Author Archives: Mario Escamilla

Final Project – Marginalia, a Historical Witness

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Introduction

Throughout the vast majority of cultures in the world societies have taught to read the history of time periods through the content of a book and other various forms of text. Reading history came from the many different ways of text/content which ranged from articles, books, newspaper, and even social media. This, however, is no longer the case since there have been more and more ways to read/record history not only through content, but literal physical forms as well. Marginalia, being one of those forms, exemplify the idea of how a society can view the margins of a book and read the time periods associated with it. Marginalia is a time traveler that lurks underneath our noses every time someone decides to open a book and read the scribbles on the margins. Looking at margins from the famous 1554 Renaissance rhetoric Latin book Rhetoricorvm ad C. Herennivm libri IIII / incerto avctore. Ciceronis … / corrigente Pavlo Manvtio, Aldi filio or also known in English as the, Four Books of Rhetoricians to C. Herennius / by an uncertain author. Cicero’s … / corrected by Paolo Manuzio, son of Aldus can show us the various different histories associated with the book. Understanding margins grants the people access into a hidden inventory of history in how a reader would respond to the book, how academic institutions would react towards marginalia and how important the book was to societies at the time. Looking at it from not a personal perspective but rather analytical is crucial to the process because the assumptions made towards why the marginalia exist in the book cannot be accurately pinpointed/represented correctly.

How the Aldine Press Indirectly Influenced Marginalia

First and foremost, analyzing the format design behind the Latin book’s margins are critical to knowing why they helped shape the books history and how its content are viewed. Aldine Press was the publishing company for these gorgeous sixteenth century books during the Renaissance period and they were responsible for the wide margins in most of their published books. Although it is argued by many scholars of different time periods, most have agreed that Aldine’s innovative decision to include wide margins in their revolutionary Octavio books changed how people interacted with the content itself going forward into the future. “This change in format subsequently shifted reading from an activity that bound one to a lectern or desk, required to hold up the book, into a newly portable pastime that readers could practice anywhere… In Univ’s copy we can see evidence of how the book’s previous readers have engaged with the text, as they have added manuscript marginalia throughout the book”(Univ of Ox). So, not only were they reformatting the design of the book by creating it smaller to fit the hand, but it also allowed for people to engage with the book even more than before. People were now engaging with the book from the comfort of their home, outside of it, at social events and more which further adds on to the list of histories that marginalia can carry with the book. Add this with the wide margins of the text and there’s a whole recipe to have an entire conversation about rhetorics for a good hundred pages.

Marginalia as a Multifunctional Tool

This design in format allowed for marginalia to flourish in many different ways for readers to use. Not only could it be used as an archive for history, but also a way to communicate with various time periods. Annotations, markings, drawings, signs, summaries, text, highlighting, underlining all add multiple layers to what marginalia can be and what it can show. It can show the history of how society changes the way marginalia is used and how it evolved to the needs of a society or institution. It can also show how some societies were potentially silenced if what is shown are white pages. Marginalia not only does this but also allows for readers to act as time travels, interacting with other notes and texts of different people from various time periods. Writing something in today’s book will be considered history in the next twenty years if you look at the margins of that book. Marginalia in itself, is a type of archive and one that should be carefully treaded with because of how powerful it is.

Digital Marginalia’s Importance

While this project is related to the physical marginalia it would be foolish to not briefly touch upon the power of digital marginalia and how it has evolved as well as shaped its own history. Early in the semester of class, there was a discussion and website of digital footnotes and how they exist overtime so long as they were kept alive on a website or server. This is the key difference between physical and digital marginalia which is their preservations are astronomically different in comparison. While the uses of both marginalia are the same, digital marginalia is at a higher risk of being ephemeral since things run on required exterior resources such as online servers, electricity, machines and hardware. Physical marginalia in books have existed for centuries and there is proof by seeing the various different copies of literature that have existed hundreds and hundreds of years ago. While digital media/marginalia are more fragile it can be argued that it is beyond more accessible than physical literature marginalia. Websites will allow for all footnotes, comments, and questions to be shown as a clickable pop-up which is really neat and honestly, revolutionary. This type of feature allows for various different minds from around the world to chime in, create conversations, lead with great questions that make the reader wonder about the content more. Their date and time stamps are even shown on the footnote when viewing them on the website or reading which is not possible at all on a physical book unless you write in the time, and date.

