Abstract of Feike Dietz' paper

Reading by Writing: Early Modern Reading Practices in Manuscript and Print Culture

Feike Dietz MA

Department of Early Modern Dutch Literature 

Research Institute for History and Culture

Utrecht University

My paper discusses the relationship between manuscript culture and print culture in early modern religious practices, and in particular the way authors and readers reused printed texts in new meditative manuscripts. Contrary to earlier scholars, I do not consider the manuscript as a 'not yet printed text', but as a 'rewriting' of a printed product. I will focus on a seventeenth century illustrated manuscript based on the popular religious emblem book Pia desideria (1624). By reconstructing the relationship between the manuscript and its printed sources, I argue that the Pia desideria formed the starting point for a meditative reading and writing process in which fragments from different printed sources were creatively combined in a new meditation text.