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Free keywords:
Paratext, Tractatus de sphaera, Johannes de Sacrobosco, Social
network, Local market
MPIWG_PROJECTS:
The Evolution of Cosmological Knowledge from the Middle Ages to the Eighteenth Century
Abstract:
Paratexts, such as dedication letters or epigrams, in early modern printed
books can be used by historians to situate a book’s production in its institutional
and social context. We depart from the general assumption that two publishers or
printers were in a relation of awareness of each other if they printed and put on
the market two different editions that contain at least one identical paratext. In this
paper, we analyze the circulation of the paratexts among the 359 editions of the
“Sphaera corpus.” First, we discuss the available data, the conditions to build a social
network, and the latter’s characteristics. Second, we interpret the results—potential
relationships among printers and publishers—from a historical point of view and,
at the same time, discuss the sorts of potential relationships that this method can
disclose. Third, we corroborate the historical results among different approaches,
namely by using editions’ fingerprints and by investigating the book production
of those printers and publishers tangentially involved in relevant relationships, but
who fall outside the “Sphaera corpus.” Finally, we identify local communities of
printers and publishers and, on a transregional level, printers, and publishers who
were observing and influencing each other.