The Renaissance Scholars and Societies View on Marginalia

Furthermore, the margins added by the Aldine Press and other publishers were never explicitly mentioned as a purposeful design, but the assumption can be made that they were inviting the reader to write back to it or rather reflect any knowledge during the sixteenth century. The Renaissance period for example, were actually very fond of marginalia in texts whether it be for storytelling books, academic books, articles, and even health documents. An example of this were Venetian’s death register system in which they would make iconographic images related to the person death in the margins which would then affect how the Venice Health Department would push their agenda of what was a risk and not. “Marginalia were an integral part of Venice’s civic death registers, facilitating the scrutiny of certain causes of death, as well as allowing the Venetian Republic to promote its public health agenda and to monitor demographic change”(Bamji 3). Society saw how the Venice death register was affected by marginalia which then affected how they consumed that information; it is clear that society and higher up officials didn’t denounce the extra commentary on all subject matters which affected how the content was read in general. Another institution that was open to marginalia were academic universities; they would often encourage students to interact with the content of the book so long as the commentary was effective and added more to the conversation rather than make it more confusing.

To continue, a very well-known professor/humanist and close friend of Aldo (creator of the Aldine Press) was Giovanni Battista “Egnazio” who would often add to the margins of many books whether it be corrections, annotations, or even extra information. “His close association with Aldo himself and his scholarly collaborators in editing texts, in correcting, annotating, explicating, indexing, and the like, gained for Egnazio the reputation for industry and learning which Erasmus generously acknowledged”(Ross 539). While Egnazio does not explicitly state that marginalia should be done in every book. He is indirectly sheding light on it by showing all his markings and Erasmus even promotes it which further adds on to the notion that many academic scholars in the sixteenth century welcomed marginalia with open arms. It was a practice that was commonly done in all books even in private books so long as the information was suitable and that it was not randomly made up to interfere with the content. Many scholars of this time period looked at marginalia as an art form and something that should be respected rather than oppressed.

Not only was Egnazio an indirect force for promoting this usage, but so was Italian humanist Niccolò Leonico Tomeo who felt the need to draw a verdant branch next to important passages as well as write short summary next to it. “Eleonora Gamba also attributes this specific drawing to Tomeo, describing it as ‘a wavy leafy twig (or a garland) to signal longer notable passages’ (‘un ramoscello frondoso e ondulato (o ghirlanda) per segnalare i passi notevoli più ampi’)” (Sherman). Tomeo is widely known throughout Venice for his illustrious verdant branch which people recognize who it was immediately upon seeing them. Tomeo has written and drawn marginalia in all his works so much so that even his private printed works of his have his iconic verdant branch on it. While society sees that many scholars, professors, and humanists talk about marginalia they were never against this idea as well as authoritative about it. They viewed it as an intellectual tool that can further enhance the development of conversation for whatever text they were reading.

Close Reading Analysis and Comparison of the Latin book’s Marginalia

Despite scholars using marginalia, this wasn’t always the case for every book created during the Renaissance period. The Latin rhetorical book Four Books of Rhetoricians to C. Herennius / by an uncertain author. Cicero’s … / corrected by Paolo Manuzio, son of Aldus from San Diego State gives the idea that the book may not have been fully tampered with and that it belonged to an authoritative institution or the owner simply did not use it at all. The only thing that is tampered with is the iconic logo of the Aldine Press, which is a dolphin wrapped around an anchor, but the anchor is colored in with a brownish color. When the margins are analyzed though, in this specific copy from San Diego State, it has shown that the margins of the book are practically white blank which can tell the reader an insurmountable number of things. One, the blank pages can signify its history of never being used before in any way shape or form regardless of ownership. If there was no usage of it, it can raise the questions of: Was there a voice of discouragement to not write in it? Did the owners simply ignore it and allowed for it to live a life on their shelves? Was the book never actually studied as much as it was intended for? These are only a few questions that come to mind when analyzing these pages since they look very inviting; it almost feels mesmerizing looking at the blank pages knowing the context of the book. To continue the list of what blank pages can potentially show, it could also show the dark blank history of the book in which things were left unsaid. This only comes to mind after reading about the Shadow Archives book in class and it prompts the idea that history can be left untold which is tragic and sad because someone’s thoughts and ideas were targeted. This would be no different than a draconic figure dictating people to not inscribe in their personal or publicly owned books which is basically showing the dangers of power associated with marginalia and its history.

