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the significance of visual form tuesday april 24th 1990 geoffrey f k sauer 30,884 words 207 fisher hall notre dame indiana 46556 219 283-1949

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copyright © 1990 by geoffrey f.k sauer all rights reserved no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical including photocopy recording or any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the publisher requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be mailed to permissions the gs press 4401 the cedars mobile alabama 36608 isbn 9-99-999999-9 the last word in typography library of congress catalog number 99-99999

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to my mother and father.

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table of contents table of contents iv preface v introduction 7 problems with the current approach to typographic theory 8 making use of literary criticism 13 nietzsche 13 my own beliefs 14 history of orthography 16 why study it 16 how to use this knowledge 29 varieties of contemporary typographic criticism 31 antiquarian typographic criticism 33 antihistorical typographic criticism 36 monumental typography 39 critical typographic thought 45 conclusion 55 glossary 59 bibliography 66 index 69.

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the significance of visual form preface it should be pointed out here that the term typographic can refer to two very-dissimilar sorts of analysis when elizabeth eisenstein marshall mcluhan or walter ong use the term they are referring to those characteristics which are peculiar to print-oriented literacy as opposed to those of other media film television etc written versus oral/aural or visual communication this thesis focusing exclusively on print will use a more specific and to my mind richer definition of the term the study of written communication addressing not only the issues involved in print as a `literacy but also analyzing the effects of physical orthography on narrative the shape of letterforms their placement on the page and the disposition created by a text s physical presence within the realm of readers expectations herbert marshall mcluhan s 1962 gutenberg galaxy provided insight into the mechanisms which have historically determined print s role in society but in doing this he used the word `typographic to refer to anything which deals with mass-production of manuscript in short the printing press as an abstract entity his work almost completely avoids discussion of the aesthetic merits or innovations of the look of specific printed texts to center instead on the sociopolitics of mass media elizabeth eisenstein in her comprehensive printing press as an agent of change 1967 continues this use as does eugene provenzo in his 1986 beyond the gutenberg galaxy but their inability/unwillingness to deal with the visual form of a significantly visual medium is substantial and foucauldian analysis can make much of this omission i suggest that in order to do this my thesis must define itself from within a tradition of printers writings rather than from those of historians sociologists or literary critics i will argue vehemently that the writings about typography must incorporate the advances of feminist thought semiotic analysis poststructural and deconstructive criticism and feel that within a few years can certainly make contributions to their discussions elizabeth eisenstein s writings are really for the most part outside of the realm of printing discourse more historians texts than printers as is apparent in her tone and conclusions 1 she argues in the preface to her most substantial work that the significance of printing on europeans has been so vast that it has seldom been addressed adequately but that this magnitude makes it a very necessary area of research.2 but she remains a historian examining what she considers to be a primarily historical phenomenon or rather phenomena since she rightly argues that printing as a discipline is so vast that `publishers cannot accurately be incorporated within any single rubric or stereotype but if one were to suppose that typographers writings constitute a discourse of their 1 the title of her two-volume twelve-hundred page thesis is the printing press as an agent of change this is important because it demonstrates that her focus will be on the social and historical effects of printing on western society preferring explanations of historical causality to semiotic analysis rather than publishing or printing research it is a sociological or anthropological one 2 eisenstein elizabeth the printing press as an agent of change vol 1 p xi v.

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the significance of visual form own in which the interests of physically composing words on the page play an important part in the construction of popular understandings of literature and textuality then research like eisenstein s though helpful in its own right can to be put to another use during the long period this work has been in research i have incurred more than an undergraduate s share of scholarly debts the recommended readings and bibliographic advice of jim and ava collins have been invaluable their commentary on its various revisions have made possible its final form for the guidance he has given me since introducing me to the field of literary criticism in the first place the insights anecdotes and overall support i should also like to thank joseph buttigieg and for their continued support and encouragement to place my ideas in print i thank my mother and father vi.

