Roundtable: Twenty-Five Years of "Studied for Action": Gabriel Harvey and the Archaeology of Reading Digital Project

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Abstract

First published in 1990, “Studied for Action: How Gabriel Harvey Read His Livy” by Lisa Jardine and Anthony Grafton has become a seminal text in the history of reading. It now provides the intellectual basis for The Archaeology of Reading in Early Modern Europe, a collaboration in the digital humanities between Johns Hopkins University, Princeton University, and University College London. By treating the manuscript marginalia in Gabriel Harvey’s books as purposeful readings designed to inform specific political moments, “Studied for Action” mapped out a method of historicizing the relationship between Renaissance text, reader, and historical action. Twenty-five years on from “Studied for Action,” Jardine and Grafton join Earle Havens as principal investigators on The Archaeology of Reading. William Sherman, another scholar of marginalia, leads them in discussion, examining the ways in which the “history of the book” has grown and how it might be transformed within the digital environment.

Sub Unit

• Discipline Representative / History of the Book

Organizer

• Andrew Pettegree, University of St. Andrews

Chair

• William H. Sherman, University of York

Discussants

• Lisa Jardine, University College London

• Earle A. Havens, Johns Hopkins University

• Anthony Grafton, Princeton University