In addition, when comparing this copy of SDSU’s to other institutions it can be shown that the other copies had actual interactions with various different people. One of the copies that comes from the University of Utah shows that the cover page had markings of some names. Some of them which are “Alexander” on the top of it and another saying “Benedicti de Benesiets” in the middle which allude to the fact that the book had multiple owners who didn’t mind writing their name in it. While the page doesn’t have any more information related to the Latin book, it’s intriguing to see how there is a different copy with names inscribed all over the cover of the page. It goes to show that no matter what time period these books are made, someone is willing to write something down, even something as small as their name.

Offering another perspective, it can be sees that a version of the book from 1579 have markings on it from cover to the first fifteen pages. There are multiple names and letters drawn on the cover of the book with underlines of certain text. Along the text that is underlined are small texts that are either notes, or summaries of the passage they just read. So, by comparing the two copies everyone can see that marginalia is still a prominent concept almost thirty years into the future when comparing the 1554 to the 1579 versions. There is no clear indication whether or not this was a copy used for school or private use. All that is known is that the markings on the book are done by someone or multiple people in which society at that time are still using the same techniques. Nothing else can be said about its markings and when they were done because that would be pointless and adds nothing to the conversation.

Contemporary Marginalia and How it is Viewed Now

Viewing marginalia in today’s time is actually a lot more different than before. Now, more than ever, are books from the early modern period being valued much more than ever before. No longer are people viewing marginalia as a way to devalue a book, but it has found a market meaning that marginalia have found a way to be commodified by current society five-hundred years later. “As part of this critical shift, scribal marks in books have been radically revalued; no longer viewed as defacing prized clean copies, to be politely ignored or washed away, marginalia now increase the value of early modern books at auction and have been subject of a growing body of secondary criticism”(Smith 1). Not only are marginalia being viewed much differently than before, but it has also found a way to make money from auctions. People are now glorifying other people’s notes which is odd considering how a lot of people want to purchase a brand-new book with no markings simply because it is there. Seeing as how the class of books would discuss issues about power, control, and capitalism and how those affects books in general. It begs to question as to how writers in today’s time are now going to write in their books. Will there be an increase in writing since some believe that they’ll be famous enough to sell it for a future generation? What constitutes the marginalia of its worth? It is the author’s notes or the way they wrote their notes.

Upon further investigation, marginalia are still present within current pedagogies of the world and the United States. Most people have come to the conclusion that marginalia add more to the conversation of the book rather than devaluing it. Educators are now giving their two cents as to how marginalia help students focus more and actually learn more about the concept, they are studying which is a huge bonus. “However, in
educational contexts where students are interacting in class with their peers and a teacher, there is a significant potential in developing more comprehensive theoretical and empirical approaches to grasp the role of Visual Marginalia in the teaching/learning process”(Dario, Lund, Tateo 3). Three educators from the same university spoke about the benefits of marginalia and how it actually helps students grow which is something different compared to the Renaissance period. People during the sixteenth century wouldn’t outright tell you to start using marginalia which is very interesting when there is a complete opposite in today’s time. It goes to show you how conventional techniques change over time from people’s opinions and how society values certain mechanics in their socio-cultural era.

