The first year Bibliography Course: after the hand press

This term I would like you all to get an email account, if you haven't got one already. If you haven't, or even if you have, please click here.

 

Summary:

After the hand press 1: machine printing

After the hand press 2: the micro-computer

After the hand press 3: how to do it

 

In detail:

Here is the plan for the coming semester. What I want us to do is this. Firstly, examine and understand the two major technological developments in print after the hand press: machine printing, often known as hot metal, and the use of the computer, originally known as cold comp[osition].

In the case of each I want to look at first the technology, what it is, what it means, how it works; and second the implications, in relation to literary text. As with hand printing and the Shakespeare sonnet in semester 1.

The main point of hot metal is that it is expensive and dangerous and hard to learn. This affects the balance of power between author, publisher, and reader. So a first-time novelist, for instance, has relatively little power over the text compared with the publisher. We look at this in the case of a novel by the American author Stephen Crane. You will need to read this rather short novel. Why not start now? Here it is. You will find other Crane material on the Web. Click here.

In hot metal the reader has very little power over the text at all: you read the text you get. You can't alter it. The point of the computer is that it is the opposite of hot metal: cheap, safe, easy to learn. With the Web, anyone can publish anything to anyone, and, moreover, any reader can manipulate the resulting text in any way they want. This free flow of meaning is the style of post-modernism, which, curiously, predated the micro-computer by many years. We will examine this coincidence and its implications for text with reference to a novel by Kurt Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse-5. I choose this book in spite of and because of the fact that it is a first year set text, so some of you will have looked at it already. Not the way we are going to look at it, though. The interactive cd-rom version, for instance? And since it is a set text it will be readily available: please buy and read it. If you want to order a copy, click here.

There is a lot of Vonnegut material on the Web: click here to find it.

Finally I want you to learn a practical skill. I can't teach you hot metal, precisely because it is difficult, and expensive, and dangerous. But I can teach you the computer, precisely because it is the opposite of those things. So by the end of the semester you should know from first hand experience how to lay out text and graphics on a printed page. Moreover, since this is so easy, there is another essential that you need to learn along with it: how to do so in a pleasing fashion. This is called layout and design and typography, and the course will include a basic introduction to those skills. This will be based on a beautiful and brilliant book, The Non-Designer's Design Book, by Robin Williams. You can order it here, if you want (it's not compulsory, but if I were in your position I would buy a copy).

We will meet as last semester in the same lecture and seminar hours, beginning in week 1 (January 20th) with an introduction to the graphic user interface, which is the key to how computers came to be used for print. The two seminar hours of that week will be used to prepare presentations (which will be Web based, and therefore you will learn the beginnings of Web-based presentation) on your hand printing project. The week 2 lecture hour will consist of the presentations themselves.

The practical part of the course (ie the DTP) is not assessed, but there is a course requirement that you provide a desk-top published A4 poster. The theoretical part of the course is assessed by a three-hour examination taken at the end of the semester. For both the first and second year students this is a pass/fail exam, not counting towards finals. The pass mark, as usual, is 40%.

This is quite an ambitious project. In order to cover the ground and prepare yourselves for the exam you will need to research the subjects covered on your own: the lectures will not be enough. You can start now: there is a lot of material on the Web. Look at these links:

In general I will expect all of you to have used this page, and these links, to give yourselves necessary and interesting background material. The lectures will only be the basic minimum. The good news is that if you do this, you will learn a lot: about essential aspects of nineteenth and twentieth century literature, from a novel point of view, and you will also learn a practical skill that will be of use for the rest of your life.

Note:

The book ordering links I've put in here are a bit experimental: let me know how (if) they work...

The teaching method

The course will be taught by a mixture of lectures, seminars, hands on individual computer work, and on-line discussion. On-line discussion? I will explain.

The on-line forum.

I have set up an on-line forum for discussion of the first year bibliography lectures. It's here. Each week I will post a summary of the lecture: just the headings. Each week at the beginning of the lecture I will ask for two volunteers to be scribes. What is a scribe? It's the job of the scribes to take particularly careful notes of the lecture. Their job is then to agree a version of these notes, and to post it to the on-line forum, where everyone will be able to refer to it. I will go through the notes you put up and make sure they are accurate. The advantage of being a scribe is that you will have to opportunity to practice, carefully, your note-taking skills. To be able to take lecture notes is a crucial ability in the English Department.

In addition, in the forum there is a facility for each of you to add comments to the lecture, ask questions, or comment on the comments of others. I don't know how this will work in practice: it's entirely up to you. If it works, fine; if not, no harm done; it entirely depends on you. I will monitor it frequently and reply quickly to any questions that come up. I'll be interested to see what happens.