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染墨的指尖：近代早期欧洲的书籍制作
从弗朗西斯·培根到巴拉克·奥巴马，历代思想家和政治领袖都曾经抨击人文主义者是不爱劳动的书呆子。而在这本赞美书籍制作的书中，享有盛誉的历史学家安东尼·格拉夫敦介绍了书籍制作过程中的诸多凌乱而复杂的细节，并邀请我们将近代早期欧洲的学者视为勤奋的劳动者。他细致入微地展现了造就书籍黄金时代的体力和脑力劳动——编纂笔记、誊抄并修正文本与校样、筹备复本——他让我们看到，学者们的勤勉如何塑造了那些影响深远的书本、专著和伪书。
《染墨的指尖》追溯17、18世纪的人文主义文本研究方法的转变，探究神学争论对16世纪学者所产生的、既是支持也是制约的影响。格拉夫敦在人文主义传统与智识创新、文本学习和工艺知识之间、在手稿与印刷品之间建立了全新的联系。
最重要的是，格拉夫敦明确了一点：书籍制造的基本细节对思想史产生了深远的影响——思想的生命力取决于双手的劳动。
《染墨的指尖》追溯17、18世纪的人文主义文本研究方法的转变，探究神学争论对16世纪学者所产生的、既是支持也是制约的影响。格拉夫敦在人文主义传统与智识创新、文本学习和工艺知识之间、在手稿与印刷品之间建立了全新的联系。
最重要的是，格拉夫敦明确了一点：书籍制造的基本细节对思想史产生了深远的影响——思想的生命力取决于双手的劳动。
528 pages, Hardcover
First published June 9, 2020
About the author
Anthony Grafton
105 books66 followersAnthony Thomas Grafton is an American historian of early modern Europe and the Henry Putnam University Professor of History at Princeton University, where he is also the Director the Program in European Cultural Studies. He is also a corresponding fellow of the British Academy and a recipient of the Balzan Prize. From January 2011 to January 2012, he served as the President of the American Historical Association. From 2006 to 2020, Grafton was co-executive editor of the Journal of the History of Ideas.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
February 19, 2021
I found this a very engaging book, although it might not be everyone’s “cup of tea”.The author is an historian of early modern Europe at Princeton. The appears to comprise a number of papers that have been drawn together around a general theme - the details of serious intellectual activity during the period of late humanism/early modernity that followed the invention and spread of printing.
The book’s perspective (and title) come from what one could call a “technological perspective”, namely that the nature of the technology influences the intellectual output produced by that technology. In the initial chapters this comes across in the putative distinction between the “content” aspects of book production (writing, thinking, editorial judgment) and the craft oriented aspects of book production, such as proofreading, error revisions, and other technical aspects of production. While content and craft aspects of the work are supposedly different, in practice they get mixed up, with authors getting the hands dirty (or fingers inky) and proofreaders and correctors exercising much more influence on books than is commonly assumed. This is not a surprising conclusion even today in working with good editors, but the particular stories and examples are really well done and interesting.
The topics move onto other areas and the stories get more interesting. For example, how did the craft of detecting literary forgeries develop? The intellectual process involves determining what the major types of archaic documents looked like and then comparing the forgery to those standard types to show how a claimed document could not be authentic. The grand example is the identification of the Donation of Constantine as a forgery by Lorenzo Valla, but in the early intellectual life profiled in the book, this was a constant and chronic problem. When does a literary critic become a forger? An entire chapter on Annius of Viterbo traces the career of an especially prolific forger/critic and gave examples of how skillful practitioners could just make stuff up and get away with it.
One of the most interesting chapters for me was on Francis Daniel Pastorius, who was an intellectual and attorney in early Pennsylvania. Think of how people read today, even on Goodreads, and then think about how people could manage their reading and intellectual lives when there were no computers or anything else digital, no television or radio, and just books, paper, pens, and ink. Grafton explains how books were used as “commonplace” items in which readers took copious notes, recorded or summarized passages, added questions or related stories, and the like, so that the book, once read, became a keepsake intellectual item that could be passed on to children. The same occurs with the keeping of journals, which became the location where smart and aware people kept track of their lives, developed new ideas, reacted to current events, and the like. Sort of a precursor to Facebook that you carried around and had a nice cover.
