the porous city |
Commonplace books that survive from the Tudor period contain a huge variety of texts, including letters, poems, medical remedies, prose, jokes, ciphers, riddles, quotations and drawings. Sonnets, ballads and epigrams jostle with diary entries, recipes, lists of ships or Cambridge colleges and transcriptions of speeches. Collecting useful snippets of information so that they could be easily retrieved when needed, or re-read to spark new ideas and connections, was one of the functions of a commonplace book. But the practice of maintaining a commonplace book and exchanging texts with others also served as a form of self-definition: which poems or aphorisms you chose to copy into your book or to pass on to your correspondents said a lot about you, and the book as a whole was a reflection of your character and personality.
last modified: 13:10:24 16-May-2013
in categories:Other/History, People/Weblogs
This is Lukas Bergstrom's weblog. You can also find me on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Tech
Storage, Security, s60, Product Management, barcamp, Automobile, Javascript, Development, Web analytics, AI, Energy, Social, Open, a11y, Net, OS, WRX, Crowdsourcing, Medical, Shopping, Data, Business, Audio, Visual, PIM, MacOS, Android, Web, RSS, Collaboration, Hardware, Wearables, Mobile
Other
Feminism, California, Bicycling, Surfing, Boston, Podcasts, Agriculture, L.A., Games, Travel, History, Clothes, Politik, Toys, Friday, Law, Sports, Transportation, Food & Drink, Personal care, Activism, NYC, Geography, CrowdFlower, Minnesota, Berlin, Video, San Francisco, Statistics, Life hacks, Quizzes, Housing
Music
Reviews, Mixes, Mp3s, Musicians, Streams, Hip-hop, L.A., Boston, House, Booking, Labels, Business, Good tracks, Mailing lists, Lyrics, Making, Shopping, Events, History, Videos
People
Exercise, MOTAS, Heroes, Meditation, Vocations, Stories, Enemies, Friends, Languages, Buddhism, Family, Health, Gossip, Life hacks, Me, Subcultures, Weblogs, ADD, Working with
Arts
Spoken Word, Humor, iPad bait, Sculpture, Outlets, Movies, Rhetoric, Burning Man, Animation, Visual, Events, Literature, Comix, Poetry, Desktop wallpaper bait
Commerce
Taxes, Personal finance, International Development, Personal services, Web, Macroeconomics, Non-profit, Investing, Marketing and CRM, IP Law, Shopping, Microfinance, Insurance, Management consulting, Real Estate
Design
IA, Tools, Cool, Data visualization, Algorithmic, Furniture, Presentations, Process, Type, Architecture, User experience, Web
Science
Psychology, Statistics and Data, Zoology, Physics, Networks, Environment, Cognition
Travel
Kenya, Kingdom of Siam, Vagabond '08, Uganda
Comment