Category Archives: Week 5: Book as Content- Borsuk Ch. 2 and “In the Beginning was The Word”

The Press’s Redefinition of The Book As Content

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Amaranth Borsuk’s second chapter, specifically, “The Body of the Book,” delves into the differences between printed books before 1501 and after. The former was known as incunables. A word used to describe the period just before the commercialization and efficient mass production of ‘books’, a time when each ‘book’ was still unique and still handcrafted to an extent. Today, when a new book is published, we have mass printings of it, and each one is identical in terms of content and binding.The process and end result was more intimate as it was a laborious task and there were many ways in which you could personalize the text and there was this idea of the residues of reading. This also created a strange paradoxical effect with the press and it production of ‘the book’. It created a clear distinction and redefined its terms forever.

Today, when a new book is published, we have mass printings of it, and each one is identical in terms of content and binding. Even more so after ISBNs were created, any two copies became interchangeable. This is the main idea in this chapter: today, the book, as a physical object, is just a uniform, mass-produced text. During the incunable period, printing was still very much in its unrefined, rudimentary form: “Scholars of early modern books make a distinction between a ‘book’ and a ‘book copy,’ since each codex produced from a given print run will be unique in its circulation, history, and materiality.”(Borsuk 74).

The printing process back then was even more intimate too. The wealthy would hire illuminators to personalize their prints further with gold or highly elaborate illustrations, therefore, making the ‘book’ a piece of luxury and a sign of wealth/social status. This made each ‘book copy’ a unique and even archeological artifact with its own unique personal history, “In additon to minute differences in the binding, each book copy will contain marginalia and other residues of reading that adhere to them thanks to their individual history of ownership and circulation”(Borsuk 76). The marginalia and what Borsuk brilliantly calls ‘residues of reading’ perfectly encapsulate an incunable copy as a snap shot of the process in that specific moment and how these ‘residues’ “are part of the copy without being part of the ‘the book.'” (76)

A less obvious point is how the mass proliferation and production of printed copies that were nearly identical allowed for the author’s ideas to spread like never before, but it also inadvertently highlighted everything outside of that printed text. The marginalia, residues of reading, provenance marks, and accretions all became important to these highly annotated/illustrated copies, meaning that the identically mass-produced and plain-looking copies lacked. During the manuscript/incunabula era, each text as a whole was unique; ‘the book’ and its contents were one. But the press redefined the terms of the book, it essentially created the distinction between the content and its container. This allowed for us to think of the book as an abstract piece of content separate from its physical body.

The Book. Chapter two

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When reading this next chapter, the first paragraph really caught my eye. We saw a picture of the girdle book at the end of last class and it stuck with me. “Girdle Books, a popular form among pilgrims in the Middle Ages, continued to be made: with an oversized soft leather cover whose flaps could be looped under one’s belt for easy consultation on the go.” (pg.43) This is interesting to think about or imagine. I would have just put my book in a bag, carried it, or even had a kindle in replacement nowaday. The image of the girdle book stuck with me, this little sack that carried the book around seems unnecessary to me. But I guess everything we have now could be classified the same way, accessories more than necessity. Aesthetics more than need. That’s what our world is made up of, items and things that we can consume or own. This has existed forever, and it has progressively gotten worse: I am not immune to this. I love little knick knacks and collecting things I do not need. I am not sure what that says about me, but it makes me feel better that even in the Middle Ages they were doing this aesthetic with books too. The Girdle itself is like many unnecessary things I own, and it’s interesting to think of how this made books more portable than before. In my mind books had always traveled and moved with you, but I guess when I really think about it this isn’t true, they used to live in libraries of the rich. The Girdle is just another example of this aesthetic obession of the book, and with everything else we now consume, that might not be necessary.

Further in the chapter the rise and importance of Codex books also caught my eye. “As codex books became private items, rather than shared objects experienced publicly, copyists simply couldn’t keep up with demand.” (pg. 43) I keep forgetting the fact that books were something that were shared publicly and read aloud. The image of seeing people on the street reading a novel out loud is foreign to me, that would never happen now. But this is how it all started, and as the codex was created books became private, expensive, and a sign of education and status. Rather than stories being shared in pubs or public places they were being read privately in the home. This is how reading has always been for me, rather than when I was little and my parents read to me, so the fact that this was not normal is intriguing. Reading was related to wealth and status rather than community, so when I really think about it that is true still. Reading is a privilege not everyone has access to. Reading is political, as most things are, and reading is something that is meant to be shared and discussed, but usually it is not. I am really enjoying the new perspective this book is giving me on the history of books but also the history of reading as a political, wealth, or status statement of the past.