In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 25.2 (2001) 335-346 [Access article in PDF] Aesthetic Incunabula Ellen Dissanayake Incunabula n. pl. (f. L swaddling clothes, cradle): Early stages of development of a thing.Over the past thirty years, developmental psychologists have discovered remarkable cognitive abilities in young infants. Before these investigations, common pediatric wisdom accepted that apart from a few innate "reflexes"--for crying, suckling, clinging, startling--babies were pretty much tabulae rasae for (...) their elders to inscribe as they (and their cultures) decreed. Today, however, it is well established that newborns come into the world with decided preferences and motivations, so that one can speak intelligently of "neonatal" (or even "fetal") psychology. 1The demonstrable existence of inherent psychological capacities in newborns and infants has important implications for twenty-first-century literary theory, which--also over the past thirty years--has operated under the theoretical assumption that all knowledge and experience are mediated by culture and that there is therefore no "natural" psychological or emotional experience. Yet if, as infant psychology confirms, babies in every culture show the same or similar cognitive abilities and preferences and the same or similar motivations and emotional responses, it is necessary to modify the dogmatic assertion that all experience, including literary response, is socially constructed. Rather, adult psychology and experience grow from and build upon inborn motives and preferences. Literary theorists can no longer ignore contemporary knowledge in psychobiology, ethology, and evolutionary psychology that directly pertains to conceptualizing their subject.The innate capacities of newborns predispose them specifically for social and emotional interaction with others, not simply for soliciting [End Page 335] their physical care. For example, newborns prefer human faces to any other sight (high-contrast colors, cartoon characters, cute stuffed animals) and human voices to any other sound (soft music, tinkling bells, The Chipmunks). 2 They can imitate face, mouth, and hand movements and respond appropriately to another person's emotional expressions of sadness, fear, and surprise. 3 At birth, infants can estimate and anticipate intervals of time and temporal sequences and remember these temporal patterns, categorizing them both in time and space and in terms of affect and arousal. 4 By six weeks of age, these perceptual and cognitive abilities of normal infants permit them to engage with adult partners in complex communicative interchanges--the playful behavior that is commonly or colloquially called "babytalk."Babytalk is not the trival or inane pastime that it might superficially seem but, rather, a cradle in which nascent psychosocial capacities can emerge and be developed. Interestingly for literary theory, babytalk achieves these effects through fundamentally aesthetic means. Adult-infant engagements are noteworthy for their use of stylization (formalization or simplification), repetition, exaggeration, and elaboration in visual, vocal, and gestural modalities. I call these "aesthetic incunabula"--that is, sources (or early developmental stages) of the operations used by artists in all media to attract attention and to provoke and manipulate emotional response. The existence of sensitivities to such features in the first months of life suggests that humans are born with natural (innate, universal) predispositions for aesthetic engagement from which cultures and individuals can go on to create their myriad elaborated forms of artistic expression.Although babytalk varies in minor details among individuals and cultures, it can be described in all instances as a multimedia performance. That is, it contains not only "talk" (or the characteristic high-pitched, undulant, breathy, patterned, repetitive vocalizations with pauses called "motherese," "parentese," or "infant-directed speech"). Along with the utterances are peculiarly stereotyped, repetitive, and exaggerated facial expressions (such as widened eyes, uplifted eyebrows, sustained open mouth, and smiles), head movements (e.g., distinct bobs backwards, slow rhythmic nods, movement toward and away from the baby), and gestures (such as touching, stroking, and rhythmic pats) to which infants respond with their own vocal sounds and face and body movements and, in many societies, sustained mutual gaze.Babytalk is not only a performance, but a duet that incorporates both synchrony of behavior and alternation (or turn-taking)--activities that [End Page 336] are made possible by the infant's remarkable inborn sensitivity to temporal sequence and pattern. Microanalyses of videotaped interactions (at 24... (shrink)

