Pause and Effect

An Introduction to the History of Punctuation in the West

M.B. Parkes

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781351912464
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Literatur
• Categoria: Literaturkritik für Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft

From its publication in 1992 Pause and Effect has become a cornerstone of the study of punctuation across the world. Described as 'magisterial' by Lynne Truss in her best-selling Eats, Shoots and Leaves, this book has stimulated interest and scholarly debates among writers, literary critics, philosophers, linguists, rhetoricians, palaeographers and all those who study the use of language. To celebrate this extraordinary achievement, Pause and Effect has been republished in September 2008, coinciding with the publication of the author's new work, Their Hands Before Our Eyes. The first part of Pause and Effect identifies the graphic symbols of punctuation and deals with their history. It covers the antecedents of the repertory of symbols, as well as the ways in which the repertory was refined and augmented with new symbols to meet changing requirements. The second part offers a short general account of the principal influences which have contributed to the ways in which the symbols have been applied in texts, focusing on the evidence of the practice itself rather than on theorists. The treatment enables the reader to compare usages in different periods, and to isolate the principles which underlie the use of punctuation in all periods. The examples and plates which are at the core of the book provide the reader with an opportunity to test the author's observations. The examples are taken from a wide range of literary texts from different periods and languages. Latin texts are accompanied by English translation intended to illustrate the use of punctuation in the originals in so far as this is possible.

Notes

Introduction - Notes

• 1. Isidore's attitude to reading, and the development of the written medium as a separate manifestation of language are discussed below, pp. 21-3.
• 2. Signes-de-renvoi indicate where an omitted passage subsequently copied in the margins of a manuscript should be restored in the text. In some texts, for example, in a collection of homilies, they are also placed on either side of a passage to be omitted in the liturgy, in order to indicate to the reader where to resume. Construe marks were placed over certain words to indicate grammatical concord or regimen, and helped a reader to construe Latin syntax: see esp. M. Korhammer, 'Mittelalterliche Konstruktionshilfen und ae Wortstellung', Scriptorium xxxvii (1980), 18-58. On annotation marks or notae, see below, pp. 12, 57, 61.
• 3. Called distinctiones, discussed below, pp. 13-14.
• 4. Influences on the formation of marks are discussed below, pp. 42-3.
• 5. See the discussion of the paragraphus, the kapitulum sign and the hedera, below, pp. 43, 61.
• 6. The impact of printing is discussed below, pp. 53-61.
• 7. On the location of distinctiones see below plates 2, 13, 14.
• 8. For an example of this, see below, p. 85.
• 9. Oxford, Bodl. Lib., MS D'Orville 158, fol. 17.
• 10. Q. Horatius Flaccus ex recensione & cum notis atque emendationibus R. Bentleii (Cambridge, 1711). Given Bentley's attitude to editing, his punctuation is likely to be his own. His famous note to Odes, III, xxvii, 15: 'Nobis & ratio & res ipsa centum codicibus potiores sunt', ensured a reputation amongst his contemporaries for going 'against the authority of all MSS whatsoever, according to his usual boldness': Remarks and Collections of Thomas Hearne, x, ed. H. E. Salter, Oxford Historical Soc., 1xvii (1915), 170.
• 11. For a collection of extracts on punctuation from ancient and medieval texts see M. Hubert, 'Corpus stigmatologicum minus', ALMA, xxxvii (1970), 5-224; xxxix (1974), 55-84. (This reprints those collected by Thurot in Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Impériale, xx (1868), 1-592, and many others, but is by no means complete.) For accounts of post-medieval discussions see V. Salmon, 'English punctuation theory 1500-1800', Anglia, cvi (1988), 285-314; P. Honan, 'Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English punctuation theory', English Studies, xli (1960), 92-102; B. Garbe, Texte zur Geschichte der deutschen Interpunktion und ihrer Reform (Hildesheim, 1984); S. Höchli, Zur Geschichte der Inter-punktion im Deutschen (Berlin, 1981); A. Bieling, Das Princip der deutschen Interpunktion nebst einer übersichtlichen Darstellung ihrer Geschichte (Berlin, 1880); La Ponctuation: recherches historiques et actuelles, ed. J. Petit & N. Catach (Paris-Bcsançon, CNRS-HESO, 1979). For an admirable survey of modern studies of medieval punctuation see P. Rafti, 'L'Interpunzione nel libro manoscritto: mezzo secolo di studi', Scrittura e civiltà, xii (1988), 239-98.
• 12. For example, in Hildemar's letter to Ursus of Benevento, pr. MGH, Epistolae, v, 320; and Carthusian and Cistercian treatises printed by Hubert, ALMA, xxxvii (1970), nos xv, a, b and c.
• 13. For example, in the works of the dictaminists, see below, pp. 45-6.
• 14. On regional variations in the pronunciation of Latin see, for example, D. Norberg, Manuel pratique de latin médiéval (Paris, 1968), pp. 13-92 passim; cf. P. Tombeur, 'De polygraphia' in Grafia e interpunzione del latino nel medioevo, ed. A. Maierù, Lessico Intelletuale Europeo, xxxix (1987), 69-101 with further references.
• 15. D. Steel, Elements of Punctuation containing remarks on An Essay on Punctuation (London, 1786), p. 1.
• 16. J. Robertson, An Essay on Punctuation (London, 1785).
• 17. This interpretation is discussed below, p. 75.
• 18. The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, xii, Marginalia, 2, ed. G. Whalley (London and Princeton, 1984), 161-2.
• 19. Petrarch's punctuation is discussed below, pp. 81-3; on Dickens see P. Gaskell, A New Introduction to Bibliography (Oxford, 1972), pp. 339 et seq.
• 20. 'Quand j'ai desiré qu'on suivit le manuscrit je n'entendois pas parler de la ponctuation qui y est fort vicieuse': J.J. Rousseau, Correspondence complète, ed. R.A. Leigh, iii (Geneva and Madison, 1966), 85-6. Wordsworth wrote in a letter to Humphrey Davy, July 1800: 'You would greatly oblige me by looking over the enclosed poems and correcting any thing you find amiss in the punctuation a business at which I am ashamed to say I am no adept': Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth 1787-1805, ed. E. De Selincourt, rev. C.L. Shaver (Oxford, 1967), no. 135. Charlotte Bronte was content to leave punctuation to her publishers, since she considered their 'mode of punctuation a great deal more correct and rational than my own': letter of 24 September 1847, pr. in C. Brontë, Jane Eyre, ed. J. Jack & M. Smith (Oxford, 1969). However, see the extract from one of her earliest manuscripts printed below, p. 94.
• 21. For example the written statement - George said Paul is an idiot - can be pointed either as - 'George', said Paul, 'is an idiot' - or as - George said, 'Paul is an idiot' - .
• 22. See the extracts from addresses to the reader printed by J. Binns, 'STC Latin Books: evidence for printing house practice', The Library, 5 ser., xxxii (1977), 1-27; 6 ser., i (1979), 347-54, especially extracts nos 6-7, 10, 28, 32-3, 36, 71.

