The Alphabetic Labyrinth: The Letters in History and Imagination [Hardcover]

Johanna Drucker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1995

The letters of the alphabet have been the object of speculation since their invention almost 4000 years ago. The symbols represent sounds, yet they exist in their own right, often invested with quasi-magical power. This book examines the many imaginative, often idiosyncratic ways in which the letters of the alphabet have been assigned value in political, spiritual, or religious belief systems over two millennia. The birth of writing was linked to religion and cosmology and was endowed with semi-divine status. Plato saw letter-forms as reflecting ideas, while the Pythagoreans assimilated them to number-theory. The Greeks employed letters for occult and divinatory purposes, while the Romans used them in more practical ways, such as the invention of shorthand. The Middle Ages saw the rise of further theories about letters in Christian philosophy, alchemy and Kabbalah. Theories of their divine origin and mystical significance continued into the 18th and 19th centuries, becoming involved with nationalism and revolutionary political theory. In our own day letters of the alphabet are the subject of scholarly research, and inspiration to graphic artists and a fertile field for mystical speculation. This book explores this realm, and should be of interest to cultural historians, art historians, and anyone interested in the history of typography.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Long regarded as a divine gift, the alphabet has been seen not just as a collection of arbitrary signs but as the direct visual embodiment of meaning. Pythagoreans, Kabbalists, neo-Platonists, and medieval Catholic mystics regarded the alphabet as a code that explained the universe. Drucker (art history, Yale) examines these and other ideas about the origins and inherent meanings of the alphabet, relating them to their intellectual milieu. She also discusses developments in the forms of the letters. She notes, for example, how modern typefaces, first developed in the late 18th century, embody Enlightenment philosophy. Her well-written discussion is enriched with over 300 illustrations drawn from important texts and documents. A major study in the history of books and the history of ideas; recommended for academic and public libraries alike.
Joseph Rosenblum, Guilford Technical Community Coll., Jamestown, N.C.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

Language is devoted to articulation, but the inarticulate elements from which it is composed -- bare forked letters, decaying sounds -- have long teased the human imagination as something at once unnacountable and provocative: a threat of utter incoherence underlying all linguistic expression; a token of some final as yet undisclosed revelation. Drucker, an author of many accomplishments, a poet, novelist, art historian, and printer, has written a history of alphabetic forms and speculations. She limits herself to the West, but needless to say that still leaves a lot to consider. Uncials, historiated capitals, alchemical codes, and the Kabbalah are all here. This is a fine and suggestive survey, thoroughly researched, handsomely illustrated, somewhat detached in tone -- which is odd: the author loves her subject; she needn't have struggled so hard to hide it.
Copyright © 1996, Boston Review. All rights reserved. -- From The Boston Review

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Thames & Hudson; First edition (April 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0500016089
• ISBN-13: 978-0500016084
• Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 7.9 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,474,024 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Poetic, mystical, and literary associations of the alphabet, December 9, 2001

By 

S. Gustafson "Holy Roman Emperor" (New Albany, IN USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Alphabetic Labyrinth: The Letters in History and Imagination (Paperback)

This book on the history of the alphabet is focused on Western and Semitic scripts; it pays little heed to the alphabetic scripts of South Asia. This book seems more concerned with mystical and artistic elaborations of the alphabetic symbols than with its actual use as a writing system. It focuses on things like the Kabbalah, calligraphic styles, and the changes wrought on attitudes to the alphabet wrought by the invention of printing. Parts of it seem a history of concepts used by other scholars attempting to determine the history and origin of the alphabet, rather than a new contribution to the alphabet's history.

Those who wish a more sober account of the alphabet's history, and tracing the family tree of the various alphabetic scripts, will get more mileage out of David Diringer's -The Alphabet: A Key to the History of Mankind-. The information presented in this book, however, is interesting, if only for the fanciful ideas various people have devised around the alphabet.

