Notes on the frontispiece as graphical navigational interface

In addition to providing some of the most striking images of the early modern period, frontispieces brought new functionality to the printed book.  The frontispiece of Swammerdam’s Tractus Physico functions as a graphical interface that gives the reader another kind of access into the material of the book.  This navigational device reflects the interests of an emerging group of readers–the early modern natural philosopher–and the need for their reading environment to respond to the particular needs of this group of readers.  The need for objective representation, familiarization with new and, to many readers, strange apparati, and careful representation of physically executed processes provide the impetus for a visualization of the experiment that the tract describes. (On the importance of experimental apparatus and the need for accurate representation to audiences unfamiliar with the apparatus, see Shapin and Schaffer).  It also represents a way into the text that is organized around the logic of the type of material the book contains: i.e. the steps and stages of the experiment.

The reference on the frontispiece to page 40 (at the base of the receiver, to which is attached the pump piston) sends the reader to the corresponding point in the experiment where one finds a more detailed description of a diagram on the facing page, using alpha-labels to correlate the discussion to the diagram.

Similarly, the reference to page 55 (on the surface of the plinth, just above the snails) points to a description with a corresponding, detailed diagram with alpha-labels.

Other features of navigation:

This little book (duodecimo?) of less than 140 pages is fully equipped for referencing. Each of the seventeen short chapters (broken into three sections, numbered from “one” in each) also has numbered sections which enable an internal referencing mechanism, as exemplified on page 27 at the start of §.9, which refers to §.2 and §.4. References within the text to other parts of the text are by paragraph, chapter, and page. At the end of the book there is an outline of each chapter (“Syllabus”) that lists topics and points to the page number where they occur. The errata list, in contrast, refers to page and line.   
  

The frontispiece has not traditionally been ornamental and symbolic, rather functional, and there is something of this tradition represented here.  Some points worth noting:

$          The apparatus merges with the ornamental frame [what is the precise term?].

$          The penes of the two snails intertwine as they look at the date of publication.

The page reference below the snails is to a section (ch. IV §.3) where Swammerdam introduces a discussion of the reproduction of snails which, he discovered, are hermaphrodite.

---

Bibliography:

“Illustrations and their meaning.” Swammerdam’s Science (Webpage)  http://www.janswammerdam.net/illus.html

Shapin, Steven and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump. Princeton UP, 1985. Esp. chs. 2 and 6.

 

Swammerdam, Jan.  Johannis Swammerdamī ... Tractatus Physico-Anatomico-Medicus De Respiratione Usuque Pulmonum: In Quo, Praeter Primam Respirationis in Foetu Inchoationem, Aëris Per Circulum Propulsio Statuminatur, Attractio Exploditur; Experimentaque Ad Explicandum Sanguinis in Corde Tam Auctum Quam Diminutum Motum in Medium Producuntur. Lugduni Batavorum: Apud Danielem, Abraham, & Adrian. à Gaasbeeck, 1667. 

 

Spring cleaning of available topics list

January's going to be a busy month for ArchBook, with some new team members joining the Toronto crew (Jennette and Matt), my ArchBook workshop beginning at the iSchool, and work beginning on a public interface for our image database. Seems like a good time to do some spring cleaning of the topics list posted on the "For Authors" page.

Yesterday I updated the page with a list of topics that are already underway, or which team members have expressed interest in working on. That list is pretty long, which is good, but we need to make the list of available topics is also healthy -- especially now that we're about to solicit a bunch of new entries.

I've updated that list with some new topics that emerged from offline discussions with Richard, Scott, and Rebecca. Defining a good topic is tricky, and I've erred on the side of inclusiveness, figuring that it's best to record ideas before they slip our memories, and then to refine them later. The criteria for a good entry, as I see them, would be:

• the feature has long enough history or range of use to support an entry (as opposed to being a one-off oddity that would work better as a blog post); remember, that history can be one of success or failure, or both
• the feature has what Scott calls "digital potential," in that it can inform digital interface design (including but not limited to e-books)
• the feature's "digital potential" isn't simply that of a cute literalized metaphor, like page-turning animations, but can be connected to a more abstract sense of functionality; for example, bookmarks are a good feature because they point us toward bookmarking as an activity that fits into a bigger picture of discontinuous reading (thinking of Stallybrass's "Books and Scrolls" article)
  
  Note: with the above criterion I'm hoping we can avoid the mistakes that Johanna Drucker warns against in her chapter "Modeling Functionality: From Codex to E-book" in SpecLab. That chapter is essential reading for us. Further in the background here, but also important, is John Unsworth's notion of scholarly primitives -- that's probably not a concept we need to apply dogmatically here, in the sense of matching features up with primitives, but the spirit of that article could help us think about what textual features matter, and why.
  
