Readings Due:

• Plato, from Phaedrus (use your browser's search function and read from the following sentence to the end: "Shall we discuss the rules of writing and speech as we were proposing?")
• Dennis Asbaugh, William Gibson, Kevin Begos, Agrippa (a book of the dead)
• The Transliteracies Project (read about the project)

Readings Due:

• Paul Zumthor, "The Text and the Voice" (1984)
• M. T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England, 1066-1307 (2nd ed., 1993): "Technology of Writing," 114-44; "The Literate Mentality," 185-96; "Hearing and Seeing," 253-93 (see Clanchy's plates online; course login required )
• Alberto Manguel, A History of Reading (1996), pp. 41-53, 94-107
• Theoretical and other readings to establish conceptual context
  • Marshall McLuhan, "The Medium is the Message" (1964)
  • Claude E. Shannon, "The Mathematical Theory of Communication" (1948), pp. 3-6
  • Matthew Fuller, Media Ecologies: Materialist Energies in Art and Technoculture (2005), pp. 1-16
  • Ronald J. Deibert, "Medium Theory, Ecological Holism, and the Study of World Order Transformation," in his Parchment, Printing, and Hypermedia: Communication in World Order Transformation (1997), pp. 17-44
  • Paula McDowall, "Popular Culture and the Idea of 'Oral Tradition' in Eighteenth-Century Britain" (2005; manuscript of talk)
  • W.J.T. Mitchell, "Showing Seeing: A Critique of Visual Culture" (1998)

Readings Due:

• James J. O'Donnell, Avatars of the Word: From Papyrus to Cyberspace (1998), pp. 50-63
• Ivan Illich, In the Vineyard of the Text: A Commentary to Hugh's "Didascalion" (1993), pp. 93-114
• Roger Chartier, Forms and Meanings: Texts, Performances, and Audiences from Codex to Computer (1995), pp. 6-24
• Alberto Manguel, A History of Reading (1996), pp. 125-47
• Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe (1983), pp. 34-41
• Theoretical and other readings to establish conceptual context
  • W.J.T. Mitchell, Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology (1986), pp. 7-31 (plus separate handout of pp. 42-46)
  • Johanna Drucker and Jerome McGann, "Image as the Text: Pictographs and Pictographic Logic" (2000?)

Readings Due:

• Roger Chartier, "General Introduction: Print Culture," in The Culture of Print: Power and Uses of Print in Early Modern Europe, ed. Roger Chartier (1989), pp. 1-10
• Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe (1983), pp. 42-91
• Adrian Johns, The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (1998), pp. 1-40
• Roger Chartier, "Publishing Strategies and What the People Read, 1530-1660," in The Cultural Uses of Print in Early Modern France (1987), pp. 145-82
• Theoretical and other readings to establish conceptual context
  • D. F. McKenzie, "The Book as an Expressive Form" (1984) and excerpt from of "The Sociology of a Text: Orality, Literacy and Print in Early New Zealand" (1986), in Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts (1999)

Readings Due:

• Emblem Books
  • Andrea Alciato, Book of Emblems (1531): read a few emblems
  • Cesare Ripa, Iconologia (1593): read a few emblems
  • English Emblem Books (available from The English Emblem Book Project) Read a few emblems from each of the following:
• Geffrey Whitney, A Choice of Emblemes (1586)
• Francis Quarles, Emblems, Divine and Moral (1634)
• George Wither, A Collection of Emblemes (1634/35)
• Philip Ayres, Emblemata amatoria (1680's)
• Portraits of Elizabeth I ( in UCSB Early Modern Center image gallery; requires password)
  • Sieve Portrait (Cornelius Ketel, c. 1580)
  • Ermine Portrait (William Segar, 1585)
  • Armada Portrait (George Gower, 1588)
  • Ditchley Portrait (Marcus Gheeraerts, the Younger, 1592)
  • Rainbow Portrait (Marcus Gheeraerts, c. 1600)
• Ballads in the Pepys Archive (in UCSB Early Modern Center English Ballad Archive)
  • "Anne Wallens Lamentation," Pepys 1.124-125
  • "A Fooles Bolt is soone shot," Pepys.1.178-179
  • Sample a few other ballads
  • "Description of a Strange and Miraculous Fish"
• Secondary Readings
  • Roger Charter, "Reading Matter and 'Popular' Reading: From the Renaissance to the Seventeenth Century," in A History of Reading in the West (1999), pp. 269-83
  • Natascha Würzbach, The Rise of the English Street Ballad, 1550-1650 (1990), pp. 1-27
  • Tatjana Chorney, "Interactive Reading, Early Modern Texts and Hypertext: A Lesson from the Past" (2005)

Readings Due:

• The Idea of Personification
  • William Collins, Odes on Several Descriptive and Allegoric Subjects (1746), plus beginning of "Ode to a Friend on his Return&c"
  • Samuel Johnson
    • "The Vanity of Human Wishes" (1749)
    • "Life of Collins" (1781)
• Picturing Stories, Storying Pictures
  • William Hogarth ( in UCSB Early Modern Center image gallery; requires password):
    • Harlot's Progress (1731/32)
    • Rake's Progress (1734/35)
    • Industry and Idleness (1747)
    • Beer Street, Gin Lane (1750/51)
    • The Four Stages of Cruelty (1750/51)
  • Henry Fielding, Preface to Joseph Andrews (1742)
  • Sir Joshua Reynolds, from Discourses on Art: "Discourse XIII" (1786)
  • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, selection from Laocoon, On the Limitations of Painting and Poetry (1766)
• Secondary Readings
  • Alvin Kernan, Printing Technology, Letters and Samuel Johnson (1987), pp. 3-23
  • Chester F. Chapin, Personification in Eighteenth-Century English Poetry (1955), pp. 52-80
  • W.J.T. Mitchell, Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology (1986), pp. 95-115

