Ex Libris: Annotating Books from the William A. Clark Memorial Library

Introduction

The early modern period in Europe (c. 1500-c. 1800) brought significant change to virtually every aspect of life, although there was also meaningful continuity with the past. The events that we now collectively refer to as the Reformation shattered centuries-old institutional religious unity among Christians. Well before the end of the era, numerous Protestant denominations joined the Roman Catholic church on the religious landscape. In politics, old rivalries were intensified, and others were born, as a result of the new religious divisions. The period also saw major political upheavals, such as the fall of the monarchy in England in the mid-seventeenth century and in France at the end of the eighteenth. New ideas, from the Renaissance to Reformation to the Scientific Revolution to the Enlightenment, emerged during the period as well. Members of the seminar read about, and debated, the role that the introduction of the printing press in Europe played in that process. The student projects that follow each explore an aspect of the changing world of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by examining books published in the period and the annotations made by their various owners.

Timeline

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