Other parts of the book cover how intellectual and documentary support structures developed in a world of paper and ink. When did archives develop and become protected so that records could not be modified as needed by various users? There is an interesting chapter on a competition or sorts between Oxford and Cambridge to authenticate their relative distinguished histories - a nice trick when many of the key initial documents either no longer existed or else never existed.
There is lots more in the book. These are.relatively dense texts that need to be worked through. Some of the topics may seem a bit arcane, but they should not be for serious readers - at least some of them. There are even references to a history of proofreading from 1600-1800. The book is uncommon and expensive to get from Amazon but clever readers can find PDFs of it on the web.
Inky Fingets is a good, although not for everyone.
The book’s perspective (and title) come from what one could call a “technological perspective”, namely that the nature of the technology influences the intellectual output produced by that technology. In the initial chapters this comes across in the putative distinction between the “content” aspects of book production (writing, thinking, editorial judgment) and the craft oriented aspects of book production, such as proofreading, error revisions, and other technical aspects of production. While content and craft aspects of the work are supposedly different, in practice they get mixed up, with authors getting the hands dirty (or fingers inky) and proofreaders and correctors exercising much more influence on books than is commonly assumed. This is not a surprising conclusion even today in working with good editors, but the particular stories and examples are really well done and interesting.
The topics move onto other areas and the stories get more interesting. For example, how did the craft of detecting literary forgeries develop? The intellectual process involves determining what the major types of archaic documents looked like and then comparing the forgery to those standard types to show how a claimed document could not be authentic. The grand example is the identification of the Donation of Constantine as a forgery by Lorenzo Valla, but in the early intellectual life profiled in the book, this was a constant and chronic problem. When does a literary critic become a forger? An entire chapter on Annius of Viterbo traces the career of an especially prolific forger/critic and gave examples of how skillful practitioners could just make stuff up and get away with it.
One of the most interesting chapters for me was on Francis Daniel Pastorius, who was an intellectual and attorney in early Pennsylvania. Think of how people read today, even on Goodreads, and then think about how people could manage their reading and intellectual lives when there were no computers or anything else digital, no television or radio, and just books, paper, pens, and ink. Grafton explains how books were used as “commonplace” items in which readers took copious notes, recorded or summarized passages, added questions or related stories, and the like, so that the book, once read, became a keepsake intellectual item that could be passed on to children. The same occurs with the keeping of journals, which became the location where smart and aware people kept track of their lives, developed new ideas, reacted to current events, and the like. Sort of a precursor to Facebook that you carried around and had a nice cover.
Other parts of the book cover how intellectual and documentary support structures developed in a world of paper and ink. When did archives develop and become protected so that records could not be modified as needed by various users? There is an interesting chapter on a competition or sorts between Oxford and Cambridge to authenticate their relative distinguished histories - a nice trick when many of the key initial documents either no longer existed or else never existed.
There is lots more in the book. These are.relatively dense texts that need to be worked through. Some of the topics may seem a bit arcane, but they should not be for serious readers - at least some of them. There are even references to a history of proofreading from 1600-1800. The book is uncommon and expensive to get from Amazon but clever readers can find PDFs of it on the web.
Inky Fingets is a good, although not for everyone.
March 13, 2024
A serious disappointment. Even though this book is called “Inky Fingers: The Making of Books in Early Modern Europe,” and the back cover summary mentions the “physical… labors that went into the golden age of the book,” this book doesn’t ever actually talk about the physical production of books. It’s really just about humanists and scholarship in Early Modern Europe and it would be one thing if that’s what it sold itself as. But I was really waiting for the part that discussed print shops and inks and cases of type and the art that went into book production… and it never got there.
August 8, 2020
This sounded like such an interesting title, a great book to read. It was not. An interesting subject made boring. I am simply disappointed and cannot recommend this book. It is very rare for me to be so critical or so disappointed. It was not worth the ink on the book let alone, fingers.
September 8, 2021
Skoj och väldigt detaljerad, kul att läsa om hur gamla författare arbetade bakom kulisserna. Ställer ganska höga krav på förförståelse om författare som levde under antiken/medeltiden för att läsningen ska flyta på bra. Vi vanliga dödliga får stanna, anteckna och bruka Google flitigt.
July 16, 2024
An interesting look at the scholarship of select European humanists during the early modern era. However, I think some people will find the title and synopsis to be misleading regarding the contents of the book.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews