I am going to lob a broad question at you and invite you to make it specific and relevant to your own investment with print culture as a stream of literary studies.
1) Why, to paraphrase Mark Bland, should the "appearance" of text matter to us as modern critics of Renaissance literature? What can it tell us?
2) Some of you may have seen the fairly recent excellent documentary on Helvetica font. Feel free to speculate on how the history of black letter might be an equal study in the development of the early modern world as Helvetica is to the modern.
3) Why, do you think, Sidney's *Arcadia* was published in pica roman when all the other romances of the late 1580s were in black letter?
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ReplyDelete... bad day ... seems I can't distinguish between 'Post' and 'Preview.'
ReplyDeleteFont styles, I think, had some political and historical significance in the sixteenth century.
Blackletter (or Gothic) was an early form of typeface that attempted to emulate calligraphic script. It was also, I believe, a common typeface used in the German (and hence Lutheran) print industry. As such it became associated with protestantism. 'Roman' font -- although easier to read (and I suspect more economic, from an ink consumption point of view) -- may have been viewed as having associations with Catholicism.
Bland says that by 1600 plays were set in 'pica roman' and prose romances in 'blackletter'. This might suggest that it was more economic to use the former in 'low-return' projects such as playbooks and emphemera. The use of blackletter in late 16th century printing of romances could involve an element of nostalgia, I suppose. These stories were often set in the 'romantic' past and an older-fashioned font could add to the reading ambiance, perhaps.
As to why Arcadia was printed in pica roman, I can only speculate that it was for ease of reading (including proof-reading) more than anything else. Cost wouldn't have been a factor and perhaps the religious associations were losing their strength by then. Bland does say that the 'more elegantly printed books' used a roman typeface and presumably, the Countess of Pembroke would want to honour her brother's memory with a good-looking, easily readable and elegant text of his work.
Feather mentions that (roughly a century before the Arcadia) a romance was the first book printed in English (15) and that Caxton’s interest in printing romance and other vernacular works led to the printing press coming to England. Similarly, according to Mark Bland, the transition from black-letter to roman typeface as the more frequent type used in vernacular printing can be tied to two romances, the works of Sidney and Spenser (“Appearance” 107). These works influenced the printing of plays and poetry (107, 113). Once again, romance is at the fore – and Bland implies that the shift in the printing of plays and poems is based on emulation as much as practicality. I wonder how the printing relates to the way these texts were understood. Does the typographic shift suggest that romance was understood as innovative, rather than conservative (ahead of its time)? Or was the typography an intentional reaction to critiques of romance as old-fashioned (and Catholic)?
ReplyDeleteI am interested, as well, in the relationship between typeface and orality. In “Appearance,” Bland notes, “italic was used as the principal font for composition in order to convey the orality of the text” (99-100). The gesturing toward spoken word makes the adoption of roman in playtexts interesting. Poems and prose are written forms and while the stories could circulate from written to oral story (Watt), the forms do not gesture toward orality the way something such as a ballad would. However, plays are performed forms, depending in great part on oral delivery. The association between plays and poetry through roman typeface could underplay some of that orality (asserting authorial control?). Perhaps the shift in printing is a precursor to the later transition between playwrights as craftsmen to playwrights as author that Jonson promotes, as he publishes his Works.
In addition to font styles, the size of the books also had a significant impact on what type of reading the book was intended to provide. According to Bland, the quarto was traditionally “reserved for substantial works of serious intellectual, religious or political import,” whereas smaller formats were associated with “godly pocketbooks … schoolbooks, almanacs and similar publications that were intended to be repeatedly consulted and easily portable” (117). Sidney, as among the earlier English authors to be published in quarto therefore has the weight of his position as author translated literally into the dimensions of his text. However, it is curious to note that the frequency of consultation is also an important feature of textual dimensions. For practical reasons, texts that were to be used often and outside of the home were in formats which used less sheets of paper and were often smaller.
ReplyDeleteOne of the features of the text that I am curious about in terms of the distinction between the more serious intellectual works and the more accessible texts is the inclusion of textual breaks. For example, we would assume that the more serious works would require a more sustained engagement both as a result of the length of the piece and as a result of a lack of textual breaks. I spent a bit of time looking on EEBO at some printings of Arcadia ranging from 1598-1674 and noticed that while the earlier texts are printed using smaller margins, some of the later editions (for example a 1662 printing) use larger margins and more decorative elements. In addition, the 1662 edition includes a biography of Sir Phillip Sidney’s life and death. While the inclusion of a biography of the author certainly would promote the authority of the writer, I am also curious about what impact textual organization has on how we receive the text.
Modern editions include chapter breaks to make the text more manageable, however the absence of these textual breaks may propel the reader forward. Do modern editions alter the way we read the text in a significant way?
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ReplyDelete2.While I must admit that I have not actually seen the documentary referenced here, I am interested in the history of black letter as a reflection of how texts were received, how they informed one another, and what might have been going on in the minds of writers and publishers – issues I hesitantly venture to encapsulate by alluding to a sociology of texts. Bland notes that the 1590s, the decade during which black-letter gave way to roman font in publications of plays, were a period in which “Italianate fashions (and Italianate plays) were becoming popular” (106). Moreover, there was a changing of the guard at the printing presses, as many longtime master printers died or retired and were succeeded by a new generation, who were presumably more conscious of stylistic trends of the period. What seems most crucial amid this diffuse sociological background to Renaissance publishing is that certain works, like those of Spenser, influenced literature not only in terms of content, but even in terms of more outward elements such as form and typography itself. Yet if publishing in roman presupposes what Bland terms a “humanist concern,” then the elitism we’ve noticed in Sidney seems to be contradicted by his work’s typography. Attempting to distinguish between the print history of a work and its contents in terms of their viability for literary study being decidedly arbitrary in this view, what does this do to our interpretation of the text?
ReplyDeleteBuilding on that word history and Kieran’s post, I’m also interested in the political ramifications of the shift from black-letter to roman at that period of time. On the one hand, Bland debunks the association between black-letter and the German print tradition in favour of a Norman origin (93). But what does it mean for the publications of aristocratic poets like Sidney to veer in the direction of a more continental print tradition at a time when showing oneself to be a good Protestant might be called the sine qua non of attaining privileged position in court?