Working from transcriptions generated through the T-PEN program at St. Louis University, the collaborators of the project "Petrarch’s Early Manuscripts and Incunabula in the Oregon Petrarch Open Book" are presently digitizing and encoding in TEI P5 2 key interpretative copies of Petrarch’s Rvf: the late 14th-century manuscript copy from the Queriniana Library in Brescia, D II 21, the Queriniana Library’s copy of the first printed edition of the Rvf edited by Cristoforo [Berardi?] and published by Vindelin de Speier in (...) Venice in 1470. The first part of the article traces a brief history of the Oregon Petrarch Open Book, the last section introduces a future project, “Texts, Images and Interpretation in the OPOB”. (shrink)

There are varying opinions about whether or not the field of business ethics has a history or is a development of more modern times. It is suggested that a book by a Dominican Friar, Johannes Nider, De Contractibus Mercatorum, written ca. 1430 and published ca. 1468 provides a basis for a history of over 500 years. Business ethics grew out of attempts to reconcile Biblical precepts, canon law, civil law, the teachings of the Church Fathers, and the writings of early (...) philosophers with the realities of expanding economic activity. Nider's background is discussed as well as his book as an example of incunabula.Nider was one of the Scholastics who provided a link between Aristotle and later Reformation thinkers. In Nider we find caveat venditor as his moral guide to merchants as well as other surprisingly modern ideas such as justice in exchange; restitution for defective goods; the market as the final arbiter of value; and the importance of creating utility in products. (shrink)

On applique ici la méthode de l’analyse de réseau pour comprendre les temporalités de la construction de l’imprimerie, comme activité économique associant des hommes de lettres et des acteurs économiques. À partir des informations contenues dans l’Incunabula Short Title Catalogue, deux types de réseaux sont construits pour les éditions imprimées à Venise entre 1469 et 1500. Le premier permet d’observer le vivier des noms d’auteurs présents dans les éditions. Le second permet d’aller plus loin dans les notions de centralité (...) et d’autorité dans le réseau. Les presses vénitiennes se sont construites par l’utilisation réciproque des ateliers et des grands noms lettrés, dont le prestige légitimait les grandes entreprises typographiques. Avec le développement de l’imprimerie, les noms d’auteurs contemporains se font plus nombreux. Pour l’ensemble des lettrés impliqués dans l’imprimerie, cela se traduit par un rapport de force en leur défaveur. Les imprimeurs organisent eux-mêmes leurs collaborations en choisissant dans un vivier qui ne fait que s’accroître. Le prestige des auteurs est plus diffus et se nourrit de l’association de plusieurs noms dans une édition. Mais certains ont su particulièrement bien en jouer, comme le montre l’exemple d’Antonio Mancinelli. Ces réseaux éditoriaux, analysés dans leur épaisseur chronologique, permettent ainsi de redonner une vraie dimension temporelle à la construction d’une nouvelle industrie culturelle. (shrink)

Medicine and astronomy were both scientific disciplines to which visual demonstration proved helpful, were taught in the universities, and were deeply influenced by humanism and by the development of print culture, but they did not use printed images in the same way. Thus, all the aspects of astronomical activity benefited from the accompaniment of printed images, whereas, even for anatomy, illustration does not seem to have been seen as a necessity in Renaissance medical books. To explore such a difference, the (...) chronology of the development of illustration in both fields (from the first illustrated incunabula to the mid-sixteenth century) is compared, and some explanations (economical, epistemological, cultural) are proposed and questioned. -/- . (shrink)