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the significance of visual form introduction the mode of presentation of a text is in many ways crucial to the sorts of messages it can convey literary theorists have investigated diverse categories of this `mode a term which already begs definition for over two thousand years for aristotelian analysis the `form of a piece refers primarily to its structure stylistic elegance being achieved when the elements in a work resolve themselves without extraneous clutter formalist and more specifically new critical literary theorists extol what monroe beardsley calls textural form the feel the tone imbued by the author as craftsman michel foucault s work analyzes discursive forms the difference between varied media and genres and the ability of discursive regularities to circumscribe a work s scope before it is begun this treatise will address a different sort of formal quality one which has coexisted with the three above yet not addressed by literary critics due to peculiar historical circumstance yet in the past five hundred years this fourth mode has evolved as substantially as any other and affected readers in ways comparable to those above the fourth formal essence is a work s visual form the tone imbued by the actual look of a document the greatest single reason literary criticism has neglected typography the study of physical placement of words on the page should be clear the author has historically seldom had a direct role in production of the work the publications of the mainz printers gutenberg fust and shoeffer were of classical church or community texts one famous example being gutenberg s 42-line bible of 1455 the first book printed in the west publishers initially paid no royalties and the emerging industry at first proceeded in this way all across europe the first book printed in english was william caxton s 1477 dictes and sayings of the philosophers in italy the humanists began by publishing latin classics notably jenson s 1470 edition of poliphilus and from the fifteenth century authorial presence has never been indispensable to the publication of a work for examples one may cite the posthumous first folio of shakespeare s plays 1623 pepys diaries morris s chaucer etc but as a result the publisher has been excluded from the `creative characterization of writing assigned the mere role of `necessary evil or `practical businessman instead of being integrally placed in the presentation of art to its audience until recently the work of such typographic historians as elizabeth eisenstein have been considered very marginal and outside the scope of `literary criticism but such work can certainly be helpful in a historical sense for instance when eisenstein powerfully refutes common stereotypes of publishers she points out in her 1967 the printing press as an agent of change that a look at the rich assortment of characters in publishing demonstrates the craftsman/businessman dichotomy though traditional to be nevertheless simplistic and inaccurate and in turn an understanding of the production and distribution of texts may indeed be important to analysis of artistic works themselves 7.

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the significance of visual form in the history of print some authors have directed the visual form of their own works from ben jonson s supervision of his first printing one can cite numerous examples william blake s and e e cumming s poetry the drama of g b shaw the prose of lawrence sterne william morris mark twain john barth and countless others indeed it should be possible to examine the relation of writer to his or her manuscript s production farther back in history than 1455 geoffrey chaucer s humorous letter to his scribe listed in anthologies under the title `to adam demonstrates this possibility but the reason my thesis will argue type becomes a significant issue today are that sophisticated visual controls possible with word processing and desktop publishing having expanded rapidly in the past ten years are today a commonplace means of composition when the computer and laser printer were first combined to produce high-quality near-typeset design visual form was still far from the author s control but if every word processor provides typographic autonomy i.e sufficient quality for authors to publish themselves then literary criticism must address the issues that creative use of visual form begets problems with the current approach to typographic theory one significant difficulty with a literary criticism which does not account for the significance of visual form is the that typographic critical thought arguably underestimated to this day plays a substantial part in popularly defining what exactly `the book is what reading and consequently literature is for what audience is to read it how it is to be regarded as popular distraction `true center of culture etc typographic criticism has existed just as literary criticism has though both are relatively modern inventions as `disciplines nevertheless publishing s discourse has to a tremendous degree determined the character or identity attributed to printed works historically publishers have seldom been scholars with a few notable exceptions such as aldus manutius or stanley morison many instead followed gutenberg s model that of pragmatic tradesman-specialist the upshot of this can be found in that the term `publisher today evokes images of businessman not craftsman or artist elizabeth eisenstein in her comprehensive scholarly analysis of print as a historical agent speaks of the sixteenth-century humanists `centering of the printer s role in scholarship insofar as [illustration or translation decisions entailed consultation with professors and physicians print dealers painters translators librarians and other learned men it is not surprising that printer s workshops served as cultural centers in several towns printers were in the unusual position of being able to profit from passing on to others systems they designed for themselves they not only practiced self-help but preached it as well 3 typographic writings of the last five hundred years largely as a result of the sixteenth-century coincidence of publisher and editor have created for typographic specialists a very clear role of authority and the resulting conception of self demonstrated in printers writings through the 3 eisenstein elizabeth the printing press as an agent of change vol 1 pp 87-88 8.

