Reading the Early Modern Diary traces the historical genealogy, formal characteristics, and shifting cultural uses of the early modern English diary. It explores the possibilities and limitations the genre held for the self-expression of a writer at a time which considerably pre-dated the Romantic cult of the individual self. The book analyzes the connections between genre and self-articulation: How could the diary come to be associated with emotional self-expression given the tedium and repetitiveness of its early seventeenth-century ancestors? How did what were once mere lists of daily events evolve into narrative representations of inner emotions? What did it mean to write on a daily basis, when the proper use of time was a heavily contested issue? Reading the Early Modern Diary addresses these questions and develops new theoretical frameworks for discussing interiority and affect in early modern autobiographical texts.

A study of writing, publishing and marketing history books in the early modern period.

Early in the seventeenth century, Northeast Asian politics hung in a delicate balance among the Chosŏn dynasty in Korea, the Ming in China, and the Manchu. When a Chosŏn faction realigned Korea with the Ming, the Manchu attacked in 1627 and again a decade later, shattering the Chosŏn-Ming alliance and forcing Korea to support the newly founded Qing dynasty. The Korean scholar-official Na Man’gap (1592–1642) recorded the second Manchu invasion in his Diary of 1636, the only first-person account chronicling the dramatic Korean resistance to the attack. Partly composed as a narrative of quotidian events during the siege of Namhan Mountain Fortress, where Na sought refuge with the king and other officials, the diary recounts Korean opposition to Manchu and Mongol forces and the eventual surrender. Na describes military campaigns along the northern and western regions of the country, the capture of the royal family, and the Manchu treatment of prisoners, offering insights into debates about Confucian loyalty and the conduct of women that took place in the war’s aftermath. His work sheds light on such issues as Confucian statecraft, military decision making, and ethnic interpretations of identity in the seventeenth century. Translated from literary Chinese into English for the first time, the diary illuminates a traumatic moment for early modern Korean politics and society. George Kallander’s critical introduction and extensive annotations place The Diary of 1636 in its historical, political, and military context, highlighting the importance of this text for students and scholars of Chinese and East Asian as well as Korean history.

This book considers the relationship between the vogue for putting the Ottoman Empire on the English stage and the repertory system that underpinned London playmaking. The sheer visibility of 'the Turk' in plays staged between 1567 and 1642 has tended to be interpreted as registering English attitudes to Islam, as articulating popular perceptions of Anglo-Ottoman relations, and as part of a broader interest in the wider world brought home by travellers, writers, adventurers, merchants, and diplomats. Such reports furnished playwrights with raw material which, fashioned into drama, established ‘the Turk’ as a fixture in the playhouse. But it was the demand for plays to replenish company repertories to attract London audiences that underpinned playmaking in this period. Thus this remarkable fascination for the Ottoman Empire is best understood as a product of theatre economics and the repertory system, rather than taken directly as a measure of cultural and historical engagement.

Until recently, historians of reading have concentrated on book ownership and trying to map out a history of who read what. The reading experience has been a subject more difficult to research. As has been pointed out before, egodocuments can be valuable sources in this case. Following this lead, "Literacy in Everyday Life" focuses upon four early modern Dutch diaries in which readers document their daily life and in which they recount their reading. In the analysis, other ways in which these four readers communicated are also addressed, especially speech and writing. This book therefore provides an insight into the possible uses of literacy and the interaction between the printed, written and spoken word in the early modern Dutch Republic.

Reading Material in Early Modern England rediscovers the practices and representations of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English readers. By telling their stories and insisting upon their variety, Brayman Hackel displaces both the singular 'ideal' reader of literacy theory and the elite male reader of literacy history.