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The Alphabetic Labyrinth: The Letters in History and Imagination

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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.

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.

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.

A reader reviewed this book by Joanna Drucker as not being enough informative on the alphabet history in itself. It's unfair and not informate to review the book like this. Its manifesto is all in the evocative title: The Alphabetic Labyrinth: The Letters in History and Imagination. Joanna Drucker traced an history of the alphabet from the very beginning talking about the interesting and often left apart complex variety of meanings of the letterform, embodied by mystery, symbolic, alchemic, religious, esotheric and many other values, offering an unique showcase of the history of writing. Saying the book is unsatisfying equals to say you have not even read the title, which explains quite well its content!

In The Alphabetic Labyrinth: The Letters in
History and Imagination, Johanna Drucker
presents a thorough investigation of the
alphabet as it relates to the Western
tradition of intellectual development. Her
purpose is to trace alphabet symbolism through
the course of history and tradition while also
discussing the origins and development of the
alphabet itself.

Chapter seven, titled "Rationalizing the
Alphabet: Construction, Real Character and
Philosophical Languages in the Renaissance"
covers alphabet history during the Renaissance
- an age that favored a cosmological view of
the world, an age when the highly structured
and the rigidly hierarchial were considered
manifestations of the divine and an age that
saw a blend of mystical, occult and intellec-
tual traditions.

Drucker interweaves these cultural threads
with the various people of the Renaissance who
used and seriously studied the alphabet during
that period in history that is recognized by
the invention of printing.

After Guttenberg's bible in 1456, the spread
of printing throughout Europe was a quick
process that produced many ripples in the
fabric of culture. Printing was responsible
for the production and dissemination of books
and for a proliferation of type styles as
well. Page design became more linear and
regularized. Alphabetic writing itself became
standardized. Text types took their visual
form from manuscript faces and the development
of capital letters returned to the tradition
of Roman capitals which became even more
elaborate and decorative during the
Renaissance. However, letter designers recon-
ceptualized the forms of majuscules or
capitals in this period through a process of
complicated, highly rationalized construction.
The compass and the square were often
considered necessary to achieve a set of
proportions for the width of the major strokes
to fit theoretical models.

Constructed alphabets were designed by a
profusion of geometers, mathematicians,
writing masters and printers. Fra Luca de
Pacioli's designs were possibly developed with
Leonardo de Vinci. Durer's idiosyncratic
letter forms were based on Italian theories
of perspective. His remarkable constructed
form of the blackletter alphabet is based on
the use of method for its own sake. Tory's
constructed letters were an integration of
classical and mystical knowledge that used
the proportions of the human body linked with
systems of mythology and the Muses. Tory made
assessments of the characters of each letter,
giving some human personality characteristics.
Tory's work on the alphabet also includes the
symbolic opposition of good and evil, virtue
and temptation - cosmological elements of the
Renaissance.

While printing was the chief means of book
production during this period, documents used
in business, legal and financial transactions
continued to be handwritten. Arrighi,
Tagliente, Palatino were the skilled penmen
of the Renaissance who published manuals and
engravings. Their best work was then incor-
porated into designs of type which still bear
their names.

Contributors to the field of cryptology during
this period include Johannes Trithemius
followed by Porta and Selemus who each offered
various prescriptions for codes and ciphers.

Proposals for translation systems were devel-
oped during the Renaissance by such scholars
as Top, Dalgarno and Wilkin. Such projects
reflect the new belief of the period -
that languages were inconsistent, imperfect,
subject to change and not necessarily evidence
of divine inspiration.

Drucker covers all these and more alphabetic
developments that occurred during the
Renaissance period in rich detail, carefully
citing sources and making relevant connections
to both the intellectual development and the
major philosophy of the period. Although
larger print in this text would certainly be
helpful, illustrations that accompany the text
are attractive and generous, particularly
those of the various constructed alphabets and
the intricate letter designs of the writing
masters. Drucker also provides charts and
schematics for theories developed during the
period but later rejected, giving the reader
insight as to why such theories were rejected.

For those who study culture, art, linguistics,
typography, calligraphy or printing,
The Alphabetic Labyrinth is full of unexpected
twists and turns. For educated readers who
particularly enjoy the Renaissance, Johanna
Drucker's seventh chapter of The Alphabetic
Labyrinth is a rich tapestry.

Johanna Drucker's _The Alphabetic Labyrinth: The Letters in History and Imagination_ is primarily concerned with chronicling man's search for symbolic meanings of the letters of the alphabet. Chapter II of her book, however, is more concerned with plotting a history of the development of alphabets, and, as such, this chapter is more grounded in archaeological and linguistic history than the chapters that follow. For those people who are interested in a view of the relationships between ancient alphabets and modern ones, this chapter is full of information and insights.

The path the author uses to unravel the history of the search for the origins of the alphabet in this chapter is devoid of the discussions of symbolism that are the focus of the book's subsequent chapters. The chapters that follow Chapter II are concerned with values and meanings that have been attributed to letters of the alphabet based upon their visual shape. It is in these subsequent chapters that the author examines both the philosophical and cosmological beliefs and the mystic or ritual powers that have been assigned to letters of the alphabet. While these discussions are the main purpose of this book, Drucker uses Chapter II to piece together the history of the alphabet from the evidence of archaeological excavations and the study of linguistics.

Drucker states at the beginning of this chapter that the origins of alphabets have been a source of dispute since at least Classical Greek times. To give evidence of the early disputes, the author cites both Herodotus' statement that the alphabet of the Greeks developed as a result of cross cultural borrowing from the Phoenicians and Plato's belief that the Phoenician letters could be traced to the Egyptian god Thoth. Thus the dispute falls between those who thought the alphabet a man made technology and those who thought that the alphabet was a gift from a divine source.