Concluding Thoughts

In conclusion, marginalia is a fascinating tool that allows for readers to view the history of a book through its margins and see how that social time period viewed literature and other topics. The margins even though they are used mostly for good purpose, can come with some despicable things like the silence of certain people’s history. It is not necessarily needed to go read-up hundreds of documents to learn the history of something. Sometimes it just takes a deep dive into the white pages of a book that have been scribbled with. Marginalia is very powerful and honestly something that should not be trifled with so easily. It can show us the many different histories through its margins, and it can show us that the margins are an easy segway to manipulate information or to silence someone from sharing their take. Blank pages may refer to various things such as draconic behavior from institutions, to simply being ignored for the sake of being ignored or someone truly held the item as a collectible which is entirely possible. Overall, viewing the history of the Latin book’s margins showed that the Renaissance period did appreciate critical commentary over many different books and that it wasn’t something that was frowned upon from various humanists and scholars. Comparing that to today’s standards of marginalia, one could safely say that it is still being accepted with the slight difference of it becoming a commodified item. Marginalia will forever be one of the worlds most underappreciated tools/lens for history viewing and hopefully, one day, it receives the respect it so rightfully deserves.

Works Cited:

Bamji, Alexandra. “Marginalia and Mortality in Early Modern Venice.” Renaissance Studies, vol. 33, no. 5, 2019, pp. 808–831. White Rose Research Online Marginalia and mortality in early modern Venice

Dario, Nadia, Kristine Lund, and Luca Tateo. “Mapping Visual Marginalia in Educational Contexts: A Model for New Types of Self-Regulation of Learning.” Proceedings of the 16th International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS 2022), July 2022, Hiroshima, Japan, pp. 250–257. HAL Archives, https://hal.science/hal-03915350.

Jackson, H. J. “Marginalia as Intimate Contact.” Library: The Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, vol. 24, no. 3, Sept. 2023, pp. 318–333. Oxford Academic Leonico Tomeo’s Marginalia: Manuscript and Print in Sixteenth-Century Veneto | The Library | Oxford Academic

Sherman, William H. “What Did Renaissance Readers Write in Their Books?” The Margins of Texts, edited by H. J. Jackson, The Library, vol. 6, no. 2, 1984, pp. 141–178. Venetian Schools and Teachers Fourteenth to Early Sixteenth Century: A Survey and a Study of Giovanni Battista Egnazio on JSTOR

Smith, Rosalind. “Marginalia as Texts: Early Modern Marks in the Emmerson Collection at State Library Victoria.” Parergon, vol. 41, no. 2, 2024, pp. 133–159. Project MUSE Project MUSE – Marginalia as Texts: Early Modern Marks in the Emmerson Collection at State Library Victoria

University College Oxford. “The Aldine Press & Its Printing Innovations.” University College Oxford (Univ), 22 Nov. 2023

Final Project Proposal

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I wish to continue working from my mid-term paper since I chose an object that I believe will help my essay. I plan to do an analytical paper on the margins of the Latin Rhetoric book since its margins can serve as a segway/guidance into the importance of its existence and how it can help me craft other arguments.

What I would like to try and discuss are the significance of margins and how those margins showed the life/identity of a book. The reasons for markings or no markings can be dependent on many factors, and I wish to work on something along those lines. Marginalia are something that has gained my interest overtime since it was introduced in class and it is something I wish to further do more work on.

I would greatly appreciate any feedback, thank you!