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the significance of visual form centuries has clearly been that of `expert with the sovereignty or at least independence of scholarship and intellect fostered by neoclassicists and achieved by the romantics printers turned their expertise inward into editing and type-setting master-printers became unchallenged didacts in a discipline of their own one consequence of the rift between printing and scholarship has been that the lore of publishing the history and documentation of publishers attitudes and opinions consists almost exclusively of aphorisms and sage advice about details without a coherent critical whole much in the manner of `self-help books or `how-to manuals but no one has coordinated a criticism of this state of affairs because typography in its definition as the artistic arrangement of text in print has never in history been as accessible as it is becoming in the 1990s the advent of `desktop publishing implicates amateurs of all descriptions in what had been a sequestered craft without the institution of apprenticeship in which youth gains experience from the teachings of their accepted master to the thousands of adult `initiates learning typography today the contradictory wisdoms of printing will very likely seem unreasonable yet the creation of a new `reasonable set of rules based on scientific principles to the exclusion of tradition sounds little better spurious at best too like the angry dogma of bauhaus design resuscitated rather than rethought the solution which will result from an influx of a decidedly postindustrial and postmodern vitality will very likely entail the inclusion of a postmodern typographic theory yet to be coherently articulated indeed this is a feat under way at present as can be noted from fragments of typographically-aware criticism including the recentlyreleased 1989 typography by lacoue-labarthe and jacques derrida there can be little equivocation that writings for the profession of type-founders and compositors maintain a tradition of didacticism virtually-unbroken over the more than five centuries of print from its earliest days the discourse of discussion of letterforms has adopted imperatives and tones of advice to young newcomers albrecht dürer worried in print about the future of his profession as early as 1535 in his of the just shaping of letters he speaks slightingly of amateurs and novitiates entering the world of lettering because of the renaissance of manuscript copying from mainz and rome and complains that these `young men without any artistic training whatever are not aware of the central secret of type design which he goes on to describe.4 the most definitive patriarch of printing author of the seventeenth-century bible of typography a manual still found in prominent printers bookshelves as late as 19405 was the englishman joseph moxon moxon could hardly be said to be the founder of typographic discourse his guide for printers the mechanick exercises was published in 1683 fully two hundred years after the 4 dürer albrecht of the just shaping of letters r.t nichol trans new york dover publications inc 1965 p 14 5 frederic goudy refers to moxon s text as widespread in his 1940 typologia 9.

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the significance of visual form popularization of the press throughout europe but his writing is representative of dozens of the preserved european printers writings on the continent amazingly as well as in britain the tone is a distinctive one our master-printers care in the choice of good and true shap d letters is no difficult task for if it be a large bodied letter as english great-primer and upwards it will shew it self and if it be small as pearl nonparel &c though it may be difficult to judge the exact symetry with the naked eye yet by the help of a magnifying-glass or two if occasion be even those small letters will appear as large as the biggest bodied letters shall to the naked eye and then it will be no difficult task to judge of the order and decorum even of the smallest bodied letters for indeed to my wonder and astonishment i have observ d v dijcks pearl dutch letters in glasses that have magnified them to great letters and found the whole shape bear such proportion to his great letters both for the thickness shape fats and leans as if with compasses he could have measur d and set off in that small compass every particular member.6 significantly the prose is written in the first person predominantly singular but with more than occasional use of the plural `our master-printers or `we can see moxon conveys his attitudes and opinions along with a description of excellent technique he has observed and this constitutes the whole of a five-hundred page manual in the printer s grammar from london of 1808 charles stower a later london printer pontificates in a similar manner also conflating opinion with technical description the question still remains undecided with many masters as to the most proper part of the business that should first engage the attention of the learner without confusing his ideas various methods are adopted each following the mode he thinks best sorting pie is generally the first employment and afterwards to set it up again which unquestionably gives them a strong insight into the nature of the business makes them acquainted with all the different sizes of type and the method of composing and prepares their understanding for the comprehension of whatever direction may be given them when the are put to the case we shall however follow the method generally adopted which is that of first teaching him the cases a knowledge easily acquired by attention 7 the air of didactic pedantry here is overpowering a character distinctively reminiscent of the pompous dickensian uncle-characters but this printers discourse seems notoriously constant moxon s seventeenth-century mechanick exercises is much the same and the scholars who defined the role of twentieth-century book publishing often appear cast of the same mold eric gill wrote in 1934 the same sort of prattle about current techniques mechanical problems and his disdain for workmen on the type floor not very noticeably different from the earliest printers the first notable attempt to work out the norm for plain letters was made by mr edward johnston when he designed the sans-serif letter for the london underground railways some 6 moxon 7 in joseph mechanick exercises on the whole art of printing p 24 clive ashwin ed history of graphic design and communication a source book london pembridge press 1983 p 68 10.

