Very Special Booksin Special Collections, part 3:

what to look at? what to say?

Helene CazesDepartment of FrenchUniversity of Victoria

Describing/identifying books• Why should we describe old books?

– identification (no ISBN)– tracking versions, copies, owners– identifying authors, texts, contexts– checking the integrity of the copy– allowing scholars to identify the book...

• How do we describe a volume?– ...with intent! – for a catalogue? for a literary study of the text? for

the description of a collection? to give a context to an engraving? Which context?

Questions and choices

• The normative description: needed for consistency– unity within the collection being studied,

the catalogue being drawn.– common code for understanding

• The lexique• The components of the description

Why the bibliography?Why the History of the book/manuscript? And the images?

• A pedagogy of the origins: knowing by the making, knowing by context

• A cult of the origins ?• A common language for description, A

common identification• A virtual library before the digital world• A reception in the making

Typography: Mobile characters for a press

A birth in Northern Europeduring the Italian Rinascimento

The spreading of a Revolution: Italy, France, Spain, Belgium...

Conrad Sweynheim and Arnold Pannartz, former assistants of Johann Fust in Mainz

First Italian press in 1464, in the Benedictine monastery of Subiaco

Cicero (1465)

Gutenberg, Johann Gensfleish (1397? - 1468)

- Born in Mainz (Germany)- Prosperous family, tradition of working in

the mint of the archbishop of Mainz- Art of precision in iron works

Mainz, Dietrich III v Erbarch,1439-1459

Trials and achievements: a hero for the historiography

• 1428, travel to Strasburg, tried to print with mobile characters, divulged the idea

• 1448, Strasburg, first printed page: 11 lines

• 1450, return to Mainz, meets Joann Fust (a rich man) and Peter Schoffer (a melter)

• 1450, the “forty four lines Bible” (300 sheets a day, a volume of 641 pages, printed in 10 parts). Bankrupcy in 1455.

A Medieval Invention

Coin punches: G. he carved letter punches as molds for casting quantities of identical type.

Block printing: he joined the type into page-sized galleys to be inked and printed. But unlike wood blocks, the type came apart for reassembling, to spell out any word.

Wine press: it would press pages onto the type (far superior to the old method of rubbing).

Oil-painting technology yielded ink.Metallurgical developments provided alloys. Paper was becoming more available.

Gutenberg’s Bible: a technological achievement, a symbol... and a myth

The first book, but is it a book?A BibleAn Incunabulum

Honorius Augustodunensis. De Imagine Mundi. Nuremberg: [Anton Koberger, 1472?].

Saint Jerome, d. 419 or 20. Commentaria in Bibliam. Venice: Joannes and Gregorius de Gregoriis, de Forlivio, 1497-1498.

The type of Sweynheym and Pannartz was strongly influenced by the scrittura umanistica and bears gothic traces. Considered to be the first roman typeface. The capitals are roman and the lines are spaced more widely than in gothic.

The Invention of the Roman character

J. and W. de Spire, 1470, ItalyNicolas Janson (Mint, France, Venice)Geoffroy ToryClaude Garamond

Nicolas Jenson, a goldsmith turned punch-cutter translated humanistic scripts from a calligraphic expression into cast metal types. 1476

The Gothic or Black Letter

Philippe Granjon, Royal typeface, 1693-1745

Typography is no longer influenced by calligraphy,Caslon Old Face 1734

Aldus Manutius1450-1514

The first book to be wholly printed with the Italic hand was his edition of the Works of the classical author Virgil, which he printed in 1501, the type face having been designed for him by Francesco Griffo.

This revolutionary development enabled Aldus to sell a series of ‘pocket’ classics

DictionariesIndexesTextbooks

“Thesauri”Reference books

The invention of the “book”?

-the title-page-the double page-the preface-the author-the publishing house

-the price-the book seller-the press service...

Both a continuity and a revolution

• The Linearity of History, the a-linearity of notices, contexts, digital editions

• The Stories of Good Books: the common epics with authority, and their perpetuation

• The opened vaults and the common ground?New questions in the digital context:• Preserving? • Copying?• Making sense for the 21st centuryHistory of transmissions, history of receptions• The stories of owners, libraries, collections, provenances,

readers. A history of environments.• The esthetic experience• The collective myths for collective memories