French Literature Reviews - 2026

T. A. Bredehoft, The Visible Text. Textual Production and Reproduction from Beowulf to Maus
Literary Theory, Linguistics and Stylistics

Review published in Acta Fabula (February 2018, vol. 19, no. 2): "Dossier: The Middle Ages as a Laboratory": Florian Besson, "How to Read a Non-Textual Text?"

Thomas A. Bredehoft, The Visible Text. Textual Production and Reproduction from Beowulf to Maus

Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2014.

192 p.

ISBN: 9780199603152

Price: £20.00

Publisher's overview:

Covering materials ranging from Anglo-Saxon manuscripts and inscribed objects to contemporary comics, The Visible Text rewrites the history of textual media and technologies. Arguing that media are not defined by technologies alone, but by a combination of technologies and the ideas that people hold about those technologies, Bredehoft identifies four distinct periods or domains in the history of English literature that correspond to four ways in which media ideologies interacted with the two basic defining technologies of manuscripts and printed books.

Examining two complementary ways of defining texts (as subject to a reproductive medium, on the one hand, and as surrounded and defined by paratexts, on the other), The Visible Text points out how Anglo-Saxon manuscripts and contemporary comics share a remarkable similarity in being structured as productions rather than reproductions.

Contrastingly, the late-medieval and print-era periods share a cultural investment in textual reproduction, but they differ both in their characteristic technologies and in how they conceptualize the object of reproduction itself. A final epilogue, briefly considering the nature of electronically mediated textuality, highlights the importance of understanding the history addressed here, as electronic text both parallels and departs from typographic print in ways that earlier reproductive domains clarify and complicate.

Filled with concrete examples of both books and texts, The Visible Text will be of interest to readers in the fields of literature, book history, literary theory, media studies, and visual culture.

In the broader academic fields of book history and media studies, scholars frequently examine how the physical presentation of written works influences their reception and meaning. Textual production encompasses not only the core linguistic content of a work, but also the surrounding paratexts and the specific reproductive machinery used to disseminate it across various historical epochs. By analysing materials that range from medieval artifacts to contemporary graphic narratives, researchers investigate the shifting relationships between material form, technological constraints, and changing cultural perceptions of the written word over centuries of literary history.

Readers interested in the evolution of media technologies, book history, and literary theory may find this volume relevant to their inquiries. Covering materials ranging from Anglo-Saxon manuscripts and inscribed objects to contemporary comics, The Visible Text rewrites the history of textual media and technologies by examining how media are defined by technologies and the ideas that people hold about those technologies across different historical periods.