Bookishness

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This week we read Professor Pressman’s Bookishness: Loving Books in a Digital Age Intro and Chapter 1 and honestly, very fascinating and intriguing. I know we have discussed bookishness in class before but I feel as though this introduction and first chapter made me understand it even more and honestly, I see myself as a bookishness person and I never realized it and I also never realized how much we truly do fetish this object. I also never realized that our deep love for books also change how we craft the book like its physical aspect which is what professor Pressman talks about in her work. “Bookishness affects literature not only at the level of content and story, but also in form and format.”(Pressman 22). This sentence made me remember about our times in special collections where we would see a lot of great books that didn’t really LOOK like books. We saw how someone made a story with a can, as well as a copy of Dracula no more than maybe half an inch big and wide as well as a constellation book that folded into pyramids which are 3D shapes. We as a society love this object so much that we are willing to break the rules of how a book should be created physical as well as written “appropriately” because changing the formatting and format of a books content is a huge deal and is something that should not be overlooked at all. Content is important, but we must ask ourselves as to why our author created this book the way they wanted and why did they decide to format the content into weird formats. Format and formatting is something that has interested me from the start of class because I have read countless books where authors tend to let their creativity run loose with formatting. I always found it “unformal” as a child when I read books with those formats and I often labeled them as books not worth reading since they became silly in my eyes. Seeing it now though, its creative liberty and freedom of expression which I think is beautiful and something that should not be overlooked which is ironic considering its a physical aspect in which you are constantly looking at when reading.

Looking back at my life, I remember reading pop-up books, but never really asked myself as to why it was created that way or rather; how someone was obsessed with books so much that they wanted to literally bring it to life. Books are great and seeing how humanity is obsessed with them(me too) I cant wait to see what people are going to share later down the line!

Shadow Archives

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After reading The Lifecycles of African American Literature, I was very much intrigued because I always wondered how much of people’s work were never stored away or kept. The chapter goes on to tell us that simply pushing away other people’s stories and not archiving them or let alone acknowledge them; creates this erasure of the person as well as their identity, culture and of course, their work. When you purposefully do not include people’s work in archives you are damaging and controlling the flow of information as well as the history. This thought stuck to me so much after reading this quote from the chapter, “We nevertheless journey to black authors’ special collections to “search amongst the fragments of life unlived,” hoping to map out the counterfactuals that history refused to accommodate.”

The quote really stuck out to me because I remember in my journalism class a few years ago we read stories of black authors that got purposefully shadowed by the city they lived in. We also read newspaper stories about how small towns were caught lying and changing the history about how they treated black authors. That class and now this have been the only times that we have ever discussed about black history and stories being shadowed by people. It honestly bothers me a lot about people would misuse the archive to purposefully erase people. I have been more and more interested in archives because I too also believe that when you archive something, you treat it with care because you still believe for it have some life even though we “discard” them because they are “dead”. (2)

Overall, I learned a lot more about shadow archives and what authors were blocked off from society who didn’t get the recognition they truly deserved. Archives are very much important, but it is more important to document the “correct” information and I quote correct because whoever is the one archiving the information; they are labeling it with their bias. All and all, a lot of things to see and bring up to light, so that stories, people and history are not taken away from society.

Worries of the Digital Archive

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After reading The Book History of Archival Record by Katherine Ode and Roger Osborne, I can safely say that digital archives are a double edge sword. It is so powerful because it has the ability to archive anything very easy, but it can also be taken away easily and have their original meaning/history erased. They go in to explain that representing one digital record for every copy of a book is simply not enough and dangerous for our history. “The danger also exists that a single digitized record will be considered sufficient to represent all versions of a work (regardless of manifestation and physical characteristics, such as marginalia and other page markings). (233)

We must also understand that there are benefits to the digital archive in which time is cut short, and we are able to process more information faster into the archive. It saves everyone time, money and hassle, but it also erases the physical history of what it is. The physical aspects are beyond crucial as they teach us a huge piece of history from the book’s life. Of course, you can add descriptions of its physical aspects on the digital archive document, but it’s not the same as having it in your hands to inspect and analyze correctly. The history being erased is now another worry that I have about digital archives because my only worry about them before was the fact that you need a license to access most digital media. These digital licenses are not ownership licenses which allow for companies to pull away any digital media whenever they want which is terrifying. While I do believe that digital archives can serve us great purpose; I do believe that we should find ways to preserve the physical history of whatever book is being talked about. Representing one piece of work would essentially silence and erase many voices about how they treated their copy of the book. This is something that ultimately worries me but makes me wonder how we will tackle it.

While I am worried about how digital archives will act in the future, I am very much open to the idea of how they can still benefit us as a society in any way that wouldn’t hurt our history.