• ideally, though not necessarily, the feature should be relevant to the work of the other INKE teams; I don't want to confine my students to this criterion, but we should ensure that new entries undertaken by INKE team members meet this requirement

Do these criteria make sense? If not, how should we revise them?

In any case, what entry topics should we add to the list? Would you define any of the existing ones differently? Do you have an idea for an entry that you can't quite put a name to?

The Scholarly Edition: Distinguishing Different Kinds of Notes

One challenge of complex scholarly editions is to represent different classes of information in the apparatus.  The kinds of information might include:

•  representation of the various states and expressions of the text , most commonly variants between editions, or sometimes (usually in the case of manuscripts) authorial or editorial changes within a single text, such as additions or cancellations
• glosses of unfamiliar words
• paraphrases of difficult phrases or passages
• annotations providing interpretation and clarifying references

This information is often provided in the form of annotation attached to the text.  In literary editions, these fall into two general classes: textual notes and comment notes.  For ease of use, it is desirable and often necessary to distinguish these different types of information in the apparatus.  It is especially important to distinguish textual notes from other kinds of annotation.

An example of textual notes and comment notes in a single stream but distinguished by formatting codes:

In this sample (fig. 1) from Theodore Howard Banks’ edition of Sir John Denham’s poetical works (1928), the textual notes are numbered in a continuous stream with comment notes, but they are introduced with sigla that signal their peculiar nature: an italicized number representing the year of the edition, followed by a representation of the variant found in that edition.  In the case of note 18 to the poem “The Passion of Dido for Æneas,” 1668 has “ayrs” instead of “Ayr,” but 1671 and 1684 are as in the edited text.   The first two notes to the new text on the bottom of the page‒“Of Prudence. Of Justice” ‒begin with no sigla, which signals that these provide commentary: in the first note, on the sources of the text; and in the second note, a gloss on the referent of “The Wells” in the first line of the text.

Fig. 1

 An example of textual notes and glosses in segregated streams:

Robert K. Turner’s edition of Thomas Haywood’s two parts of The Fair Maid of the West (fig. 2) uses a separating line and indentation to distinguish textual notes from commentary.   Both are introduced by line number and then a word or string of words from the text, italicized and terminated with a square bracket, to identify more precisely the point of reference.  Again, the textual notes use sigla to identify source texts.  In the case of note 116, “nations” is found in the current edition (“this edn” ) as well as “(Dyce’s notes)” which, as the “List of Abbreviations” tells us, refers to manuscript notes entered by Rev. Alexander Rice in the margins of his copy of the 1631 quarto.  The textual variant “nation” is the reading found in the 1631 quarto, signified by Q.  

Fig. 2

Architectural challenges in prose:

Prose poses a particular challenge for streaming different types of notes because one of the most effective modes for referencing—the line number—is not a natural element of prose structure.   In the case of Brenda Cantar’s edition of Robert Greene’s Menaphon,  two kinds of notes are signaled by two distinct notational structures.   Diamonds in the text (fig. 3) correspond to the notes in the footer, which are essentially word glosses.  Here the keywords are necessary to distinguish the diamond-marked targets in the text.  The superscript numbers (e.g. 90) are reserved for endnotes that provide fuller commentary (fig. 4), although in the running title this commentary is misleadingly referred to as "textual" commentary.

Fig. 3

Fig.4

Works cited:

Denham, Sir John. The Poetical Works of Sir John Denham. Ed. Theodore Howard Banks Jr.  New Haven: Yale UP, 1928.

Greene, Robert. Menaphon: Camilla’s Alarm to slumbering Euphues in his melancholy cell at Silexedra.  Ed. Brenda Cantar.  Publications of the Barnabe  Riche Society 5. Ottawa: Dovehouse, 1996.

Heywood, Thomas. The Fair Maid of the West. Parts I and II.  Ed. Robert K. Turner Jr.  Lincoln: U Nebraska P, 1967.

Varying Complexity in the Table of Contents

In some of its architectural elements, the book's development has been toward simplification.  Take the common table of contents, for example.  In its modern form, it usually comprises a fairly simple correlation of chapter title--sometimes numbered--with a starting page number (fig. 1).  

Fig. 1. Simple representation of "Contents" in Roston, Soul of Wit (1974)

 

In contrast, nineteenth- and early twentieth-century books often contained fulsome and elaborate descriptions and location aids for surveying and navigating its contents.  The second edition of Daniel Rock’s The Church of Our Fathers (1905), for example, provides an elaborate summary of the main points of content in each chapter, keyed by reference numbers to the relevant location in the text.  On the first page of the “Contents,” for example, one gets a detailed itemization of nine major points discussed and numbered as section headings in chapter one, comprising a fairly granular account of its contents.  Supplied with the “part” number (the “first”), the chapter number (“1”) and page number (“18”) one can locate not only where the chapter begins, but also the page on which Rock discusses “The belief of the Anglo-Saxons in Transubstantiation.”   (The header of the page indicates the page number, of course, but also, on the recto page, the part and chapter number). 

