Inventing the alphabet : the origins of letters from antiquity to the present / Johanna Drucker.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Drucker, Johanna, 1952- author.

Contributor:

Rosengarten Family Fund.

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Alphabet--History.

Alphabet.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

380 pages : illustrations (black and white) ; 26 cm

Place of Publication:

Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2022.

Summary:

"Though there are many books about the history of the alphabet, virtually none address how that history came to be. In Inventing the Alphabet, Johanna Drucker guides readers from antiquity to the present to show how humans have shaped and reshaped their own understanding of this transformative writing tool. From ancient beliefs in the alphabet as a divine gift to growing awareness of its empirical origins through the study of scripts and inscriptions, Drucker describes the frameworks-classical, textual, biblical, graphical, antiquarian, archaeological, paleographic, and political-within which the alphabet's history has been and continues to be constructed. Drucker's book begins in ancient Greece, with the earliest writings on the alphabet's origins. She then explores biblical sources on the topic and medieval preoccupations with the magical properties of individual letters. She later delves into the development of modern archaeological and paleographic tools, and she concludes with the role of alphabetic characters in the digital era. Throughout, she argues that, as a shared form of knowledge technology integrated into every aspect of our lives, the alphabet performs complex cultural, ideological, and technical functions, and her carefully curated selection of images demonstrates how closely the letters we use today still resemble their original appearance millennia ago"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: One. When Did the Alphabet Become "Greek"?

Two. Divine Gifts: Original Letters, Moses, and the Tablets at Mount Sinai

Three. Medieval Copyists: Magical Letters, Mythic Scripts, and Exotic Alphabets

Four. The Confusion of Tongues and Compendia of Scripts

Five. Antiquity Explained: The Origin and Progress of Letters

Six. The Rhetoric of Tables and the Harmony of Alphabets

Seven. Modern Archaeology: Putting the Evidence of the Alphabet in Place

Eight. Reading the Early Alphabet: Epigraphy and Paleography

Nine. Alphabet Effects and the Politics of Script.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Rosengarten Family Fund.

ISBN:

9780226815817

0226815811

OCLC:

1268123333