http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/800010180

Memory's library medieval books in early modern England

"Libraries," wrote Francis Bacon in 1605, "are as the shrines, where all the reliques of the ancient saints, full of true virtue, and that without delusion or imposture, are preserved, and reposed." But in Jennifer Summit's account, libraries are more than inert storehouses of written tradition; they are volatile spaces that actively shaped the meanings and uses of books, reading, and the past. Considering the two-hundred-year period between 1431, which saw the foundation of Duke Humfrey's famous library, and 1631, when the great antiquarian Sir Robert Cotton died, Memory's Library revises the.

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