Digital Media, A Screen and Page

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After seeing the video, A Screen and Page I honestly thought it was really neat and rather interesting. I have always heard of augment reality and how it can help with a lot of things, but I do think this is pretty smart. The computer glasses read a “QR” like code which are hieroglyphs that the computer reads and then a text pops up which tend to be poems, short stories and such which I find very accessible, yet not as accessible.

I say that it is accessible, yet it isn’t because not everyone can afford augment reality glasses with a computer that is able to run the software properly. I also find it very ironic how we still need to use a book in order to have this screen and page thing to work even though society is doing their greatest efforts to go fully digital. It reminds me of previous class discussions about how technology is always looking to better itself and make itself new but always having to rely on physical book aspects to maintain its identity and proper use. Examples such as bookmarkers still being used in digital media, highlighting, annotating, circling and such. I do think the concept is really interesting and intriguing.

A Screen and Page is fascinating because it begins to make you wonder as to how this piece of literature is classified. The formatting, structure, and such are all experimentally done well and it goes to also show that literature in general is experimental, and I do believe we should play around with it more. Like our discussions and how Pressman mentioned in previous classes, there is nothing stopping you from creating a book however you want. Having this kind of mindset has me excited to see other various forms of digital media and how we interact with it as well as to how maybe one of us can create a neat book that changes how we perceive books in general. My only scare and complaint about digital media is how will AI play a part in it all and if people use AI to write their stories, then who do we call the author? The person who put the prompt into the machine, or the machine that pumped out all the words and ended up calling it a “story”? Many interesting questions and conversations to have around digital media and why it is important in today’s time.

MIDTERM – A 16th Century Renaissance Beauty

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Part I.

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Many of the books that I encountered during our visits to special collections were interesting and very much fascinating, but not as fascinating as the 1554/60s Latin text, Four Books of Rhetoric addressed to C. Herennius / by an uncertain author. Cicero’s/ revised by Paulus Manutius, son of Aldus which translate from its Latin name Rhetoricorvm ad C. Herennivm libri IIII / incerto auctore. Ciceronis … / corrigente Pavlo Manvtio, Aldi filio. One of the oldest if not the oldest Latin-based text that talks about rhetoric and how it was designed to help students create a more powerful speech for themselves. It is a four-part book in which is part talks about a specific rhetoric technique that can help shape your thoughts and emotions as you talk to someone. The author is claimed to be Ciceronis, but there are claims from people saying that he only simply added specific parts of information and that this is simply a compilation of works.

The book is small around 5.5 inches length with a width of 4 inches which deems it as an octavo formatted book and that tells us that this book was designed for more personal use and easier portability. Its cover has been replaced a few times, and we can see that from not only the different color scheme, but also the spine which has multiple different textures with different colors that do not correspond to our cover here. There is also a bit of writing on the bottom of the spine, but I was not able to confirm nor make out to what it was, but I did find it interesting how we are still able to see some of the spine’s lettering regardless of its readability.

The only damage and tear that the outside of the book had was mainly on the spine and we can see it from the top of it where there are 2 different types of materials being used which is most likely animal hide over a pasteboard or piece of wood. The bottom is flaking quite a bit which starts to show the wood like material used for its spine and cover.

How is the spines condition doing? Well, honestly, not too great as the spine will start to crack if you open the book too much which made it difficult to fully open and examine the book, but it is very understandable as to why we cannot open it fully. Due to it being a book that talks about how you can master speech, craft persuasion and such; it’s no wonder many people used this book back in the day and its worn-out spine is the clearest clue as to how many times it was opened and used.

