'Fishers' Craft and Lettered Art' provides editions, English translations, and analysis from social, cultural, and environmental perspectives of the three oldest European extended tracts on fishing. Richard Hoffmann discusses the history of fishing in popular culture and outlines the economic and ecologic considerations needed to examine and understand the fishing manuals. Hoffmann further explores how continental fishing traditions were conveyed from oral craft practice into printed culture, and proposes that these manuals demonstrate a lively and complex interaction between written texts and popular culture. The tracts are presented in their original languages - Spanish and German - with facing page translations. Close attention is paid to original setting, functions, and possible range of readings, with detailed explanatory notes to help modern fishers and historians.
Includes original texts and English translations of 'Wie man fisch und vögel fahen soll' (1493), 'Tegernseer Angel- und Fischbüchlein', 'Dialogo que agora se hazia...'.
Author(s): Richard C. Hoffmann
Series: Toronto Medieval Texts and Translations, 12
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Year: 1997
Language: English
Pages: 420
City: Toronto
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
ABOUT THE CITATIONS AND ABBREVIATIONS
PREFACE
Introduction
The origins of angling?
An English version
Continental fragments
Listening for ordinary voices
Popular oral culture
Literacy in medieval Europe
Vernacular literacy
Cultural effects of print
Writing along cultural margins
Economies and ecologies
Eating fish
Regional fish communities
Aquatic habitats
Food webs
Notes
1. The Heidelberg Booklet of 1493 and the Market for Information
The making of a how-to manual
From 1498 to 1493: The historian as detective
Environment and economy along the Rhine
Technology and culture in Köbel's booklet
Voices of popular experience
A veneer of learning
Magic, popular and learned
Empiricism
Curious consequences of print
Printers and their products
Uses of print: High culture
Uses of print: Popular culture
Notes
2. 'How to Catch Fish' [Heidelberg, 1493]
Introductory note
Text and translation
Notes to the translation
3. A Collection of Popular Wisdom from Tegernsee Abbey
A scribal artefact
Fish dinners for monks
Date and connections
In regional popular culture
Peasant society and economy
Speaking of experience
A family of 'oral texts'
Alpine and Danubian ecologies
With hook and trap
Angling tackle and techniques
The feathered hook
Traps
Whose methods?
Notes
4. 'Tegernsee Fishing Advice,' ca 1500
Introductory note
Text and translation
Notes to the translation
5. Literary Performance and the Fisher's Sport in Basurto's Dialogo
Fernando Basurto's literary art
Service and reward
Shared knowledge
Two characters debate hunting and fishing
A literary dialogue
Characters
Hunting vs fishing
The didactic tract within
Local knowledge
Spanish angling techniques
Qualities of mind
Notes
6. Fernando Basurto 'Dialogue between a Hunter and a Fisher' Zaragoza, 1539
Introductory note
Text and translation
Notes to the translation
7 Letters, Craft, and Mind
Forms and functions of early writing on fishing
Simple recipes, memoranda, and tracts
Ordered treatises, private and public
Written forms and social purposes
The fishers' craft
Ecologies, near and far
Techniques
Ways of thinking
Sources of power and knowledge
Information and idea
Reflection
Texts, contexts, and beyond
Notes
Epilogue: Looking Back to England
Notes
APPENDICES
1. Some Fishes of European Fresh Waters
2. Previous Modern Editions of and Commentaries on the Fish-Catching Tracts
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