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the significance of visual form of these letters are not entirely satisfactory especially when it is remembered that for such a purpose an alphabet should be as near as possible `fool-proof i.e the forms of the should be measurable patient of dialectical exposition as the philosophers would say nothing should be left to the imagination of the sign-writer or the enamel-plate maker in this quality of `foolproofness the monotype sans-serif face is perhaps an improvement the letters are more strictly normal freer from forms depending upon appreciation and critical ability in the workman who has to reproduce them 8 the contemporary designer by the time he or she achieves the status of professional has accumulated such a store of thesecontradictory wisdoms and without recognition that they are juxtaposed that it will be difficult to demonstrate to them the feebleness or at least inadequacy of these `commonsensical beliefs this weakness of typographic criticism has never been widely apparent and only becomes so today as the established publishing `experts such as jan white or clifford burke attempt to explain publishing conventions to a mass audience of novitiates part of the problem is one new to publishing a creation of the twentieth century in eighteenthcentury europe the printing press had been the instrument of mass media the incarnation of `popular pandering as elitist literary circles termed novel-publishing but in our own age with film television and music more easily accused of promoting what allan bloom can call `hedonistic pleasure-seeking typographic criticism finds itself a bastion of the old order this creates an uneasy alliance between desktop publishing a movement which popularizes and massdistributes written communication and the now more conservative traditional book publishing the ideology of this stance can easily be found in the manuals produced today to introduce initiates to desktop publishing the amalgamation of sage axioms in even the most erudite of these texts can be traced back almost verbatim to typographic critics of self-contradictory visual theory the argument could be made that none of these maxims are assimilated in any substantive way unless they are adopted into the holistic framework of designer s `self the most glaring anomalies of modern typographic criticism concern the role of tradition in the formation of contemporary aesthetics jan white in two passages from graphic design in the electronic age exemplifies the conflicted mandate facing publishing today he argues in the introduction to his manual of typography that `desktop publishers today do not know the timeworn established rules of a craft with a proud and dignified history 9 yet in the same paragraph he also contends that s why we must go back to the basics because the wonders of technology are nothing more than tools for use to use for the same old purpose of human communication that will remain constant no matter what wonder-machine produces it 10 8 from eric 9 white 10 ibid gill s essay on typography also in ashwin p 246 jan graphic design in the electronic age a manual for desktop and tradtional publishers p 2 p 2 11.

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the significance of visual form his paradox is simply this white wants to argue in the modernist fashion that aesthetic design should follow function no matter how why when or where it is produced but as a representative of established typographic authority he feels also compelled to belittle the new `amateur typographers and can only do this by privileging a knowledge of history and tradition a second conflict arises from the question of how prominent the craftsmanship of a text s production should be whether `transparent subtly below the level of conscious awareness or `opaque flamboyant calling attention to itself beatrice warde demonstrates how difficult this can be for modernist typographers who must reconcile the conflict in that they certainly view their work as worthwhile and important yet also somehow admit it to be only a conveyance of ideas rather than a container `type should be invisible she argues in a famous parable but also if the `tone of voice of a typeface does not count then nothing counts that distinguishes man from the other animals not only notation but connotation is part of the proper study of mankind warde s solution is to create an aesthetic which makes synonymous subtle typography and quality work she appoints typographers the guardians of quiet majesty in the face of advertisers and a mass public which produces only vulgar showy type but her solution is problematic at best in that it only incorporates poorly notions of typographic design as a creative or vital process of which the history of the craft can produce numerous examples desktop publishers will be censured by these specialists time and again accused of mixing incompatible design styles and producing ugly work of being merely eclectic imbeciles but the established printing authorities seem to demonstrate eclecticism and inconstancy within their own indictments in their supportive theory and injure their own credibility and demonstrate the need for a coherent perhaps postmodern typographic criticism david lodge in his 1981 working with structuralism speaks of literary criticism as a pendulum which swings predictably from revolution to reaction every twenty years after a decade of modernist experimentation in literature and design on the continent of europe in the nineteentwenties he demonstrates a literary reaction of simple direct prose in writers such as orwell waugh and hemingway in the thirties 11 graphic design today is of a very conservative turn in serious literary publishing in reaction to the expressiveness which resulted from the popularization of phototype in the nineteen-sixties and seventies but the revolutionary torrent of typographic experimentation which seems likely to result in the nineties from the desks of amateurs clearly appears a nightmare to those writing the majority of desktop publishing `manuals on the market today the writers of which in the tradition lodge terms `antimodernism evoke the solemn and dignified history of printing as an ideal of caution and tradition against which a new generation of typographic experimentation may be defined 11 lodge david working with structuralism p 8 12.

