As I looked at the beautiful illustrations accompanying your brilliant essay, I was struck by how different the medieval sense of beauty and artistic expression is from that of our own age. The illustrations are complex and sophisticated, with swirls and weaves that follow defined patterns (the Fibonacci series?) and with elements that represent both nature and humanity. What an incredible difference to the simplistic artistic forms of our current era.
I was also struck by the fact that all the material in these amazing volumes was produced by a stylus of one form or another in a human hand. Through history, that was how all art and literature was created. I wonder if there is genetic code for humans to create with a pen or stylus in hand. How have keyboards and screens changed the style and content of what we are all producing?
Our tools definitely affect the product. It’s a fascinating question as to how. One thing I sometimes think about: Even in scholarship of just 50–75 years ago, the cited literature tends to be far slighter than today. That’s only only because there was less literature to cite—which is part of it—but because the Internet and finding tools like search engines have changed our ability to access gobs of literature for our research.
The art of typography, the designing and setting of typefaces, really continued the work seen in the Lindisfarne Gospels, of making the message come alive through the text. I perceive individual letters as having personality and gender - a form of synesthesia called ordinal-linguistic personification. For me, the text of any book is 'alive'.
But a poor choice of font and spacing, like a font that is narrower than it is tall or inadequate spacing between paragraphs - faults found in many self-published books - can strangle the message. Even in online text, font and spacing will make a difference. The design of Garamond or Helvetica, etc. may seem more utilitarian than artistic, but in reality, it takes an artist's instinct to set a readable font.
Absolutely. I’ve done just enough typesetting in my day to know it’s easy to screw up. Elegant type is a thing of wonder—that’s part what imparts the life to the words!
Before then, it was more like the modern day. Papyrus was useful. Also fugitive. Any book not copied within a century of its being committed to papyrus was lost to rot except in the rarest of circumstances.
Parchment is much longer lasting. Parchment can still be read a millennium after writing. One can go all out on it.
Wonderful piece Joel! I came across a facsimilie of The Lindisfarne Gospels at a bookbinder's in my hometown Basel last year. He allowed me to leaf through some of the pages - it was simply magnificent!
As I looked at the beautiful illustrations accompanying your brilliant essay, I was struck by how different the medieval sense of beauty and artistic expression is from that of our own age. The illustrations are complex and sophisticated, with swirls and weaves that follow defined patterns (the Fibonacci series?) and with elements that represent both nature and humanity. What an incredible difference to the simplistic artistic forms of our current era.
I was also struck by the fact that all the material in these amazing volumes was produced by a stylus of one form or another in a human hand. Through history, that was how all art and literature was created. I wonder if there is genetic code for humans to create with a pen or stylus in hand. How have keyboards and screens changed the style and content of what we are all producing?
Our tools definitely affect the product. It’s a fascinating question as to how. One thing I sometimes think about: Even in scholarship of just 50–75 years ago, the cited literature tends to be far slighter than today. That’s only only because there was less literature to cite—which is part of it—but because the Internet and finding tools like search engines have changed our ability to access gobs of literature for our research.
The art of typography, the designing and setting of typefaces, really continued the work seen in the Lindisfarne Gospels, of making the message come alive through the text. I perceive individual letters as having personality and gender - a form of synesthesia called ordinal-linguistic personification. For me, the text of any book is 'alive'.
But a poor choice of font and spacing, like a font that is narrower than it is tall or inadequate spacing between paragraphs - faults found in many self-published books - can strangle the message. Even in online text, font and spacing will make a difference. The design of Garamond or Helvetica, etc. may seem more utilitarian than artistic, but in reality, it takes an artist's instinct to set a readable font.
Absolutely. I’ve done just enough typesetting in my day to know it’s easy to screw up. Elegant type is a thing of wonder—that’s part what imparts the life to the words!
Before then, it was more like the modern day. Papyrus was useful. Also fugitive. Any book not copied within a century of its being committed to papyrus was lost to rot except in the rarest of circumstances.
Parchment is much longer lasting. Parchment can still be read a millennium after writing. One can go all out on it.
Scripture reading has declined in many churches in modern times. We have used some good choral reading arrangements though.
Wonderful piece Joel! I came across a facsimilie of The Lindisfarne Gospels at a bookbinder's in my hometown Basel last year. He allowed me to leaf through some of the pages - it was simply magnificent!
So rich!