Fig. 2. Detailed "Contents" for Rock, Church of Our Fathers (1905).

Fig. 2. Section on “The belief of the Anglo-Saxons in Transubstantiation”
with page numbers of the original edition indicated in parentheses: “(20)” and “(21).”

This book offers another and peculiar (though potentially very helpful) feature of navigating its content: page numbers, in parentheses, marking the page divisions of the original edition of Rock’s text.  Someone (whether Burke in the first edition, or, in the posthumous second edition, the editor or publisher) was very considerate of the reader in providing intelligent representation and location aids to the reader.

Works Cited

Rock, Daniel. The Church of Our Fathers as Seen in St. Osmund’s Rite for the Cathedral of Salisbury. 2^nd ed. Vol. 1. London: John Murray, 1905.

Roston, Murray. The Soul of Wit: A Study of John Donne.  Oxford: OUP, 1974.

The forgotten encoder: Plantin, mise-en-page and some thoughts towards the future

Designers working with digital media, particularly those with an interest in layout, should look to the early modern book for inspiration. Consider, for example, Christopher Plantin's eight-volume folio Polyglot Bible, the Biblia Sacra (Antwerp: 1568-1573). What an amazing feat. First devised by Plantin in 1566, the set was finally completed in 1573. This remarkable multilingual translation, (which is based on versions in Chaldean, Greek, Hebrew and Latin), was supervised by Arias Montano and Plantin’s Bible received royal patronage from the Spanish King, Philip II.

What always amazes me, though, is Plantin’s mise-en-page: remarkable layout, brilliant engravings, and several ancient languages set side by side. How long would it take to set a single page of Plantin’s Bible, and what compositor had the qualifications to do such work? Unfortunately, the compositors of the early modern period almost always go unnamed. Will today's encoders and web designers face a similar fate? Looking back fifty years from now, in 2061, how often we will know who did the work on a website produced in 2011? Perhaps the problem, if it is a problem, will not be whether we can identify the encoders, but if we can find the site. Just a thought….

The two images shown here are taken from the second volume of Plantin’s work. Figure 1. shows a typical opening from Plantin's Bible; figure 2. shows one of five frontispieces commissioned for the eight-volume work. Both the frontispiece and the historiated initials used to begin the different sections of the translation have been expertly handcoloured.

Images come courtesy of the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto. Call # G-10 00137. The Fisher has volumes 2-6, 8 of the Polyglot Bible.

Works Cited

Biblia Sacra, Hebraice, Chaldaice, Graece, & Latine. Excud. Antuerpiae : Christoph. Plantinus, 1568-1573.

Bowen, Karen L. and Dirk Imhof. Christopher Plantin and Engraved Book Illustrations in Sixteenth-Century Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Annotations in Four Scholarly Editions

Among other things, the Modern Language Association considers the following essential in scholarly editions:

1. Explanatory annotations to various words, passages, events, and historical figures.

2. A statement, or series of statements, setting forth the history of the text and its physical forms, explaining how the edition has been constructed or represented, [and] giving the rationale for decisions concerning construction and representation. . . . Statements concerning the history and composition of the text often take the form of a single textual essay, but it is also possible to present this information in a more distributed manner.

3. Appropriate textual apparatus or notes documenting alterations and variant readings of the text, including alterations by the author, intervening editors, or the editor of this edition. http://www.mla.org/resources/documents/rep_scholarly/cse_guidelines

In spite of these overtures to standardized expository annotations, a quick survey of scholarly editions exposes varieties of styles of providing supplementary information.

In some cases, notes are used minimally. Consider, for instance, Albert J. Geritz’s edition of John Rastell’s The Pastyme of People and A New Boke of Purgatory. In his introduction, Geritz offers remarks on the history of the texts, their representation in his edition, their composition, and so on (indeed, all of the editions that I mention here do as much). Geritz does not provide supplementary footnotes in the body of Rastell’s prose; instead, there is a short section of notes and a glossary at the end of the book (fig. 1). Oddly, the presence of the notes and the glossary is not indicated anywhere else in the book. Without superscripted numbers or other marks in Rastell’s text to draw a reader’s attention to Geritz’s notes and glossary, one wonders how useful these tools are.