The title of this paper is inspired by the book edited by Domenico Fiormonte entitled Canoni liquidi (Liquid Canons). Of course, the adjective “liquid” refers to Zygmunt Bauman’s term at which my critique is also indirectly aimed. The title of Fiormonte’s book seems to suggest equivalence between textual “mobility” and “liquidity.” Yet the “liquefying” of (literary) canons and the emergence of new intrinsically kinetic or fluid forms of mobile textuality requires a critical assessment that does not prematurely celebrate the funeral (...) of the text as we know it but pays close attention to what seems to be waiting for us beyond the text, as suggested in Francesco Fiorentino’s recent edited volume. This means paying attention to what in my recent book, Il futuro della letteratura (The Future of Literature), I call digital incunabula: objects/textual tools, devices programmed in a twofold, reciprocal sense, whose linguistic properties and rules interact and interfere with the algorithmic procedures of artificial languages. In this programmed and programmable interaction and intermediation one can perceive the horizon of incomprehensibility of posthuman language, providing a new aporetic dimension to Gadamer’s assertion that “the being that can be understood is language.“ This assertion is by now the most significant issue in the horizon of literary (digital) arts. (shrink)

Oggi il libro elettronico imita il libro a stampa come i primi incunaboli imitavano i manoscritti, l’esplosione delle modalità di comunicazione elettroniche è altrettanto rivoluzionaria di quello che fu l’invenzione della stampa a caratteri mobili centinaia di anni fa, e il lettore contemporaneo ha altrettante difficoltà ad assimilare gli e-book di quante ne ebbero i lettori del Quattrocento a familiarizzare con gli incunaboli. Siamo in un periodo nel quale testo a stampa e testo digitale coesistono e sicuramente continueranno a farlo (...) per qualche altro tempo ancora. Non pretendiamo dunque a tutti i costi di analizzare in termini dualistici ( o carta o digitale ) un fenomeno che è ancora in corso e basandoci invece su quello che ci insegna la storia del libro proviamo piuttosto a riconoscere che oggi stiamo assistendo a un cambiamento che almeno per un verso è effettivamente inedito perché, per la prima volta nella storia, avviene simultaneamente su più piani, con la trasformazione contemporanea del supporto della scrittura, della tecnica della sua riproduzione, delle modalità della sua diffusione e infine dei modi di leggere. Tutto il circuito della comunicazione editoriale classicamente intesa è messo in discussione e con il digitale il mercato librario è destinato a crescere, ma attraverso una grande mutazione delle sue logiche di funzionamento. Today, the e-book imitate the printed book exactly as the first incunabula once imitated the manuscripts; the explosion of the electronic communication is just as revolutionary as it was the invention of the movable type printing hundreds of years ago; and the contemporary reader is facing, with the e-book, the same difficulty than the readers of the fifteenth century have had with the incunabula. We are in a period in which paper and digital definitely coexist and they surely will continue to do it for a few more years to come. So, rather than insisting on analyze in dualistic terms (or paper or digital) a phenomenon that is still in progress, and relying instead on what we learn from the history of the book, we should try to recognize that today we are witnessing a change that at least in one way is actually different because, for the first time in history, it takes place at the same time on several levels, with the simultaneously transformation of the writing's media , the technique of its reproduction, the way of its spread , and finally the practice of reading . The classic communication circuit is being revisited, and the editorial market is meant to grow in the digital era, but throughout a big change in its behavior. (shrink)

The flames of Alexandria continue to rage. After twenty centuries, they still dazzle us, as though the Mouseion were the only massacred library. One would believe that Julius Caesar, Theophilus of Antioch and Omar (the three pyromaniacs, the pagan, the Christian and the Moslem) had had no predecessors or imitators. But the race of incendiaries is as numerous as the waves of the sea. It is monotonous, it is indestructible, it is equal to that of the ants. It was born (...) at the same time as the first Babylonian tablets. In 1988, it continues its work. All over the world and in all times, the incendiaries were there with their torches. They burned parchments, wood or clay tablets, leather manuscripts, papyrus or folios. The same warriors who profaned temples set fire to incunabula. The same ones who slaughtered the Aztecs threw their firebrands into the collection of codices. What is it, this unleashed fury of prince and priest, judge and soldier against these small monuments of clay or paper, against these sepulchres in which the dead say that they have lived and loved, suffered and hoped? (shrink)

