n Comments on: 1.08 Less Than Folio http://www.humanismforsale.org/text/archives/98 Making and Marketing Schoolbooks in Italy, 1450-1650 Sun, 25 Dec 2011 13:41:49 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: John Vincler http://www.humanismforsale.org/text/archives/98/comment-page-1#comment-207 John Vincler Sun, 06 Sep 2009 04:59:58 +0000 http://www.humanismforsale.org/text/?p=98#comment-207 There is something wonderful about <a href="http://www.humanismforsale.org/text/images_full/1.00_Chapter_One/Wing-ZP-535.P12,-Pub.-Terentii-Afri-Comoediae-in-sua-metra-restitutae,-folio.144v-145r.jpg" rel="nofollow"> this image </a> embedded as it is on <a href="http://www.humanismforsale.org/text/archives/98" rel="nofollow"> this page</a>. The detail here of the comic strip-like illustration at first obscures the text embedded in commentary to which you refer earlier in this section. (The detail image of the “comic” shows the verso only; you must click on this to reveal the whole spread including the recto with the text and commentary.) This immediately calls to mind (for this reader) the meta-critical nature of the text you as author have created: that is a text that opens itself up for comment and critique. While your 21st century text is a dynamic, digitally morphing (not to say living and breathing) thing, the text you refer to is also an example of an earlier interactive project, evidencing a history of interpretation that required thoughtful planning and design to make sense of the polyphony of voices both authorial and critical/interpretive. So much has changed and yet so much stays the same. This brings into sharper focus the messy business of “print culture.” We see the text embedded in commentary (e.g. the recto page of the photo illustration), we can think of the convention of the scholarly footnote, and then we can see CommentPress providing a newer digital model at work here in your text. (The “comic strip” provided in this same illustration, sets up another very different but parallel example.) This reminds me once again that “print culture” is never fully coherent, it can only point us towards the profound role technology plays in the process of interpreting old texts by adapting old or inventing new strategies for creating new texts. This process is never as neat and as linear as it may at first seem. And certainly not every innovation offers an improvement. At this moment of profound change in scholarly publishing and experiences of reading, it is particularly useful to be jolted a bit out of the conventions of the book, so that we just might be better able (or at least differently able) to reflect upon the book in its various and sometimes wonderfully deviant forms. I know I’ve read someone else expressing this same sentiment (I think it was Roger Chartier): Perhaps the computer can provide a site for scholars to better and more clearly examine the nature of the book… There is something wonderful about this image embedded as it is on this page. The detail here of the comic strip-like illustration at first obscures the text embedded in commentary to which you refer earlier in this section. (The detail image of the “comic” shows the verso only; you must click on this to reveal the whole spread including the recto with the text and commentary.) This immediately calls to mind (for this reader) the meta-critical nature of the text you as author have created: that is a text that opens itself up for comment and critique. While your 21st century text is a dynamic, digitally morphing (not to say living and breathing) thing, the text you refer to is also an example of an earlier interactive project, evidencing a history of interpretation that required thoughtful planning and design to make sense of the polyphony of voices both authorial and critical/interpretive.

So much has changed and yet so much stays the same. This brings into sharper focus the messy business of “print culture.” We see the text embedded in commentary (e.g. the recto page of the photo illustration), we can think of the convention of the scholarly footnote, and then we can see CommentPress providing a newer digital model at work here in your text. (The “comic strip” provided in this same illustration, sets up another very different but parallel example.) This reminds me once again that “print culture” is never fully coherent, it can only point us towards the profound role technology plays in the process of interpreting old texts by adapting old or inventing new strategies for creating new texts. This process is never as neat and as linear as it may at first seem. And certainly not every innovation offers an improvement.

At this moment of profound change in scholarly publishing and experiences of reading, it is particularly useful to be jolted a bit out of the conventions of the book, so that we just might be better able (or at least differently able) to reflect upon the book in its various and sometimes wonderfully deviant forms. I know I’ve read someone else expressing this same sentiment (I think it was Roger Chartier):

Perhaps the computer can provide a site for scholars to better and more clearly examine the nature of the book…

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