The letter and the cosmos : how the alphabet has shaped the Western view of the world / Laurence de Looze.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

De Looze, Laurence, author.

Contributor:

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Alphabet--History.

Alphabet.

History.

Civilization, Western.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xiii unnumbered pages of plates, 50 unnumbered pages of plates, 218 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Other Title:

Letter & the cosmos

Place of Publication:

Toronto ; Buffalo ; London : University of Toronto Press, 2016.

Summary:

"From our first ABCs to the Book of Revelation's statement that Jesus is "the Alpha and Omega," we see the world through our letters. More than just a way of writing, the alphabet is a powerful concept that has shaped Western civilization and our daily lives. In The Letter and the Cosmos, Laurence de Looze probes that influence, showing how the alphabet has served as a lens through which we conceptualize the world and how the world, and sometimes the whole cosmos, has been perceived as a kind of alphabet itself. Beginning with the ancient Greeks, he traces the use of alphabetic letters and their significance from Plato to postmodernism, offering a fascinating tour through Western history. A sharp and entertaining examination of how languages, letterforms, orthography, and writing tools have reflected our hidden obsession with the alphabet, The Letter and the Cosmos is illustrated with copious examples of the visual and linguistic phenomena which de Looze describes. Read it, and you'll never look at the alphabet the same way again."-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

1 Introduction 3

2 Ancient Greek Letters 19

3 Latin Letters and the Enduring Influence of Roman Scripts 32

4 Christian Letters: The Middle Ages 49

5 The Letters of Humanism 67

6 Baroque Variations and the Search for a Universal Language 83

7 Logical Letters: The Alphabet in the Age of Reason 102

8 The Alphabets of the Industrialized World 118

9 From Modern Experiments to Post-Modern Experiences 135

10 Into the New Millennium 165.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [195]-207) and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

ISBN:

9781442650602

1442650605

9781442628533

1442628537

OCLC:

921863905