fig. 1. Geritz's notes

As in Geritz’s edition of Rastell, in their edition of Stephen Parmenius’ writings David B. Quinn and Neil M. Cheshire include annotations, unmarked in the primary text, in a commentary section following the text (fig. 2). However, they also include expository comments in footnotes at the bottom of each page of text (fig. 3). Although expository information is made obvious by the use of footnotes, the annotations in the commentary section would be readily accessible too if they were simply marked in Parmenius’ text in the manner of proper endnotes. Again, indicating the presence of annotations with running numerals in a body of text seems to be a particularly helpful, if not crucial, strategy when offering expository comments to supplement a reader’s appreciation of a text in the manner supported by the MLA.

fig. 2. Quinn and Cheshire's commentary notes

fig. 3. Quinn and Cheshire's footnotes

Jean Robertson improves somewhat on Geritz’s Rastell in his edition of Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia by using footnotes to represent variations between early manuscript and print versions of Sidney’s text (fig. 4). Expository annotations and a glossary are left until the end and are again left unindicated in the text itself. Robertson’s supplementary material is thus divided based on content. However, this division effectively makes the expository notes and glossary less accessible to readers than the footnotes on textual variations between editions. Robertson’s organization of his supplementary information in this manner does not serve the best interests of his readers.

fig. 4. Robertson's footnotes

In their edition of Thomas More’s Utopia, George Logan, Robert Adams, and Clarence Miller offer annotations in more accessible, straightforward manner than the previous three examples do. There is no commentary section or glossary at the end of the book; that is, supplements are not divided based on content. Instead, all expository material is placed in footnotes at the bottom of each page (fig. 5). A range of information is thus made readily available and, significantly, apparent to readers.

fig. 5. Logan, Adams, and Miller's footnotes 

Although annotations and contextual supplements are required elements of scholarly editions, this brief survey highlights the lack of standardization not only in the form but also the functionality of their notational structures. It may seem intuitive, but the accessibility of annotations is a key part of their usefulness.

Works Cited

“Guidelines for Editors of Scholarly Editions.” Modern Language Association. October 2, 2011. http://www.mla.org/resources/documents/rep_scholarly/cse_guidelines

More, Thomas. Utopia. Edited by George M. Logan, Robert M. Adams, and Clarence H. Miller. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Parmenius, Stephen. The New Found Land of Stephen Parmenius: The Life and Writings of a Hungarian Poet, Drowned on a Voyage from Newfoundland, 1583. Edited and translated by David B. Quinn and Neil M. Cheshire. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972.

Rastell, John. The Pastyme of People and A New Boke of Purgatory. Edited and introduced by Albert J. Geritz. New York: Garland Publishing, 1985.

Sidney, Philip. The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia. Edited and introduced by Jean Robertson. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973.

Case study: the shifting form of the table of contents in Judith Drake's An Essay in Defence of The Female Sex (1696)

Judith Drake's Essay in Defence of The Female Sex (1696, formerly attributed to Mary Astell) has no major structural breaks dividing its content into books, chapters, or sections.  Perhaps the author or printer thought the work too short to warrant such divisions.  This lack of explicit structural divisions may account for the absence of a table of contents, though some of the functionality of the table of contents is provided elsewhere.  At the very entry-point of the book, on the title page, the major elements of content are listed (a series of "characters" that are depicted therein--"A Pedant," "A Squire," "A Beau," etc.) along with an indication of the larger framing genre ("In a Letter, to a Lady") to give a summary of what the reader can expect to find inside, but all without page numbers.  The other elements of the book contents in the preliminaries--a dedicatory letter, a preface to the reader, and a commendatory poem on the work by James Drake--are easy to distinguish by their physical form, and they are conventionally placed in the front of the book, so they are easy to locate.  The former two elements also have running titles ("Dedication," and "Preface") to aid navigation.

fig. 1. Title page of Drakes An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex (1696).

In the main body of the book, marginal notes are the only markers of a new section of content (e.g."Character of a Vertuoso" [sic] fig. 2). 



fig. 2 Marginal note marking the start of a new section of content

The one element of the book's architecture that gives an explicit signal of representing "THE CONTENTS" comes not in the form of a table correlating section breaks with line numbers, but rather an index at the back of the book, an example of how close in function these two navigational aids are (fig. 3).  In some cases, these subject headings, like the list of contents on the title page, are marked in the margins of the text (fig. 2).

fig. 3 "Contents" as index

The images in this entry are of a copy in the Boston Public Library and were taken from the Internet Archive: http://www.archive.org/stream/essayindefenceof00aste#page/n7/mode/2up

Works cited:

Drake, Judith. An essay in defence of the female sex:  in which are inserted the characters of a pedant, a squire, a beau, vertuoso, a poetaster, a city-critick &c. in a letter to a lady. London, 1696.