Table Of Content

T E X T T E C H N O L O G I E S STANFORD T E X T T E C H N O L O G I E S Series Editors Ruth Ahnert Elaine Treharne Editorial Board Benjamin Albritton Lori Emerson Alan Liu Elena Pierazzo Andrew Prescott Matthew Rubery Kate Sweetapple Heather Wolfe T E X T T E C H N O L O G I E S A History Elaine Treharne and Claude Willan Stanford UniverSity PreSS Stanford, California Stanford UniverSity PreSS Stanford, California © 2020 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper Library of CongreSS CataLoging-in-PUbLiCation data Names: Treharne, Elaine M., author. | Willan, Claude, author. Title: Text technologies : a history / Elaine Treharne and Claude Willan. Description: Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2020. | Series: Stanford text technologies | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCn 2019010215 (print) | LCCn 2019013548 (ebook) | iSbn 9781503604513 (electronic) | iSbn 9781503600485 (cloth : alk. paper) | iSbn 9781503603844 (pbk. : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Communication—History. | Communication—Social aspects. | Communication—Technological innovations. Classification: LCC P90 (ebook) | LCC P90 .t69 2019 (print) | ddC 302.209—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019010215 Cover design by Rob Ehle Text design by Kevin Barrett Kane Typeset at Stanford University Press in 10/15 Spectral CONTENTS Illustrations v Preface ix Acknowledgments xi PART I: CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK 1 Introduction to text 1 Finding and Defining text Describing text What Is the Study of Text Technologies? 6 How to Use This Book 7 Overview of This Book 8 Principal Concepts 9 Intentionality Materiality Functionality Cultural Value / Aura Secondary Concepts 16 Sedimentation Authority Production, Transmission, Consumption Censorship Copyright Consortia Cryptography Contents vi PART II: HISTORICAL FRAMEWORK 33 Timelines 34 Lithography 103 Historical Technologies 38 Minard’s Carte Figurative Writing on Stone 38 Chromolithography Reading for Everyone 106 Chauvet Cave Paintings Babylonian Clay Tablets Newspapers The Cyrus Cylinder Magazines The Florida Ostraka The Spectator Behistun Monument Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language The Rosetta Stone Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie Roman Inscription Charles Dickens’s Writing Japanese Tsunami Stones Readers and Reading 116 Breamore Church The Marsh Library Signs Duke Humfrey’s Library Graffiti The British Library Writing on Cellulose 60 Sound and Image 120 Papyrus The Zoetrope Paper Film Wax Tablets Television Seals Radio Writing on Animal Skin 68 Digital Technologies 126 Parchment and Vellum BBSs and the Well The Hereford Mappa Mundi HTML, CSS, and RSS The Scroll Web 2.0 The Codex Touchscreen Tablets Tattoos Proprietary Content Streams Form and Function 78 Research Questions 134 Manuscript Culture 78 New Text Technologies 134 A Bible Writing Systems 134 A Book of Hours Form 135 An Antiphonal Substrates 135 Voynich Manuscript Jacobite Manuscript Poetry Sample Tools and Materials 136 Bookbinding Trends, Themes, and Issues 137 Woodcuts and Block Printing 93 The Gutenberg Bible William Caxton and Early Modern Printing Protestant Bibles Shakespeare’s Works Contents vii PART III: CASE STUDIES 139 ILLUSTRATIONS The One-Dollar Bill 140 Figure 1. The Chauvet Caves. Thirty thousand The Rosetta Disk 144 BCE. 39 The Cyrus Cylinder 148 Figure 2. Babylonian cuneiform tablet. 2056 BCE. 40 “Hotel California” 152 Figure 3. Cyrus Cylinder. Sixth century BCE. 42 Kelmscott Chaucer 154 Figure 4. Ostrakon—fragment of a letter. Second century CE. 45 PART IV: TRANSFORMATIONS 159 Figure 5. Ostrakon—fragment of a letter. Second century CE. 45 Manuscript to Print 159 Figure 6. Behistun monument. Sixth century Compact Disc to MP3 165 BCE. 46–47 Scroll to Codex 168 Figures 7–9. Rosetta Stone. Second century BCE. 48 Figure 10. Arch of Constantine, Rome. Fourth century Notes 173 CE. 50 Bibliography 179 Figure 11. Duomo, Pisa. Twelfth century CE. 50 Index 197 Figure 12. Vergilius Augusteus manuscript. Fifth century CE. 50 Figure 13. Japanese tsunami stone, Aneyoshi. Twentieth century. 52 Figure 14. Breamore Church doorway. Eleventh century CE. 54 Figure 15. Road sign. Twentieth century. 56 Figure 16. Shop sign, Pisa. Twenty-first century. 