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As for writing or markings within the book, there seem to be only writing numbers from the SDSU special collections library which makes sense, but there is one really interesting thing that I cannot wrap my head around. That is the fact that one of the owners decided to color the publishing logo’s anchor orange/brownish which can be seen on the first page of the book when opening it. There are also really dark circles with heavy ink next to the logo as well as another hint of that orange on the top of the page as well. As for illustrations, that is quite literally the only one which is Aldine Press’s logo who are a famous publishing company known for enjoying and reviving classic literature from Greek and Latin stories as close to their original form and storytelling so that modern audiences can enjoy them. Essentially, the cared about persevering books and keeping it authentic to the source material so much so that you knew you had an official copy from them because the book would not have a stench. Speaking about it having a stench, we of course at SDSU have an official copy, and I did confirm that the book does not have a bad stench; in fact, it has a rather dirt like smell to it, but nonetheless, it goes to show how companies cared about preservation because this book is almost half a century old and it does not stink at all!

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The book is also bounded by hand using a thread to sew between the pages and the spine. Aldine Press was known for their mixture of technology and hands on creation in which the print was being pressed on the paper while the rest of the book like its cover, and spine were handled by hand. Not only would they be bounded by hand, but the company would allow custom covers to be ordered. Sadly, this one has gone through many different renovations so we will never know if the owner ever ordered it in a custom way or if it just remained with the normal cover that all the copies had.

Part II.

The most interesting thing about this book is the fact that its margins are more than an inch, and the text itself is literally 60% of the pages size. You would think that the page would be filled with letters, but no, its most margins taking up the space which is neat because I would personally want a book this small for its accessibility and I don’t think I would have assumed that it had this much marginal space. It almost seems as though the text is inviting the reader to join the conversation and talk with it, which is so interesting because this is a book that teaches people how to talk in a more critical way.

I could not open the book fully, but there were multiple pages where there were book worm sightings. From the very beginning of the book to the very end, and we can see that the book worm really did dig through a good number of pages. Other than dirt, water and similar stains, book worms were often the hallmark of this book’s “blemishes”, and I think that’s pretty nice because it goes to show how the owners took care of it and how great the material is to a degree. There are other editions of the book in which they have some of the four copies inside the book or all of them such as this one right here. There were none that had a translation inside

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As opposed for the copy being modified or have any writing marks on it. There seem to be none and the only “markings” I could find were just corners of the page folded which seems as though someone was reading it and decided to “bookmark” it in a way so that they may continue reading it at a later time.

The text is a Latin rhetoric book that teaches students how to argue, deliver speeches better, have better communication in general. It was widely used during the Renaissance time period and was often regarded as the book to use in school to teach to students. Considering that this is one of the oldest texts in Latin, we must also remember that this is also one of the earliest books that talks about rhetoric which makes it an extremely valuable piece of work for that time period and for the future.

I also do believe that the margins reflect a rather personal use for this book since it is a book about self-improvement in a way. The margins being more than an inch wide is what caught me by surprise because with a small book you would not want the margins to be that wide. You would want the text to fill the page and perhaps be a bit bigger so that you can read it clearer on the go. Ultimately, I can see students reading this book when going to school or simply having it on them to study one of the four books since this one book.

One final thing that really fascinated me from this book was the formatting and structure of certain pages where the text seems to just take its own form sometimes. I couldn’t make the correlation between the formatting and the content itself, but I found it rather beautiful and mesmerizing to look at which fits the standards of the Aldine Press where they would want to make their texts correspond to beauty itself.

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Google Document if pictures do not load: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WA-LfcTbBIUQa-FYXQ1VbLDSQPTHxJKcNq0qOWEd2aw/edit?usp=sharing

The Hidden Power of the Interface

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After reading the final chapter in Borsuk’s “The Book”, I was captivated by the idea that Borsuk talks about in how we need to start viewing the interface of the page and how we as a society interact with it. Never in my life would I have imagined the interface of a page as a “crystal goblet” in which the desired information can be shown to you easily due to the accessibility and utility that the interface has. “A good interface, according to human-centered design principles, is like Warde’s crystal goblet: a transparent vessel which we access information we want”(198). Borsuk highlights the importance of how we can use the tool and view it because it is something that we never really had interest, nor have we ever thought about it on that level. We are always concerned with the content, but never with the interface and how that may alter how we the readers view the text.

