KULVER-Kulturell verdsetting

Unlike Medieval literature, early modern literature shows evidence that the writer is perpetually short on time. Yet so far no attempt has been made to study the impact of this hurry on the literary culture. This project investigates the frequent expressi ons of haste in paratexts to literary works published in England from the late 16th to the early 18th century. Do the writers' complaints about lack of time only pertain to the rapid developments in the book trade? In this period, writers across Europe we re subject to an increasing degree of attention, and there was an ongoing debate about the quality of their work. Bringing together the fields of book history, the history of rhetoric and the history of criticism, the project argues that the references to time play an essential role in defining the aesthetic value of the work. Haste makes waste, and hasty writing makes for hasty reading. Thus, the expressions of haste cannot be explained by reference to material conditions alone. Rather, they indicate a d eeper conflict between the humanist ideals regarding how much time one should be able to spend and the actual amount of time that these writers had at their disposal. Unlike previous studies, the project does not primarily address the writers' idea of ti me as such, but rather their sense of time and haste with respect to the art of writing and aesthetic evaluation. Partly conducting a rhetorical analysis of a wide selection of texts and partly considering their context, the study aims to give a better un derstanding both of the aesthetic theory of the age and of the development of authorship as a profession. The main challenge is how to distinguish between those expressions of haste that are merely conventional and those that can be related to ideological and material conditions. The project also participates in contemporary media debate by claiming that even in our own 'age of speed,' the defenders of high literature still tend to insist that time equals quality.