The objective of this study is, first of all, to analyse the representations of the dragon in different medieval versions of Saint Martha’s Life. Thus, we will review the Latin text of Saint Martha’s Life assigned to Marcelle, that of The Golden Legend of Voragine, four Catalan versions of Life—manuscript of the BnF, manuscript of El Escorial, manuscript of Vic and the incunabula Flos sanctorum romançat —and the poem in Anglo-Norman by Nicole Bozon La vie seint Martha. The comparative (...) analysis of the representation of the dragon in the versions listed above will lead us, secondly, to question the function of the Tarasque in the texts of Saint Martha’s Life analysed. (shrink)

Alfonso de la Torre’s Visión deleitable was one of the most read works during the second half of the 15th century and its interest carried on until the Enlightenment, which allows us to reflect on the foundations of a critical text and review that inventory of interests that clarify us many aspects about the aesthetic and intellectual positioning for more than two centuries. With regard to the handwritten documentation, we have about twenty manuscripts in almost all the peninsular linguistic variants (...) of the 15th century, apart from five incunabula, one in Catalan and four in Castilian, and several editions printed during the 16th century, even one in Italian, which attests to the great demand obtained by the work of the Bachiller. (shrink)

A referência a um conjunto de reportórios e catálogos publicados desde 1890 onde se reproduzem portadas de obras produzidas na Península Ibérica entre finais do século XV e inícios do XVI é o ponto de partida para, através de quatro dezenas de exemplos, propor uma metodologia para identificação, registo e classificação de marcas de impressores.

Process engraver and printer Emery Walker was a pivotal figure in the English, American, and continental European Private Press Movement from the 1880s until his death in 1933. This article looks at his theories for the typography, design, and production of books, and how those theories were developed by key designers and close associates of Walker such as William Morris, T. J. Cobden Sanderson, and Bruce Rogers and through the practical teaching of figures such as J. H. Mason and Edward (...) Johnston. It examines how the theories were then taken up by the exponents of fine printing from the early 20th century through to the 1930s, focusing on the presses of Bernard Newdigate, Harry Kessler, Harold Curwen, and Francis Meynell. From these presses, and also via Stanley Morison and the Monotype Corporation, Walker’s theories are shown to have spread into mainstream book publishing in the first half of the 20th century. The article considers questions of whether the improvement in the readability of books in the early 20th century has had a continuing impact in book publishing, and makes suggestions how to access the incunabula referenced by the designers discussed, as well as collections of private press books and other early 20th-century fine printing. (shrink)

Odd Langholm has previously given us three important book-length studies on price and value, wealth and money in the Aristotelian tradition, and the Aristotelian analysis of usury. The present work is an effort to integrate virtually all the secondary literature on economic speculation by every significant figure who studied or taught at Paris during its golden age. This is no mere compilation of prior research, however. The author has made detailed examinations of unedited manuscripts and rare incunabula in order (...) to present a panorama of diverse speculators, each with his own intellectual genotype. In offering new interpretations and important nuances to previously established conclusions, this work may well serve as an indispensable reference for future investigations into medieval and early modern economic thought. (shrink)

This is a marvelous book, a “must read’ for anyone interested in understanding the philosophical debates of the later Middle Ages and a useful book for contemporary philosophers who will find in it a sophisticated articulation of a philosophical position well able to provide perspective on a number of contemporary debates. It is exceptionally well-written, clear, and insightful.We are now in a fairly good position to understand Buridan’s role in later medieval philosophy, his general philosophical orientation, and the milieu in (...) which he worked. What we have lacked is a detailed study of the core of his philosophy, and it is this gap that Gyula Klima’s book splendidly fills—just as our picture of Buridan’s thought is coming into focus. Much of Buridan’s work is either unedited or exists only in incunabula, and there are underway editing projects of central texts that will shed considerable new light on the man and his work. We are fortunate, however, to have already a splendid English translation of and commentary on Buridan’s massive and rich Summulae de dialectica by Klima himself, and this, together with incunabula and with recent editions of some of his other logical works, forms a sufficient basis of text for reasonable confidence that Klima’s. (shrink)