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the significance of visual form making use of literary criticism i hope to juxtapose this `current understanding of type with readings from western criticism in order to present other ways of explaining the significance of print this strategy will as a secondary effect introduce the possibility that literary criticism might be reconciled to typographic criticism and show deeply-ingrained if tacit relations between orthographic form and other sorts of literary style n ietzsche friedrich nietzsche in his essay `on the advantages and disadvantages of history for life defines a sense of history as necessary for human activity he goes on to discriminate between three ways men have used history in the past forms he terms the antiquarian the monumental and the critical the first is characterized by contemplation of lost historical forms admiration of relics to the exclusion of current or vital art in typography the celebration of incunabula as pre-industrial `craftsmanship monumentalism in a similarly erroneous move according to nietzsche sacrifices experimentation to great tradition the third is capable instead of making the strange and the past at one with the near or the present and through the process of assimilation create new and great works 12 nietzsche s critical theory is useful both as a justification of desktoppublishing-related postmodern eclecticism and as an explanation in very useful ways of the relationship between various schools of twentieth-century typographic design my own beliefs nietzsche s ideal `critical typographer would be a writer publisher or designer very of the sort termed `postmodern today the modernist movement of this century most extravagantly in the international school designs of the twenties rejected history in a hope of purging the inequalities and evils of the past this is condemned as a bankrupt or exploded strategy by many authors and artists of today who prefer instead among other things the re-appropriation of evocative images or symbols of tradition combined into altogether new patterns and messages i should like to postulate that if postmodern `quotation and `parody can be used in textual style to evoke images or create an atmosphere then certainly contemporary typography should be encouraged to do the same indeed i should further argue that typographers since the fifteenth century have engaged in this process often it was the british and american formalist `new style typography of stanley morison eric gill and beatrice warde which argued in fact that print should not do this but in a postmodern world with a new appropriative aesthetic that conviction present if tacit in every contemporary publishing house should be re-considered or rejected one could find a tremendous irony of history in that by the end of the 1890s printers like william morris felt they had to fight in order to restore the dignity of book typography from the 12 nietzsche friedrich `the use and abuse of history in thoughts out of season adrian collins trans.volume five of the complete works of friedrich nietzsche oscar levy ed p 9 13.

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the significance of visual form slovenly jumble of victorian advertising and poster-work yet in the 1990s posters and advertising postmodern and technologically-adept design may have to fight to resuscitate book typography from the stagnation which its defensiveness about `tradition and `preservation have imposed i hope to explain why literary criticism must interest itself in this field not because graphic design won t though they won t choose to there is a tremendous vested interest behind current hierarchical structures but because printed literature is defined to some extent by its typography the typographer doesn t have to answer to the public because public consciousness of the discipline is surprisingly low it is the work itself often conflated as roland barthes points out with the author which bears the burden or kudos of innovative magnificent or shoddy composition if the technology of composition places a command of visual form on the writer s desktop a politics of established visual discourses should become incorporated into textual criticism 14.

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the significance of visual form history of orthography why study it spenser and milton wrote their epics the faerie queene and paradise lost in an archaic pseudo-medieval language deliberately in order to create a desired tone visual periods of western history are as distinctive as archaic language and marked by many elements which evoke at least something in even the least visually-aware readers/viewers the title page of shakespeare s first folio bears little resemblance to that of the signet classic s midsummer night s dream signet could have set its title page in a deliberate attempt to evoke that style had they wished to ground it historically in that way typography can be and is evocative and so in a literary age prone to allusion a quick summary of the written and printed word is appropriate while eliot s or joyce s readers today might not need an introduction which reviews his allusions one assumes them to be predominantly well-read and capable of drawing on their own knowledge of literature to grasp subtle meanings and eliot was himself convinced that `poets in our civilization as it exists at present must be difficult 13 but the introduction to a new mode of critical thinking the typographic mode does require such a review greece the greeks employed the alphabet largely to preserve a literary and philosophical tradition by 1000 bc they had adopted a writing system adopted from the phonecians and had begun to transform it to create the model for our alphabet the phonecian system did not satisfy the demands of greek culture it had been used by a pragmatic culture for business transactions and record-keeping not for poetry it had no vowels for example so the greeks created five vowels and renamed the consonants by 403 bc the greek alphabet was standardized athens had decreed an official version of the writing system and it was slowly adopted by the other city-states that alphabet of two thousand years ago strongly resembles the one the greeks use today though the ancients employed no punctuation lowercase letters or spaces between words the letterforms were very primitive by today s standards even in height of pericles s `golden age in athens the character strokes were unadorned straight lines they resembled very much today s `print handwriting style sans serifs with a uniform line weight all around and smooth bowls and arches roman the most important contribution of the romans to our own alphabet was the visual refinement of capital letters those incised on the column of trajan raised in rome circa 114 ad have been called by stanley morison `the perfect expression of a letter they are undeniably the basis 13 from lodge david working with structuralism p 70 15.

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