Browse Items (42 total)

NOTE: I inadvertently deleted the photos I took of the book during our in-class meeting at the library, thinking they were of another text that I didn't plan on using. By the time I realized my error, it was too late to request an appointment at the…

This is a poster advertising a performance of Othello in November 1836, nearly 232 years to the day after the first recorded performance of the play in 1604, at the Theatre Royal in London, England. What is of particular interest here is the identity…

These extracts, taken from the same text, provide a viewpoint into an interesting mentality at the time Othello was published. The author of the book claims that plays are not only immoral, but inherently unlawful if they include (among many other…

These two extracts, taken from the same work, are both valuable and interesting indications of the social climate at the time Othello was written (the text from which it hails was apparently published two years before Othello is thought to have been…

In City of God, Saint Augustine takes the pagan claim that Christianity was the cause of the fall of the Roman Empire and flips it around, blaming instead the pagan’s moral and spiritual corruption as the cause of the downfall of the most powerful…

Theodor de Bry’s book, Americae Pars Sexta, contains an extensive collection of maps. Just as Barker does in his collection of voyages, Theodor de Bry offers an account of the explorations of European voyagers and their discoveries of new lands.…

Vittoria Colonna was a sixteenth century poet who wrote Tutte Le Rime della Illustrius (above text). She was born in 1492 and died in 1547. Notably one of the most recognizable poets of her time, Colonna wrote perhaps the most influential work of the…

Thomas Rymer wrote "A Short View of Tragedy" in 1693, nearly eighty years after Shakespeare's death. The author's work is less of a "short view" and much more of a hefty critique of all of English theater. Rymer argues that society should return to…

This folio explores the idea of anatomy as connected to discovery. These fantastic drawings depict a skeleton in not only extraordinary detail, but a unique vision of anatomy in particularly life-like form. In the drawings above, the skeletons are…