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Books > Language & Literature > Language & linguistics > Palaeography
A charming and indispensable tour of two thousand years of the
written word, Shady Characters weaves a fascinating trail across
the parallel histories of language and typography.
Whether investigating the asterisk (*) and dagger ( ) which
alternately illuminated and skewered heretical verses of the early
Bible or the at sign (@), which languished in obscurity for
centuries until rescued by the Internet, Keith Houston draws on
myriad sources to chart the life and times of these enigmatic
squiggles, both exotic (
) and everyday (&).
From the Library of Alexandria to the halls of Bell Labs,
figures as diverse as Charlemagne, Vladimir Nabokov, and George W.
Bush cross paths with marks as obscure as the interrobang (?) and
as divisive as the dash ( ). Ancient Roman graffiti, Venetian
trading shorthand, Cold War double agents, and Madison Avenue round
out an ever more diverse set of episodes, characters, and
artifacts.
Richly illustrated, ranging across time, typographies, and
countries, Shady Characters will delight and entertain all who
cherish the unpredictable and surprising in the writing life."
In early Pennsylvania, translation served as a utopian tool
creating harmony across linguistic, religious, and ethnic
differences. Patrick Erben challenges the long-standing historical
myth--first promulgated by Benjamin Franklin--that language
diversity posed a threat to communal coherence. He deftly traces
the pansophist and Neoplatonist philosophies of European reformers
that informed the radical English and German Protestants who
founded the ""holy experiment."" Their belief in hidden yet
persistent links between human language and the word of God
impelled their vision of a common spiritual idiom. Translation
became the search for underlying correspondences between diverse
human expressions of the divine and served as a model for
reconciliation and inclusiveness. Drawing on German and English
archival sources, Erben examines iconic translations that
engendered community in colonial Pennsylvania, including William
Penn's translingual promotional literature, Francis Daniel
Pastorius's multilingual poetics, Ephrata's ""angelic"" singing and
transcendent calligraphy, the Moravians' polyglot missions, and the
common language of suffering for peace among Quakers, Pietists, and
Mennonites. By revealing a mystical quest for unity, Erben presents
a compelling counternarrative to monolingualism and Enlightenment
empiricism in eighteenth-century America.
Over 5,000 years ago, the history of humanity radically changed
direction when writing was invented in Sumer, the southern part of
present-day Iraq. For the next three millennia, kings, aristocrats,
and slaves all made intensive use of cuneiform script to document
everything from royal archives to family records. In engaging
style, Dominique Charpin shows how hundreds of thousands of clay
tablets testify to the history of an ancient society that
communicated broadly through letters to gods, insightful
commentary, and sales receipts. He includes a number of passages,
offered in translation, that allow readers an illuminating glimpse
into the lives of Babylonians. Charpin's insightful overview
discusses the methods and institutions used to teach reading and
writing, the process of apprenticeship, the role of archives and
libraries, and various types of literature, including epistolary
exchanges and legal and religious writing. The only book of its
kind, Reading and Writing in Babylon introduces Mesopotamia as the
birthplace of civilization, culture, and literature while
addressing the technical side of writing and arguing for a much
wider spread of literacy than is generally assumed. Charpin
combines an intimate knowledge of cuneiform with a certain breadth
of vision that allows this book to transcend a small circle of
scholars. Though it will engage a broad general audience, this book
also fills a critical academic gap and is certain to become the
standard reference on the topic.
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