Abstract 

In this illustrated presentation, drawn from an ongoing book project, Dr. Sujata Iyengar outlines through twentieth- and twenty-first-century fine press, artisanal, and sculptural editions of Shakespeare’s sonnets her theory of “bookness” — the tangible and phenomenological qualities of the print codex that have become newly pertinent in the age of digital publishing, as the form of the book itself becomes a legacy media form. Then, building on her earlier work on the history of the book and on Shakespearean adaptation in legacy and emerging media forms, she considers aspects of bookness through the fine press edition of Shakespeare’s sonnets published at the Doves Press (1909), the facsimile of the Doves edition by New Albion Press (2009), Jen Bervin’s now-classic letter-press Nets (2004), and the handcrafted, demotic, individualized remediations of sonnets for sale on popular digital craft websites. She concludes with a reading of a sculptural scroll by Jan Owen, Era Overlap (2015), which layers calligraphic renditions of Shakespeare’s sonnet 55 in italics, in Roman-style lapidary capitals, and the digits of binary code on sheets of translucent paper illuminated, medieval-manuscript-style, with gold. Through its mixed media or intermedia, Iyengar comments, this work alludes to stone, papyrus, paper, and computer code in an elliptical yet exemplary commentary upon printed books as received in the digital age.

Speaker

Sujata Iyengar, Distinguished Research Professor, University of Georgia