I watched The Story of Writing 3: Print and Metal Pens, and the first thing that struck me was the library of chained books. Now a days, we have many security measures, most of which we take for granted, so the idea of chaining down books to shelves may seem somewhat barbaric. But considering the time period, that was the simplest method to deter theft, which never occured to me until I saw it.

I was also surprised to see, that in a time where ink was how things were written, text could be erased. With our pencils and erasers, we tend to take that for granted, until we use pens of course. I always wondered how, if corrections needed to be made, it would be done. It seems it was as simple as scraping off the mistake and writing over it. While I say simple, the process was definitely more than that, but the idea just seems too easy, when in fact it was how things were done. When it came to printing, the engraving process was just as difficult as I imagined, if not more so.

In regards to the music, it was an old timey style that made me felt like “I am watching something old.” What stood out for me in terms of the production however, was the credits. While most people would skip credits (which I am also guilty of), I watched through and noticed: all the names were written in Italic font, which was described in the video itself. I felt that it was a clever use of content.

I’ll be the first to admit that this article isn’t the easiest or the best thing you will ever read but it does raise an interesting question. The study focuses on how the brain processes words when varied which brings up a point that I hadn’t thought about. When there are pictures in books it allows us to understand what is happening or have a basis for the setting and events occurring, but are more areas of your brain activated when pictures are present along with words or when it is strictly one or the other. I am one of those people who loves creating the characters in my mind and that’s why I don’t always see movie adaptations when they come out because I don’t want it to ruin my view of the character. It would just be interesting to study how many and which areas of the brain would be used under the three varying circumstances.

A while back I remembered reading this post about what children should be reading in school. Now I don’t necessarily agree with the Common Core State Standards I do agree that kids should be reading more. I have personally found that with reading more I have had better ideas for papers in class or just having more creative ideas in general. I also feel like that kids need to be reading more at a younger age because when things pick up in high school and then again in college they need the necessary skills to help them successfully get through books at an appropriate pace.

I watched the print and metal pens segment and I found myself rather immersed in what was happening. I was impressed with how beautiful the writing was with a quill but something that I had never thought about before was how the quill eventually becomes soft and can break.

Another aspect of the video I enjoyed was the engraving process. It is a process that relies on so many minute details and I didn’t realize that a magnifying glass was necessary for the process. Then when they explained the copper plate and how to make a perfect print it surprised me that it is so difficult to get exactly what you wanted.

Through watching the segment I learned that the ways in which writing used to be performed was so intricate and I don’t think I ever thought about it being that difficult.

I thought the “Alice in Wonderland” work of art we saw was crazy. I had no idea what the artist was saying, but I’m sure they knew exactly what the “story” was telling. I also thought it was interesting to see how somebody thought of describing stories through scents. Some of them made “scents” (pun intended) and some of them didn’t.

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?