| Although the first generation of electronic books has come and gone, the transfer of printed material into the electronic medium continues to occupy the attention of scholars and librarians alike. Recent advances in digital technologies have allowed institutions to preserve the texts and images of rare books with a high degree of precision. Although these electronic projects provide unprecedented access to treasured materials, they have yet to be fully embraced by readers and scholars. We will explore the reasons for this rift between designers and readers by examining the shift from print to electronic media as a moment in the long history of written artefacts. This dissertation will therefore consider how text and image have been transmitted through time in manuscript, in print, and on computer.; This project uses the Controversia de nobilitate, a late medieval treatise, as a vehicle with which to examine diverse technologies of writing. We shall explore the different ways in which the Controversia has been visually presented and re-presented from the moment of its composition in 1428 to the present. The investigation will guide us through an array of pages from the treatise: parchment pages written and decorated by hand; printed pages in Latin and in translation; and digitally-reproduced pages on the World Wide Web. Through this historical survey, we will discover that any page, whether in manuscript, print, or digital form, is an expressive construction designed to encourage its audience to read in certain ways through the use of textual and non-textual signs. We shall observe how designers assign the Controversia different literary heritages with these signs, and how the text has consequently been received as a participant in these diverse traditions. This study therefore examines how the Controversia de nobilitate has been cast by its designers, how it has been understood by its readers, and how the text has been variously categorised and stored in libraries from the fifteenth century to the modern day. We shall expose how the same text, through subtle changes in its visual presentation, traverses the boundaries established by disciplines and challenges our current categories of knowledge. |
