ABSTRACT
A law of sixteenth-century studies dictates that its primary documents must be seen and read in their original form. The culture that moves effortlessly between the manuscript and the printed book attends to the shape and aspect its matter takes in respect to what it conveys. Thus as students of the period we cut our teeth in rare book rooms. In the name of seiziémistes we bear more than faint resemblance to anthropologists because our native informants become the books and papers of special collections. Manuscripts, books that essay new typographies and illustrated poems continually elicit and assuage our Wanderlust. Something beyond words comes forward when our eyes caress the page of an incunabulum or an image adjacent to a decorative block framing the margins of a page in a book of emblems. We sniff and inhale the musty aroma emanating from the smooth vellum binding or the pages of an open book. When it piques our nostrils we bless ourselves for sneezing and take pleasure in recalling Montaigne’s opening sentences of ‘Des coches’, an essay that asks why we bid good health to those who sneeze. Such are the immediate and ineffable pleasures we divulge when we commingle with kindred souls in the same settings.
