Fabric of Empire

Material and Literary Cultures of the Global Atlantic, 1650-1850

200 pages

English language

Published Feb. 8, 2020 by Johns Hopkins University Press.

ISBN:
978-1-4214-3969-3
Copied ISBN!

View on OpenLibrary

No rating (0 reviews)

A history of the book in the Americas, across deep time, would reveal the origins of a literary tradition woven rather than written. It is in what Danielle Skeehan calls material texts that a people's history and culture is preserved, in their embroidery, their needlework, and their woven cloth. In defining textiles as a form of cultural writing, The Fabric of Empire challenges long-held ideas about authorship, textuality, and the making of books.

It is impossible to separate text from textiles in the early modern Atlantic: novels, newspapers, broadsides, and pamphlets were printed on paper made from household rags. Yet the untethering of text from textile served a colonial agenda to define authorship as reflected in ink and paper and the pen as an instrument wielded by learned men and women. Skeehan explains that the colonial definition of the book, and what constituted writing and authorship, left colonial regimes blind …

2 editions