My copy seems to have a number of typographical errors and other mistakes in it. A long passage discusses the thought of "Marcos the Gnostic." From the context I am reasonably certain that Marcion, not "Marcos," was intended. The people of Mount Seir in the Bible are identified in the book with Kenites and Midianites; if my memory serves me, the inhabitants of Mount Seir were Edomites and Horites. These mistakes tend to make me less inclined to trust the many passages that present data that is entirely new to me.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars All encompassing story of the alphabet, July 13, 1998

By 

Barbara Ginzburg([e-mail]) (Lawrence, Kansas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Alphabetic Labyrinth: The Letters in History and Imagination (Hardcover)

Johanna Drucker gives us a comprehensive history of the alphabet, or should I say alphabets. She tells us about everything from the history of type face, to groups using various alphabets to justify their existence as a nation. Drucker also examines the various ways individuals have interpreted the alphabet; as a divine gift from a higher being to a necessary creation of "civilized" governments. This book was a fantastic read, although some sections required more than one reading for complete comprehension. A very informative book.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Drucker's THE ALPHABETIC LABYRINTH Aptly Named, August 9, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Alphabetic Labyrinth: The Letters in History and Imagination (Hardcover)

Reading--not to mention reviewing--a single
chapter of Johanna Drucker's The Alphabetic
Labyrinth: The Letters in History and
Imagination is enough to convince any reader
that Drucker's work is aptly named. For
instance, Chapter 5 focuses first on the
script of Medieval documents, then on the
decorated letters of the same period, and on
to runes, alchemical alphabets, and the "Ars
Combinatoria." This is no easy journey, and
the twists, turns, and switchbacks are enough
to stagger even the most fearless of
polymaths. It is indeed a labyrinth--but one
worth the effort. The illustrations
(albeit all in black and white and/or blue)
make this book worthy of attention. But
leafing through the book only to look at the
illustrations would be to miss Drucker's
point--the alphabet is a sinuous vine,
twisting its way around the entire history of
civilization, and it continues to wind its
way into human imagination in the present.

In Chapter 5 (or would "V" be more
appropriate?), Drucker begins by reminding us
that ". . . in the centuries following the
decline of the Roman Empire . . . [t]he
activity of writing shifted emphasis--from the
carving of monumental inscriptions,writing
of classical poetry, and recording of legal
and biblical texts--to the copying of
religious and classical texts within the
province of religious communities" (94).
This is an example of the subtle way in
which Drucker encourages her readers to
remember that "Imagination" is part of the
title of her book--upon reading those
words I was immediately reminded of Eco's
NAME OF THE ROSE, and I'm sure many of
Drucker's statements inspire such thoughts
in the minds of other readers. After
discussing several scripts (or "hands") of
the Middle Ages, Drucker then walks readers
through the different styles of letter
decoration as illustrated by several
beautiful examples of medieval documents.

Drucker then leads the reader into a brief
discussion of runes and ogham which began as
legitimate forms of writing but came to have
"magical properties" (116), as have other
forms of alphabet throughout history. Drucker
then briefly discusses missionary and
alchemical alphabets, missionary alphabets
having been developed to transcribe holy texts
into the languages spoken by peoples with whom
the missionary worked and alchemical alphabets
being ". . . a code to order elements in
alchemical operations and . . . to conceal
the knowledge of secret processes in an
unreadable and arcane form" (120).

Next, Drucker performs one of the many
switchbacks she negotiates in her text by
discussing ancient and celestial alphabets,
celestial alphabets being "derived from
observation of configurations of stars in the
heavens which can be `read' as a form of
sacred writing" (125). Her final discussion
in Chapter 5 is reserved for the 13th Century
Catalan Raymond Llull, whose work later
resulted in the "Ars Combinatoria," a
systematization of systems so that they
functioned as an abstract network of
knowledge and process" (127).

Drucker has an unfortunate habit of using
difficult terminology several times before
defining/explaining it for her less erudite
reader (for instance, the word uncial is
used several times before it is finally
defined on page 94); however, this
compendium of alphabet history--Eurocentric
though it is--exhibits awareness of the
alphabets of non-Western cultures and exhibits
the depth of Drucker's understanding of her
subject. She invites the reader to explore
arcane subject areas connected with alphabets
and, in many cases, provides the material for
wonderful flights of the imagination.