Chatper 1 - Notes

• 1. The ideal of the vir eloquentissimus is discussed by O. Seeck, Geschichte des Untergangs der antiken Welt, iv (Berlin, 1911), 168-204; H.-I. Marrou, St Augustin et la fin de la culture antique (Paris, 1958), pp. 3-9, 85-9; A. Gwynn, Roman Education from Cicero to Quintilian (Oxford, 1926).
• 2. On eloquentia in ancient education see H.-I. Marrou, Histoire de l'éducation dans l'antiquité, 6th edn (Paris, 1965), see English tr. History of Education in Antiquity (London, 1956), pp. 210-12; S. F. Bonner, Education in Ancient Rome (London, 1977); Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, ed. M. Winterbottom (Oxford, 1970).
• 3. Augustine, De dialectica, v, 11; cf. De Trinitate, xv, 10, 19. On the authenticity of the De dialectica see Marrou, St Augustin, pp. 571-9.
• 4. The habit of reading aloud in Antiquity and later is discussed by J. Balogh (' "Voces paginarum", Beiträge zur Geschichte des lauten Lesens und Schriebens', Philologus, 1xxxii (1927), 84—109, 202-40), although some of his examples are not wholly convincing. See further B. Knox, 'Silent reading in Antiquity', Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies ix (1968), 421-35. On reading habits in Antiquity see also U. E. Paoli,'Legere e recitare', Atene e Roma, xxv (1922), 205-07; E. Albertini, La Composition dans les ouwages philosophiques de Sénèque, Bibl. des Ecoles Françaises d'Athènes et de Rome, cxxvii (Paris, 1923), 317-18; G. L. Hendrickson, 'Ancient reading', Classical Jnl, xxv (1929), 182-96; J. Marouzeau, 'Le Style oral latin', Rev. des études latines, x (1932), 147-86.
• 5. Ausonius, Liber protrepticus, 47-50. Compare the comment on the affected modulation of a rea...