Unprinted: Reading and Meaning in Early Modern Iberia

A careful investigation into the history and meaning of reading, Unprinted dives into the rich culture of unprinted manuscripts in early modern Iberia.

Spanish literature scholar Heather Bamford studies the meaning of reading and the activities it comprises through the aporia of texts whose principal point of contact was being left unprinted or never destined for the press. Early modern Spain was a period of burgeoning arts, the forced conversion and expulsion of Jews and Muslims, and the enslavement of North and sub-Saharan Africans, Turks from Eastern Europe and the Ottoman Empire, North African Muslims, and Moriscos (Muslims forcibly converted to Christianity). Each of these groups contributed to an Iberian history of reading.

The book structures a critical intervention into the scholarly categories of reading practices, manuscript and print culture, and material text, as well as a historical deep dive into a rare and compelling history. Unprinted cites a unique archive of personal notebooks and compilations of magic, poetry, and theatre, in addition to other unprinted writings that circulated among Christians and religious minorities in early modern Spain. Through her analysis of manuscript texts, Bamford redefines the meaning of reading itself and explores the possibilities that results from that often-revolutionary act.