Readings Due:

• William Wordsworth
  • "The Ruined Cottage"
    • MS. D version (Feb.-Nov. 1799)
    • MS. B version (selections), plus superadded revisions (March 1798): reading text, facsimiles, and transcriptions (pp. 42-48, 256-81 in Cornell Wordsworth edition of poem)
  • "Tintern Abbey" (July 1798)
  • from The Prelude (1805/1850): Gibbet-Mast and Blasted-Hawthorn "spots of time"
• J.M.W. Turner, view selected paintings in online image gallery (including where possible paintings discussed in the Ronald Paulson essay) (requires course login)
• Secondary Readings
  • Richard D. Altick, The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public 1800-1900 (1957), pp. 81-98
  • William St Clair, The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period (2004), frontmatter and pp. 1-42, 158-85, 235-67, 394-412, 433-51
  • Ronald Paulson, "Turner's Graffiti: The Sun and Its Glosses" (1978)

Readings Due:

• Futurism/Constructivism
  • Vladimir Mayakovsky (poet) and El Lissitsky ("book constructor" or designer), from For the Voice (1923) (requires course login)
    • Frontispiece and Title Page
    • "Our March"
    • "Order No. 2."
    • "And You, Could You?"
    • Selected other pages from book: a | b
  • El Lissitzky, "Topography of Typography" (1923) and "Our Book (1926/27)
• Graphic Design
  • Jan Tschichold, The New Typography (1928), pp. 52-99
• Imagism (all online selections below except for T.S. Eliot require course login)
  • Ezra Pound, "In a Station of the Metro," "L'Art, 1910," "Alba," "Gentildonna," "April," "Heather," "The Jewel Stairs' Grievance," "Fan-Piece, For Her Imperial Lord," "Liu Ch'e," "The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter" (online )
  • T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land
  • William Carlos Williams, "The Red Wheelbarrow," "Nantucket," "Poem," "Queen-Ann's-Lace," "A Sort of a Song" (online )
  • H. D., "Oread," "Epigram (After the Greek)," "The Pool," "Orchard," "Heat," "Storm," "Sea Rose" (online )
  • F. S. Flint, "Beggar," "Fragment" (online )
  • Richard Aldington, "Lesbia," "Epigrams," "Images," "Evening" (online )
  • Amy Lowell, "Wind and Silver," "The Pond," "A Lover," "A Year Passes," Irradiations VII" (online )
• The New Criticism
  • Archibald MacLeish, "Ars Poetica" (1926)
  • John Crowe Ransom, "Wanted: An Ontological Critic," from New Criticism (1941), pp. 279-316
  • Cleanth Brooks, "The Heresy of Paraphrase," from The Well Wrought Urn (1947)
• Secondary Readings
  • Barry Seldes, "Sensibilities for the New Man: Politics, Poetics, and Graphics"
  • William Pratt, "Introduction" to The Imagist Poem, pp. 19-44
  • Johanna Drucker, The Visible Word: Experimental Typography and Modern Art, 1909-1923 (1994), pp. 91-104, 238-47
  • Jerome J. McGann,"How to Read a Book," in The Textual Condition (1991), pp. 101-28
  • Friedrich A. Kittler, "Introduction" to Gramophone, Film, Typewriter (1999) (orig. pub. in German in 1986), pp. 1-19

Readings Due:

• Born-Digital Works
  • Ed Falco, Self-Portrait as Child with Father (1999)
  • Olia Lialina, My Boyfriend Came Back From the War (1996)
  • Talan Memmott, Lexia to Perplexia (2002)
  • Vispo (sample some of the "visible poetry")
• Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, Dakota (2002)
• Noah Wardrip-Fruin
  • Screen (2002-5):
    • About the work (.pdf)
    • Quicktime videos of work
  • Talking Cure (2002), About the work (with images and Realmedia video)
• George Legrady
  • Making Visible the Invisible (2005), About the work
  • Sensing Speaking Space (2002), About the work
• Print-Based "New Media" Works
  • David Carson (samples of graphic design work, 1980s-90s) (course password required)
  • N. Katherine Hayles (designer Anne Burdick), Writing Machines, (2002), pp. 4-33
  • Mark C. Taylor and Esa Saarinen (designer Marjaana Virta), Imagologies: Media Philosophy (1994), covers, front matter, pp. 1-13, endpaper
  • (Also review Dennis Asbaugh, William Gibson, Kevin Begos, Agrippa (a book of the dead) )
• Secondary Readings
  • Jerome J. McGann, "The Rationale of HyperText" (1995)
  • Lev Manovitch, The Language of New Media (2001), pp. 18-48, 218-28
  • Rita Raley, "Interferences: [Net.Writing] and the Practice of Codework" (2002)

Readings Due:

• Nicholas Dames, "Wave-Theories and Affective Physiologies: The Cognitive Strain in Victorian Novel Theories" (2004) (requires on-campus machine or UCSB proxy server)
• Jerome McGann, "Rethinking Textuality" (2000)
• Alan Liu, "Transcendental Data: Toward A Cultural History and Aesthetics of the New Encoded Discourse," Critical Inquiry 31 (2004): 49-84; also available online (requires on-campus machine or UCSB proxy server)
• The Transliteracies Project (read about the project)