Every year around the holidays when people make new years resolutions, I actually take the time to write some of mine down. I make what I like to call one year plans as well as five year plans. One of my favorite things to say is that air or oxygen is free. By this I mean, anyone can say anything they want to say anytime they wish to say it. I always found that committing things down on paper gives words a certain authority even if only for personal value. My little ritual helps me hold myself accountable for what I set out to accomplish every year. It also aids me in revisiting the frame of mind I was in every year I sit down to write these plans.
When reading Hamlet's Tables and the Technologies of Writing in Renaissance England, I couldn't help but think of the permanence of words. Orality, from what we learned can be very powerful in transmitting knowledge. The written word however, has a greater power of transmitting knowledge not only in its content but also in a historical context as well. To go even further, writing utensils also give a certain level of authority. Using pen versus pencil communicates a different message and speaks volumes on the permanence of text. I always liked using erasable ink pens because I felt they gave a more permanent notion of authority than pencils did and allowed for the freedom to erase and replace words without crossing out or scribbling over words when mistakes are made.
Reading Shakespeare and the Book introduced the concept of the author as well as the medium when thinking about the written word. This is where it got really interesting for me considering Shakespeare was written with the intention of being performed. All sorts of things are coming to play here in understanding "books" and the written word.
Not to leave out anything from last weeks readings, I would like to add about the typography pieces that technology allows us to be lazy. This doesn't necessarily mean that it’s a bad things or a good thing. Technology is supposed to simplify life. Maybe we read less elaborate type of printing easier because it’s easier to read. Reading more elaborate print type requires more of a concentration and work. It’s far less practical to use that type of print for everyday life operations. But like we mentioned, it’s a situational thing and when deemed appropriate I think more artistic print type can add to the aesthetics of the text as well as its content.
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Well, Ghyath, I have to agree, generally, people take the printed or written word to be the gospel, no matter how fatuous, malevolent, or unreasonable what is written may in fact be--in fact, there is an old adage about that if I recall correctly, but exactly how it goes, I can not at this time remember.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I can relate to your sentiments about how, if you right something down, it is usually easier for you to stick with it, although I've never been one to make new years resolutions. For me, it is generally an apartment with sticky notes stuck in all kinds of random places.
Oddly enough, seeing as I talk about him in my blog entry this week, your blog entry evoked thoughts of Hitler. I know I need to explain how. As we have both now acknowledged, there is indeed some kind of irrefutable power in the written and/or typed word...but...it was exactly Hitler's profoundly moving oratorical capabilities and proclivities that elicited such illogical and utter devotion from a nation full of reluctant Nazis. What makes this especially odd in the context of what we're discussing here, is that Hitler dictated everything that he ever had in print--including Mein Kampf--he never wrote or typed anything himself.
I have read a number of essays and articles that argue that it is exactly the dictated and spoken qualities of Hitler's oration, that come through in what is in print, that made Mein Kampf and his other printed balderdash, so manipulative and coercive...
Ghyath, I appreciate your connections between all our modern lists and wax tablets. Seeing some of the mundane lists in that article from the 16th c was like a door opening & closing very quickly onto the past. Somehow it seemed more "real" to me than all the old books I've had the pelasure to handle. It's disorienting to think of someone studying our lists today, and maybe even writing a paper on the erasable pen!
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