Body text: Typografi och litteraturens kropp

Kristina  Lundblad

doi:10.54797/tfl.v51i1-2.1723

Författare

Kristina Lundblad Lunds universitet

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.54797/tfl.v51i1-2.1723

Nyckelord:

Typography, materiality of literature, material text, book history, text form, corporeality of literature, ontology of literature, bibliographical theory, phenomenology of literature, Jean-Luc Nancy’s phenomenology of reading, meaning production of form, roman type, gothic type, body text

Abstract

Body text: Typography and the corporeality of literature

In one of his fragments, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg explains that German books printed with roman type, instead of the then default gothic type, always give him a feeling that he needs to translate them – evidence, he says, of “the degree to which our concepts are dependent on these signs”. The article elaborates on this thought. It explores the relation between literature, text (abstract and material), and typography, and argues – by means of bibliographical theory, Goethe’s mother, Jean-Luc Nancy, Roman Ingarden, and a diagnostic comparison between hand writing and digital fonts – that the longstanding, idealistic view, within literary criticism and history, of texts’ ‘content’ as independent of books’ and texts’ materiality and form, obstructs scholars’ striving for understand-ing. Text is not only representation; it is also presentation. Text has form, and the form produces meaning.

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Författarbiografi

Kristina Lundblad, Lunds universitet

Docent och lektor i bokhistoria och har under många år intresserat sig för den meningsproduktion som bokens och andra mediers materialitet och form genererar. 2016 tilldelade The Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing henne The DeLong Book History Prize för studien Bound to be Modern: Publisher’s bindings and the Material Culture of the Book. Hon har tidigare varit verksam som litteraturkritiker i svensk dagspress.