Includes bibliographical references (pages 233-256) and index.
Summary:
[This book] explores how authors and readers are represented in printed editions of the works of three major literary figures: Jean Lemaire de Belges, Clément Marot, and François Rabelais. Print culture is marked by an anxiety of reception that became much more pronounced with increasingly anonymous and unpredictable readerships in the sixteenth century. To allay this anxiety, authors, as well as editors and printers, turned to self-fashioning in order to sell not only their books but also particular ways of reading. They advertised correct modes of reading as transformative experiences offered by selfless authors that would help the actual reader attain the image of the ideal reader held up by the text and paratext. Thus, authorial personae were constructed around the self-fashioning offered to readers, creating an interdependent relationship that anticipated modern advertising. -- Back cover.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.