly all over Europe, in order to solicit contributions to his research projects underway, to advertise forthcoming books, and to develop his own thinking through multiple iterations.Publication A Quantitative Study of the Paratexts in Erasmus-Froben Imprints(Brill, 2021-10-08) Blair, Ann; Patton, MaryamWe study the paratexts in Erasmus’ imprints with Johann then Hieronymus Froben of Basel between 1514 and 1536. From Valentina Sebastiani’s bibliography of Johann Froben we observe that Erasmus was a more abundant paratexter than other authors who published with Johann Froben. We supplement that work with a bibliography of Erasmus’ imprints with Hieronymus Froben. We note trends across the Erasmus-Froben corpus, including: a remarkable number of imprints, equally balanced between new editions and re-editions, abundant dedications without correlation to format, indexes in folio volumes especially, a growing attention to errata lists over time. These patterns shed light on one author-printer partnership but also on more general trends in learned publishing in the early 16th century.Publication Early Modern Attitudes toward the Delegation of Copying and Note-Taking(Brill, 2016) Blair, AnnPublication Anthony Grafton: A Short Biography to 2015(2016) Blair, Ann; Popper, NicholasPublication Introduction(2010) Blair, AnnLike the special issue of 2007 (Archival Science 7:4, “Toward a Cultural History of Archives”), “In and Out of the Archives” showcases recent work by historians on the formation, organization and use of archives. The papers contained in this issue seek to shed new light on a range of historical concerns, including the origins of modern attitudes toward documents and the ideals and tools of governance devised by states and institutions during crucial phases of their development. With its focus on archiving and archival documents in various European contexts from roughly 1400 to 1700, the research here examines a period well known for the growth of bureaucracies and the consolidation of powers of government, whether in city-states, principalities or nations, often in conjunction with concurrent imperial expansion, religious confessionalization and war. In each of the cases studied (in Venice and cities in Switzerland, Flanders and Germany, in England and Spain, in the Jesuit order and in the Catholic and Protestant principalities of Northwest Germany), archives were formed or transformed during this period, as a result of (among other factors) practical pressures like the rapid accumulation of documents, a heightened awareness of the risk of loss, and political ambitions to consolidate power through the collection, control and use of documents.Publication Tables et index dans le livre de savoir en Europe moderne(Albin Michel, 2011) Blair, AnnPublication Revisiting Renaissance Encyclopaedism(Cambridge University Press, 2013) Blair, AnnThe Renaissance has long been associated with ‘encyclopedism’ primarily for two different reasons which are not directly related to one another. On the hand the term was first coined in the late fifteenth century, though without many of connotations we associate with the term today, to designate an ideal of learning which spanned and highlighted the relations between many disciplines. On the other hand many Renaissance writings, from compilations in various fields to novels and poetry, are considered encyclopedic today because of their large bulk and/or their ideal of exhaustive and multidisciplinary scope. Only occasionally did early modern authors apply the term ‘encyclopedia’ to what we consider their encyclopedic compiling activities, but by the late seventeenth century a handful of works had begun to forge the connection between the term and a kind of reference book. The success of Ephraim Chambers’ Cyclopedia (1710) and Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie (1751) established the ‘encyclopedia’ as a title of a genre which was imitated faddishly throughout the eighteenth century and which has been going strong ever since. My main interest in this essay is to ponder the intellectual foundations of the encyclopedic ambitions of large-scale compilers in the Renaissance—what was new about Renaissance encyclopedism and what motivated these innovations—while attending to the gradual convergence between the term ‘encyclopedia’ and our concept of encyclopedism.Publication Scholarly Critique in the Early Modern Period(Society for French Historical Studies, 2015) Blair, AnnCritique in some form has no doubt played a role in intellectual activity since before we have written sources to document it. Exchange is at the heart of intellectual creativity. But the circumstances, media, and norms for successful critique have varied considerably by historical context and within the same context among different kinds of authors, fields and genres of work, and target audiences. In antiquity, for example, authors like Virgil read or recited their work to audiences of friends and family to gather feedback before making a written version on a papyrus roll available for copying and distribution, i.e. publication. In medieval universities the disputation was the centerpiece of the scholastic method. Today (thanks to the polemical representations of the humanists) we mostly associate the term with a sterile pedagogical exercise that perdured into the eighteenth century and an opportunity for professors to display their prowess by arguing against one another on abstruse topics. But at their origins the disputations were “a form of collective research with colleagues about real and much discussed problems for which nobody had a ready answer” —in other words, an opportunity for constructive critique. In each of these contexts critique no doubt took other forms as well, but the evidence we have is often limited. It is especially difficult to reconstruct the conventions of critique in a given context because these have rarely been discussed explicitly, even today—hence the special interest of this unique Forum. Happily I have found a good number of thoughtful recent discussions of the nature and norms of various kinds of critical interactions in early modern Europe. New ideals of moderation in scholarly discussions clashed with new opportunities (afforded by various printed genres in particular) to bring disputes to the attention of a wider public, generating many different patterns of behavior.Publication Rens Bod. A New History of the Humanities: The Search for Principles and Patterns from Antiquity to the Present(Oxford University Press (OUP), 2015) Blair, AnnPublication Bodin, Montaigne and the Role of Disciplinary Boundaries(University of Rochester Press, 1997) Blair, AnnMichel de Montaigne (1533-92) and Jean Bodin (1529-96) were contemporaries, compatriots and colleagues. Both served as officers in the Parlements, Montaigne as a counselor in Bordeaux and Bodin as a barrister in Paris. They both ended up dissatisfied with their lives at the center of public activity and withdrew from the political fray. Montaigne retired to his family estate, while Bodin earned a living as a royal officer in the provincial town of Laon. Both owe their considerable fame, at the time and since, to their prolific writing during this period. But, at least at first view, their writings seem so strikingly different in tone as to belie any similarities of cultural context.