One of the books we saw on Tuesday reminded me of a video that my AP English teacher showed my class in high school. The video she showed us was very much like what was described in this article. I found many of the books very interesting on Tuesday, but the little green Shakespeare book next to the cellphone R&J (Romeo and Juliet for anyone who didn’t see it) was particularly funny. It highlighted the story of Macbeth in about three or four sentences with some great graphics. I would love to find who makes the Short Attention Span series to look into buying some for myself.

I watched The Making of a Renaissance Book for my lab assignment. The media that stood out to me the most as I watched the video was the music. It seemed to correspond to the relative pace of the work. It also always seemed to be playing as to represent the constant work required to make a book during this time.

The video, like the archives and EPI, was interesting because it created a detailed image of the process. Before watching the video, I pictured how the process looked based on Howard’s book, but the video gave a much more accurate image of the work and detail required to make a book.

The latest visit to the archives prompted me to think about what constitutes literature. Are words necessary to produce a literary work? Such a question never crossed my mind because I had assumed that all books had words, or at least symbols or pictures to convey the author’s message. Lafayette College, however, owns a chapter of Alice in Wonderland that has no words. The book is a collection of colorful pages. No words. No images. No symbols. I am not sure that anyone would be able to tell that it represents chapter five of the book except for the label at the beginning.

According to the dictionary on the dashboard of my Apple computer, literature is defined as, “written works, esp. those considered of superior or lasting artistic merit” or “books and writing published on a particular subject.” The key words here are written and writing, which this book lacked. No common message was conveyed. No story was told. The pages were beautiful and they were art, but I do not think the collection was an example of literature.

Literature is made up of language and language “implies boundaries. A word spoken creates a dog, a rabbit, a man. It fixes their nature before our eyes” (The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature). Did chapter five speak to you or were you as equally perplexed as I?

Because the process of bookmaking was so labor-intensive, owning a book was an example of your wealth and prestige, if you could afford one of these expensive luxuries. Books are directly tied to knowledge, and thus if you owned and were able to read a book, you were considered to be an educated person. Since this ability was not very common in the early days of printing, education was valued above anything because it meant that you had “made it” – you were wealthy enough to purchase, and had the time, to learn to read and actually read a book. It would make sense that this notion of becoming learned would carry into today’s world; that education, and having a higher education degree, seems like the most desirable thing in the world. Even though we now know that people without college degrees can be more successful than people who have a multitude of college degrees, we still strive for academic success even though it’s been proven to not necessarily be a direct indicator of success. This notion, that academic prosperity will ensure a good future, seems to stem directly from the times when owning a book meant that you were at the peak of your success.

For my documentary, I watched the making of a medieval book. It amazed me just how difficult it was to make each individual letter, or “punch”, and how someone could have a job just becoming a professional letter-maker. The skill and patience it took to make each individual letter was extraordinary. The mold was extremely exquisite, each individual part fitting together like the modern machinery of today. The act of actually getting the print onto paper is a process similar to one I have seen before, where ink is applied directly on the letters and then the paper pressed on top of that. Despite being from the Renaissance, the placing of letters was almost identical to the process we saw being done in the EPI. It was extraordinary to see such advanced technology – the ink rollers – coupled with a medieval technology. This documentary really made me appreciate the work that went into making a book, and made me realize how little regard we have for our books today.

The definition in this video is substandard but I was already in the mindset of watching an educational video so I was pleased that it was at least in color.  The definition also slightly aided in the feeling of an aura with regards to the old techniques of writing.  I feel like if i was watching this in HD it would look more like someone using tools they just took from a showcase in a museum. With 1970s definition, the actor looked like he may have owned these items personally especially because of his ability to use them with precision.