Abstract
This article argues that Renaissance print culture appropriated the cultural meanings of the footprint. The potent analogy between the printing press and printing foot informed Reformation debates over Christ’s footprints as objects of devotion and subjects of representation. In sixteenth-century England a model for investigative reading informed by Erasmian humanism was developed in the print projects of George Gascoigne and Edmund Spenser. Experimentation with effects of the press and the material environment of the page culminated in extensive play upon the material and metaphorical sign of the printing foot in Spenser’s “Amoretti.”
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 478-529 |
Number of pages | 52 |
Journal | Renaissance Quarterly |
Volume | 71 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 20 Nov 2018 |
Bibliographical note
Special thanks are due to the following: Kathy Acheson, Anthony Bale, Louisa Coles, Ian Gadd, Jane Geddes, Alastair Gordon, Bridget Heal, Julia Kotzur, Kirk Melnikoff, Helen Pierce, Anne Prescott, Jason Scott Warren, and Sue Wiseman, as well as audiences in Berlin and London where versions of this paper were first presented.Fingerprint
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Andrew Gordon
- School of Language, Literature, Music & Visual Culture, English - Personal Chair
- School of Divinity, History & Philosophy, Centre for Early Modern Studies
Person: Academic