Drucker presents a view of the ancient world and the development of the written alphabet that moves us past our western belief that "all that was Greek was great" to an appreciation of the fact that the Greeks only modified an extant Semitic writing form, the Phoenician alphabet, in order to meet the phonemes of their spoken language. Drucker goes on to provide information that allows the reader to see that the Phoenician alphabet was itself a distillation of written forms from several cultures in the general Sinai region including Egypt and Sumeria. This chapter also explains that although the hieroglyphs of Egypt were pictograms, most of the pictograms did not represent words, as was once believed. Most hieroglyphs actually represent distinct sounds of ancient Egyptian speech, and thus, were phonemes. Nor were hieroglyphs the only form of Egyptian writing; the Egyptians had also developed cursive writing forms that existed alongside hieroglyphics and served different writing purposes.

Drucker sees the Phoenician alphabet as the most direct source of all the alphabets in use today and her final illustration in this chapter (p.48) is a chart that depicts her rendition of the linguistic development of alphabets. This chart gives visual scope to the spread and variety of the alphabets through history. The strongest evidence that Greek, and thus most western alphabets, owe their origins to the Semitic languages that eventually evolve into Phoenician is the fact that the names of Greek letters are actually the names of Semitic letters and have no meaning in Greek.

Drucker's path through history is not straight and she discusses the dead ends into which theory has led us as well as many theories that have been determined to be incorrect. In taking this approach, Drucker gives us an insight into both the creation of knowledge and the importance of our own personal lenses in that creation. Drucker ends her historical journey where she began in ancient history, but she uses the archaeological evidence from 19th and 20th century excavations and developments in linguistics to move past speculation on the origins of the alphabet to an archeologically and linguistically supported view of the complex development of alphabets.

Drucker's illustrations do much to support the text, but are often difficult to decipher due to their diminutive size; it is not that illustrations on a larger scale would have made Phoenician or Hebrew script any more decipherable to the lay reader, but it might have been easier to discern some of the points discussed in the text. I also feel that expanded captions would have made it easier to relate the illustrations to the text. Many of the illustrations are charts that scholars of the alphabet used in order to show their personal rationale of the relationships between different alphabets. While these charts are very interesting, those of us who are not experts in linguistics or alphabet history might have benefited from captions that give the reader a clue as to which of the charts represent relationships believed to be valid and which represent theories that have been proven incorrect.

While this book appears to be written for a scholarly audience and often requires the use of a dictionary for those of us not well versed in the subject, this chapter is worth the effort for anyone with even just a passing interest in the history of the development of the world's alphabets.

This book is truly a history of the alphabet. The author is very informative. She gives a good historical background and overview of written language. I especially liked Chapter VI The Kabbalah. The author writes in a clear, detailed manner as she traces the alphabet through history and the imagination. Perhaps the most difficult aspect of the book is trying to relate the way different people in different epochs have veiwed the alphabet, letters, and written language. Druker does this well. She includes many helpful examples and diagrams. Anyone interested in written language would enjoy this book.

In Chapter Two, Drucker takes the reader on a trip back in time as she traces the evolution of writing systems. The trip begins with Egyptian hieroglyphics (~3500 BC), continues through Semitic inscriptions and Phoenician letters in the Mediterranean, to modern European alphabets. While a single, direct line tracing the alphabet back to one source does not emerge, the reader is beguiled by the mysteries of alphabetic history: the adaptability to other languages of the alphabet developed by Semitic speakers, the simultaneous development of ancient writing systems, and the search for connections among different writing systems. The reader is introduced to major historians in the field of epigraphy and their search for origins of the alphabet by painstakingly comparing scripts of different writing systems, looking for relationships among them. Drucker emphasizes the importance of archaeological evidence on the study of ancient writings. The progress (and accuracy!) of alphabetic analysis was greatly aided by the confirmation of archaeological discoveries. This chapter includes many illustrations of ancient writing systems and an excellent chart depicting the basic lines of alphabet development over the past 5,000 years. Drucker demonstrates vast knowledge about the alphabet and conveys this information in a very scholarly manner. Her book is intended for an informed, educated audience. Additionally, Drucker has great respect for her subject matter, so that the reader comes away with a sense of awe and admiration towards this ingenious human accomplishment.

In Chapter VIII, Johanna Drucker focuses closely on how Renaissance humanism and the invention of printing rationalized the alphabet. Further attention is given to theories of divine origin and mystical significance. These theories still proliferated and continued into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, becoming involved with nationalism and revolutionary political theory. Johanna Drucker, art history teacher at Yale University, writes with great command of facts about the letters of the alphebet. Chapter VIII, The Social Contract, Primitivism and Nationalism: the Alphabet in the 18th Century, is well-written, full of fascinating theories, and displays more than 35 significant illustrations that will interest the reader. The Alphabetic Labyrinth will prove intriguing to cultural historians, art historians, and anyone interested in the history of typograph

Going against the flow of reviews here, I found this book disappointing.

For a book of this scope, it is woefully short and lacking meaty details.

It rather ends up giving more space to the subjects of mysticism and the like, than to actual discourse on historical writing systems.

For instance, the "section" on runic languages is effectively two pages long, and half of those pages are taken up with diagrams; while parts of entire, multiple chapters are dedicated to illustrating calligraphic styles thru the ages. Fascinating on its, but perhaps better studied in a different volume.