Physical book’s interface not only allows us to interact with the text and content itself, but with the concept of the interface itself in which we can also add information. Essentially, we are learning how to read the system of the interface at a closer level than usual. Considering how we interact with physical books, I found it intriguing on how we use e-books and try to replicate that same interface interaction from the physical books.

Another quote that stuck out to about how we interact with physical books and e-books is, ”To change the physical form of the artifact is not merely to change the act of reading . . . but to profoundly transform the metaphorical relation of word to world”(203). Going from physical to digital changes everything about how we as the reader interact with the artifact itself. Yes, it may be showing the same letters, words and content, but it is no longer using paper and that in itself already alters how the text should be viewed. See as how Borsuk mentions how it changes the metaphorical relation, this sentence reminded me of last week’s class discussion on how digital text is essentially code which is HTML and it is just a bunch of flashing lights. At its core, that’s what the artifact is and how do we the reader interact with that?

A Forgotten Art

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Unlike a canvas in the art world; the sheet of paper is not a respected piece of art form and also a forgotten one. Mak shows us how true this is when explaining how we as a society have been using paper for essentially for over two millenia, and we have never really looked into the piece of paper itself. That we have always looked past it and perhaps, we may have read the page to quickly (literally). “In our haste to establish a history of the book, we have read the page too quickly. The page has remained a favored spaced and metaphor for the graphic communication ideas over the span of centuries and across different cultural milieux – Yet the page has become transparent, disappearing in its very function”(Mak 8). Mak is telling us that we as a society have never appreciated paper and what it has done for us even though its our preferred choice of space to share our imagination. It is indeed more than just a container in which ideas can be woven into it and that more is the history in which we often forget about quiet often. As Mak states in the quote, we constantly associate drawing and writing on a paper which is its function, but never saw past its function to truly learn about the material and history of the paper. Pretty ironic considering how we are never taught about the history of paper even though we constantly use it or see it almost every single day of our lives.

I too, am a person who never really paid much attention to the page. I always viewed it as a place to explore one’s imagination, but its physical aspect was something I never took into thought. Which is crazy considering how I grew up knowing the differences between the material of paper, but never really the why its using that specific material. Mak and Borsuk’s ideas of looking past the content and looking into the physical form of these art pieces reveals to us that we as a society are starting to lose the real history of some important things because we are blinded by the power of its function.

More Than Meets The Eye

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After reading Borusk’s chapter three for this week’s reading, I found myself extremely intrigued on how they discussed the idea of “the book being just more than an object. The book as I’ve come to understand from this chapter is that books can manifest whatever idea it wants depending on the author and the fact that you’re able to encapsulate that idea into a “book” is what makes the book such a dangerous tool and more importantly, a vulnerable one, but not for the reasons one might have expected, like myself. “Susceptible to decay, their power to spread ideas makes them vulnerable to censorship, defacement, and destruction, particularly motivated by ideological and political difference”(Borsuk 179). We can see that the idea of how the book functions or rather what it is capable of encapsulating makes it a dangerous tool in the hands of the wrong person. The irony of how the chapter later describes how books can withstand harsh weather, hand oil from human hands, the numerous times of picking up, opening and closing then putting back on the shelf which wears it down, but cannot withstand how it can be used as a weapon for both politics and the capitalist market. The book is able to withstand so many different types of physical attacks yet its most vulnerable piece is its concept and not really its physical form.

Understanding how society uses the “idea” of a book is crucial to understanding why we use it as a tool or weapon for either power, monetary gain or to push an ideology as mentioned early. It also blows my mind reading this section and tying it in with last week’s and precious weeks class discussion where we talked about censorship in books and how it has essentially always existed. How trusted people were able to add footnotes, write in the margins and such where the information could be changed or altered made me really think about how they weaponized this tool for themselves. In fact, I am also now thinking about marginalia is also used as a tool because of its concept in which you can write within the text.

Overall, we must look past the content of the book and understand its ideological concept. It is not a vulnerable or dangerous tool because it HAS certain information or content, but rather because it is a vessel in which it can show ideas and concept in whatever way shape or form that the author wants for their audience.