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2022 | OriginalPaper | Buchkapitel

9. For Lack of Letters: Early Typographical Shibboleths of English and Other Foreign Languages

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Abstract

This chapter examines how and why foreign languages were manifested imperfectly, or not at all, in books printed in England in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. It shows how the affordances of Latinate typographic technology did not accommodate other languages without concessions being made. The first half of the chapter identifies and characterises a trope in which printers explained, in paratexts written to the reader, that they lacked the correct fonts. Different solutions to this lack are then surveyed, showing that a reliance on mixing media and fonts led to the conspicuous othering of languages on the page. These improvisations are described as ‘kludging,’ and the second half of the chapter shows that kludges in English language texts can be read as a shibboleth of English identity in a Latinate context.

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Fußnoten
1
A typographic facsimile is given in Surtz and Hexter (1965, 18–19).
 
2
See the OED’s first sense of the adjective ‘strange’: ‘Of persons, language, customs, etc.: Of or belonging to another country; foreign, alien’ (‘strange, adj. and n.,’ OED [accessed 19 February, 2019]).
 
3
British Library, MS Lansdowne 15, fol. 99r, cited by King (2006, 86). Parker writes that the ‘newe Italian letter’ cost 40 marks—a denomination normally reserved for substantial expenditures like land, worth two-thirds of a pound (‘mark, n.2,’ OED).
 
4
‘Tertiam partem propter inopiam hebraicorum characterum quibus impressor caret’ (Lloyd Jones 1989, 45).
 
5
‘Pro tuo candore optime lector aequo animo feras, si quae litterae in exemplis Hellenismi uel tonis, uel spiritibus, uel affectioribus carean. Iis enim non satis erat instructus typographus uidilicet recens ab eo fusis characteribus graecus, nec parata ea copia, qua ad hoc agendum opus est’ (Linacre 1524, fol. 1v).
 
6
Lekprevik is discussed by Rebecca J. Emmett in this volume (Chap. 7).
 
7
These observations are based on two copies examined, Bodleian Library Ashm. 1188 (1) and Bodleian Library D 12.6 (11) Linc.
 
8
A grammatically unclear phrase but which may be translated as ‘deification of eternal love.’ I am grateful to Geri Della Rocca de Candal for his assistance with this line.
 
9
‘skil’, Middle English Dictionary, University of Michigan http://​quod.​lib.​umich.​edu/​cgi/​m/​mec/​med-idx?​type=​id&​id=​MED40677 [accessed 28 February 2019].
 
10
The ragged r (sometimes called R rotunda) which Carter describes is a variant form of blackletter r resembling the numeral 2. See Updike (1922, 109).
 
11
For a discussion of proportional distribution in fonts, see Werner (2019, 41).
 
12
Hellinga, for instance, describes an upside-down ‘Q’ playing the role of a ‘d’ (Hellinga 2007, 272).
 
13
‘kludge, n.’ OED Online [Accessed 20 February 2019].
 
14
Pynson printed a counterpart book in the same year that gave some of Whytstons’ argument in English verse: The Gardyners Passetaunce. It is, typically, set in blackletter throughout. Like De justicia, it employs explicitly nationalist strategies such as invoking Saint George: ‘And saynt George assistynge our valiau[n]t Englysshmen/Fraunce shall haue a fall our lorde saye Amen.’ Williams gives a summary of the political context of the two books (1985, 15–25).
 
15
‘shibboleth, n.,’ OED Online [accessed February 27, 2019].
 
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Metadaten
Titel
For Lack of Letters: Early Typographical Shibboleths of English and Other Foreign Languages
verfasst von
James Misson
Copyright-Jahr
2022
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88055-2_9