Laura Moretti – författare

This interdisciplinary book investigates the use of secular space for music making in Early Modern France and Italy. The fact that many artists of the time also had musical skills underlines the close relationship between music and the visual arts. This era is remarkable for the growing importance of music in domestic life, ranging from elaborate court festivities to family recreation. In parallel with the emergence of the theatre as a separate building type, music-making in elite circles became more specialised through the employment of paid musicians, as opposed to amateur participation by the inhabitants and their guests. Meanwhile, however, music printing and the mass-production of instruments, especially lutes, allowed music-making to diffuse down the social scale. We see how spaces specifically designed for music began to appear in private dwellings, while existing rooms became adapted for the purpose. At first, the number of rooms specifically identifiable as 'music rooms' was very small, but gradually over the following 150 years, specialised music rooms began to appear in larger residences in both France and Italy. A major theme is the relationship between the size and purpose of the room and the kinds of music performed - depending on the size, portability and loudness of different instruments; the types of music suited to spaces of different dimensions; the role of music in dancing and banqueting; and the positions of players and listeners. Musical instruments were often elaborately decorated to become works of art in their own right.

In the seventeenth century, Japanese popular prose flourished as waves of newly literate readers gained access to the printed word. Commercial publishers released vast numbers of titles in response to readers’ hunger for books that promised them potent knowledge. However, traditional literary histories of this period position the writings of Ihara Saikaku at center stage, largely neglecting the breadth of popular prose.In the first comprehensive study of the birth of Japanese commercial publishing, Laura Moretti investigates the vibrant world of vernacular popular literature. She marshals new data on the magnitude of the seventeenth-century publishing business and highlights the diversity and porosity of its publishing genres. Moretti explores how booksellers sparked interest among readers across the spectrum of literacies and demonstrates how they tantalized consumers with vital ethical, religious, societal, and interpersonal knowledge. She recasts books as tools for knowledge making, arguing that popular prose engaged its audience cognitively as well as aesthetically and emotionally to satisfy a burgeoning curiosity about the world. Crucially, Moretti shows, readers experienced entertainment within the didactic, finding pleasure in the profit gained from acquiring knowledge by interacting with transformative literature. Drawing on a rich variety of archival materials to present a vivid portrait of seventeenth-century Japanese publishing, Pleasure in Profit also speaks to broader conversations about the category of the literary by offering a new view of popular prose that celebrates plurality.

In the seventeenth century, Japanese popular prose flourished as waves of newly literate readers gained access to the printed word. Commercial publishers released vast numbers of titles in response to readers’ hunger for books that promised them potent knowledge. However, traditional literary histories of this period position the writings of Ihara Saikaku at center stage, largely neglecting the breadth of popular prose.In the first comprehensive study of the birth of Japanese commercial publishing, Laura Moretti investigates the vibrant world of vernacular popular literature. She marshals new data on the magnitude of the seventeenth-century publishing business and highlights the diversity and porosity of its publishing genres. Moretti explores how booksellers sparked interest among readers across the spectrum of literacies and demonstrates how they tantalized consumers with vital ethical, religious, societal, and interpersonal knowledge. She recasts books as tools for knowledge making, arguing that popular prose engaged its audience cognitively as well as aesthetically and emotionally to satisfy a burgeoning curiosity about the world. Crucially, Moretti shows, readers experienced entertainment within the didactic, finding pleasure in the profit gained from acquiring knowledge by interacting with transformative literature. Drawing on a rich variety of archival materials to present a vivid portrait of seventeenth-century Japanese publishing, Pleasure in Profit also speaks to broader conversations about the category of the literary by offering a new view of popular prose that celebrates plurality.

During the Renaissance, artists and illustrators developed the representation of truthful three-dimensional forms into a highly skilled art. As reliable illustrations of three-dimensional subjects became more prevalent, they also influenced the way in which disciplines developed: architecture could be communicated much more clearly, mathematical concepts and astronomical observations could be quickly relayed, observations of the natural world moved towards a more realistic method of depiction. Through essays on some of the world’s greatest artists and thinkers (Leonardo da Vinci, Euclid, Andreas Vesalius, William Hunter, Johannes Kepler, Andrea Palladio, Galileo Galilei, among many others), this book tells the story of the development of the techniques used to communicate three-dimensional forms on the two-dimensional page and contemporary media. It features Leonardo da Vinci’s groundbreaking drawings in his notebooks and other manuscripts, extraordinary anatomical illustrations, early paper engineering including volvelles and tabs, beautiful architectural plans and even views of the moon. With in-depth analysis of over forty manuscripts and books, 'Thinking 3D' also reveals the impact that developing techniques had on artists and draughtsmen throughout time and across space.