56 Figure 17. Graffiti, New York. Twentieth century. 58 Figure 18. Graffiti on church monument. Sixteenth century CE. 58 Figure 19. Graffiti. Twentieth century. 58 Figure 20. Early papyrus. Second century BCE. 61 Figure 21. Early paper. Fifteenth century CE. 62 Figure 22. Watermark on early handmade paper. Fifteenth century CE. 62 Figure 23. Medieval styli. 64 Figure 24. Wax tablets with stylus. Twentieth-century replica. 64 Illustrations viii Figure 25. Medieval seal on a writ. Fourteenth century Figure 45. Diamond Sutra, Cave 17, Dunhuang, China. CE. 66 Ninth century CE. 92 Figure 26. Membrane prepared for medieval Figure 46. Gutenberg Bible leaf. Fifteenth manuscript. Fifteenth century CE. 69 century CE. 94 Figure 27. Hereford mappa mundi. Fourteenth century Figure 47. Caxton’s Canterbury Tales. Fifteenth century CE. 70 CE. 96 Figure 28. Medieval scroll. Thirteenth century CE. 72 Figure 48. The Great Bible, title page. Sixteenth century CE. 98 Figure 29. Scroll close-up. 73 Figure 49. The King James Bible, title page. Figure 30. Medieval manuscript, Codex M501. Seventeenth century CE. 98 Thirteenth century CE. 74 Figure 50. Variant versions of Hamlet. 1603. 100 Figure 31. Medieval manuscript, Cambridge University Library, Gg 1.1. Early fourteenth Figure 51. Minard’s Carte Figurative. 1812. 102 century CE. 74 Figure 52. The Illustrated London News. 1865. 104 Figure 32. Twentieth-century tattoos. 76 Figure 53. The London Gazette. 1705. 107 Figure 33. Tattoo saying “Cariad” (Darling). Twenty- Figure 54. The Penny Magazine. 1840. 108 first century. 76 Figure 55. The Spectator. 1711. 110 Figure 34. Medieval manuscript leaf from a Book of Figure 56. Charles Dickens’s Bleak House. Hours, France. Fifteenth century CE. 79 1852–53. 114 Figure 35. Wilkie Collins’s 1871 manuscript of The New Figure 57. Marsh’s Library. 1707. 117 Magdalen. 79 Figure 58. The British Library. Twentieth Figure 36. Thirteenth-century Bible. 80 century. 119 Figure 37. French Book of Hours. Binding and lost Figure 59. Zoetrope, Leeds Industrial Museum. contents. Fifteenth century CE. 82 Nineteenth century. 121 Figure 38. French Book of Hours. Interior. 82 Figure 60. Still from Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat. Figure 39. Opening of antiphonal. Fifteenth century 1895. 122 CE. 84 Figure 61. Tablet technologies. Twenty-first Figure 40. Antiphonal binding. 84 century. 129 Figure 41. Voynich manuscript. Fifteenth century Figure 62. Front and reverse of a 2009 one-dollar CE. 86 bill. 141 Figure 42. Anonymous, “An Ambodexter.” Seventeenth Figure 63. Detail of the front of a one-dollar bill. 142 century CE. 88 Figure 64. Front of the Rosetta Disk 146 Figure 43. Binding frame. Twentieth century. 90 Figure 65. Reverse of the Rosetta Disk 147 Figure 44. St. Bridget of Sweden. Fifteenth-century CE Figure 66. Title page of Kelmscott Press edition of The woodcut. 92 Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. 1896. 155 PREFACE This book supports any introductory pedagogic or scholarly activity in areas loosely labeled as Bibliography, the History of the Book, the History of Information or Communication, the History of Science, Manuscript Studies, or the History of Text Technologies, and it can be usefully employed in textually based digital humanities work. By care- fully explaining the field, clearly examining terminology and themes, and providing illustrated and pertinent case studies, students and teachers can generate multiple investigations into and debates about how human communication—its production, form and materiality, re- ception, and cultural value—is crucial to any analysis and interpretation of cultures, history, and societies. Our categories and definitions are designed to be tested and evalu- ated. We invite student readers to devise their own categories for the second- and third-level concepts and trends. For those who study the history of text technologies, we suggest that the highest conceptual order is fixed (intentionality, materiality, functionality, and cultural value) and pertains to all text technologies. The second order has some flexibility, but the third order, and others subsumed beneath that, are capacious and can be filled out with themes and approaches specific to the work that each reader and course is doing. As well as providing the basis for ix