The effort of utilitarianism and maximum efficiency can be recognized in the mechanization of hand writing. Before printing we had handwriting, such as Calligraphy. Calligraphy offered the opportunity for the scribe to experience writing, sometimes beautiful writing as evidenced in the ancient books during our Bancroft field trip. The practice of Calligraphy offers the experience of the feeling of pride in achieving this art. The endeavor of a manual practice of writing rather than a mechanized practice, offers the opportunity for the best personal achievement of a beautiful letter and/or word on paper. It seems, however, this experience was changed with the advent of printing. Printing no longer offered that experiential opportunity if one chose to continue writing by hand.
Elizabeth Eisenstein brings up the issue on page 12, "Calligraphy itself was affected. Sixteenth-century specimen books stripped diverse scribal "hands" of personal idiosyncracies. They did for handwriting what style books did for typography itself; what pattern books did for dressmaking, furniture, architectural motifs, and ground plans."
There is a lot to be said for mechanization, it standardizes things leveling the playing field for everyone, a sort of point of reference from which anyone picking up a printed page can relate to; with this nascent technology of printing, is it possible to transfer the emotion of writing in longhand into the experience of printing? Is printing less personal?
Thank you,
Blanca W.
Blanca, glad to see this lengthier and more focused post! It sounds like the Bancroft visit and the readings on print culture really excited you. You've picked up on an important theme, which we can trace through McLuhan, Eisenstein, and others, namely the impact of typographical standardization on human cognition and social structure. We should try to avoid making sweeping generalizations (of the McLuhan flavor), and to think of all of these changes in their historical context.
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