Yay! The fantabulous @anne_goldgar, and the little bear of her avatar in context!

Goldgar is discussing three attempts at ‘overwinteren’ (survive during the winter) at Spitsbergen. To give you a sense of just how wintery that winter would be:

This overwinteren as human experiment:
- try to survive
- asked to keep careful records

Linked partly with commerce BUT: also deeply invested in intellectual transfer. This is very much about observation as developing epistemically category.

. @anne_goldgar is doing some Awesome linking with the rest of the programme of the #LowCountries seminar: @SchotteMargaret and D aniel Margócsy.

https://networks.h-net.org/node/7833/discussions/4674987/low-countries-history-seminar-201920-ihr-london-uk

What kind of knowledge is expected and needed? The question of the Reliability of observation depending on the goal of publisher.

Point of the story is adventure; “is exciting but not excitingly expressed — speaking as someone who read this multiple times”

BUT, ALSO: marketing faith in the venture to find a northern passage and its commercial value.

Stresses that failed endeavours were not without results (despite loss of rich cargo...): gained observations and hope. Utility to the company (&investors): learn how to survive.

Ah, @anne_goldgar, I am going to need your written text to plunder your footnotes: so many shout-outs to cool work by ECRs!

Leiden edition of overwintering: reporting bland facts.

Later Rotterdam edition: amplifies the fights against the elements, adds emotions of sailors. And intended to promote affect in the readers themselves.

Importance of affect in authenticity

- rhetoric: affect audience in mind and body, persuade and move
- art theory: authenticity = vividness (“after life” =\\= life itself = life-like): persuasion

—> adding affect not in opposition to authenticity, but in line with theories

In nexus of knowledge - affect - commerce: different uses of observations.

Commerce: needs observation and detail

Booksellers: need credibility AND affect

That was SO rich, and I am not doing justice to @anne_goldgar’s wonderful paper.

Just read her when it’s published :)

Role of investment in these enterprises and publications:

“Desire for investment not why book published but why it was written.” — “original journal doesn’t stress hardship but stressed ingenuity and how they managed to survive.”

! And: need to get some emotion out of the investors as well: need to be excited to be willing to invest.

Also need knowledge, or you make stupid investments. Knowledge and affect hand in hand.

Cool discussion about how represent ‘a source’ in an edition: how materially show that ‘original source’?

Sometimes: uses different font for source and font for own editorial comments. But not always.

Intrigued? (As you should be!) here’s a #CleverBlogs by @Marjakingma on materials about overwinteren in the BL: https://blogs.bl.uk/european/2015/02/overwintering.html