The Metaphysics of Text by Sukanta Chaudhuri

SYNOPSIS

The advances of book history and editorial theory remind us that it is vital to look behind the
text we read. Sukanta Chaudhuri explores, at a very fundamental level, how texts are
constituted and how they work. He applies insights from many lines of study not brought
together so closely before: theories of language, signification and reception alongside
bibliography, textual criticism, editorial theory and book history. Blending case studies with
general observation and theory, he considers the implications of the physical form of the text;
the relation between oral and written language, and between language and other media; the
new territory opened up by electronic texts; and special categories like play-books and
translations. Drawing on an exceptionally wide range of material, both Western literature and
Indian works from Sanskrit aesthetics to the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore, Chaudhuri sets
a new agenda for the study of texts.

SUMMARY OF “WHAT IS THE HISTORY OF BOOKS?” BY ROBERT DARNTON

Darnton was writing a social and cultural history of communication through print. People
who do things with books are the core of his study. He wanted to think about how ideas
were transmitted by print. He also considered how exposure to the printed word changed
thought patterns and behavior. The field of the history of books is interdisciplinary and could
be expanded in many ways. It goes back to the Renaissance and really began to flourish in
the 19th century with analytical bibliography. It really developed after 1958 with Febvre and
Martin’s The Coming of the Book. This example of Annales school historiography looked at
larger patterns of production and consumption over long periods of times through statistical
analysis. It examined ordinary books, not rare editions; traditional culture over avant garde.
When Darnton was writing, he was saw a disarray of topics and methodologies —
bibliography, history, comparative literature, reader’s psychology, libraries, publishing, law,
etc. — and he was trying to manage the interdisciplinary work run amok.

His answer was to turn to the communication circuit, which comprised 6 stages: publisher,
printer, shipper, seller, reader, and back to author. Outside influences are contained in the
middle of the schematic chart. Most people examine one section of this circuit in their
studies, but they are all inter-related, Darnton argues.

To prove this point, he uses the example of the Montpelier, France bookseller Isaac Pierre
Rigaud. He liked using a seller because they were discussed less in the literature. The
example revolves around Rigaud’s orders for Voltaire’s Questiones sure l’Encyclopedie, from
the Société typographique de Neuchâtel (STN) in Switzerland. Voltaire’s work was
forbidden, but sold well. He did not make it easy for the sellers though, as he often changed
his texts. Rigaud was angry that customers blamed him for it.

Some context: Rigaud sold lots of medical books, a few forbidden books, but he really was a
general salesman. He had a book inventory worth around 45,000 livre. He was a smart
buyer who only purchased a few dozen of any title at a time and he was well aware of what
sold well. Montpelier was a town of 31,000 people and had a university, a number of
academies, masonic lodges, and had a strong textile industry. There were 16 monastic
communities and was the seat of the province where the intendant sat. The courts were
based in the city and many lawyers resided there. This created an enviornment for an
extensive book trade and customers wanted Enlightenment texts. The 1770s and 1780s
were tough times in France, and in the book trade in particular, high tariffs were put in place
to pay for national war debt. Severe policing was in effect from 1771-1774. Government
reforms in 1777 hurt the foreign traders who sent books into France, hurting Rigaud’s
business.

Rigaud was a sharp businessman though. Each major town in France had 1-2 large sellers
with a larger group of fringe firms selling old volumes and chapbooks. There were also firms
beyond the fringe sellers who hawked illegal texts. Rigauld played rough and worked with
debt holders to shut down his competition. Rigauld also controlled the business of the local
binders and used his patronage to exert pressure on other sellers who did not get their
books bound in time.

With Questiones, Rigaud took a gamble with STN, which was producing a pirated edition,
supposedly with the help of Voltaire who would give the firm additional material to publish.
Cramer, Voltaire’s originally printer, got his editions out first and Rigaud lost his gamble.
From correspondence at STN that Darnton used, it is clear that Voltaire’s, while technically
illegal still sold very well. Amsterdam printed an edition too. Rigaud’s actions were not odd
— sellers would play publishers off each other and negotiated hard for the best deals and
best delivery times. Sellers sought any small advantage. Firms outside France were
essential before the Revolution because of censorship laws, and there were various routes
that smugglers took to get books into the Gallic lands. Ultimately, social, political, economic,
and intellectual conditions affected Rigaud very much.

Danrton claimed that circuit was not a standard formula, but that it did show how disparate
parts of book history could fit together. The trick is relating those separate parts into the
whole circuit to get the full story.

Authors: How do they do their work? How do they break away from patronage? What is the
nature of a literary career? How did writers deal with publishers, printers, reviews, and other
writers? How do you go from independently wealthy writers to people selling prose to the
highest bidder? One can go to police records, literary almanacs, and bibliographies for
answers.

Publishers: We still need to understand publishers as distinct entities. Luckily many

publishers’ papers still exist. How do publishers draw up contracts? How do they build
alliances with sellers? How do they handle finances, publicity, supplies, and shipments?
Can we analyze catalogs and prospectuses?

Printers: Well studied because of analytical bibliographers. These bibliographers were

looking to create perfect texts, especially Shakespearean texts, which have no manuscripts.
Ultimately, McKenzie squashes this with the idea of the “sociology of the text” in 1985. How
do printers calculate costs and organize production? How do budgets change with machine
made paper? How did technology alter management and labor relations? What part did
journeymen play in this labor history?

Shippers: Little work is done on how books get to shops. The wagon, canal, railroad, and
post office all have an effect on the text. They were shipped in sheets and bound to taste by
buyer. They were expensive ship for relatively cheap items (compared to textiles, that is).
From August-September, wagons were not available due to the harvest and there was ice in
some ports in the winter. Smuggling was also a key component of this enterprise. What
about cheap literature circulation?

Sellers: Sellers as a culture agent is an underdeveloped concept. They mediate between

supply and demand at the point of contact. What about the social and intellectual world of
men like Rigaud? What about their values and tastes? How do they fit into communities?
How do networks and alliances work? We need more economic studies. How do credit
mechanisms work? How do negotiated bills of exchange work?

Readers: They are the most mysterious part of the circuit. How do readers make sense of
signs on the page? How is meaning construed? One can look at fictitious audiences,
implicit readers, and interpretative communities. Very often, historians and literary critics
assume a text works on the reader in the same way. But reading changes over time and
people inhabit different mental universes over the centuries. But now people are seeing that
readers take significance from books and don’t merely read them. Texts do shape readers
though. Darnton fears the inner experience of ordinary readers might allude us, but the
social context can be gleaned. We can now look at library history, reception studies, and the
reading revolution of intensive vs. extensive reading. Over time, with the cluttering of print, it
is clear that print becomes a commodity that can be thrown away. How does that change
reading? Popular and elite dichotomies are no longer holding. Sociology is becoming key
— who reads what, when, and why and does it change man’s mental universe? Do the use
of books in oaths, as gifts, prizes, and legacies change reading?

Books don’t respect boundaries, languages, or limits, so the field must be interdisciplinary
and international. In the end Darnton says that books make history, they don’t merely
recount it.

THE PRINTING PRESS: Chapter 1: The Unacknowledged Revolution by Elizabeth

Eisenstein

She was influenced by Marshall McLuhan who got her thinking about the impact of
communications technology on society.

Eisenstein's book The Printing Press as an Agent of Change lays out her thoughts on the
"Unacknowledged Revolution," her name for the revolution that occurred after the invention
of print. Print media allowed the general public to have access to books and knowledge that
had not been available to them before; this led to the growth of public knowledge and
individual thought. The ability to formulate thoughts on one's own thoughts became reality
with the popularity of the printing press. Print also "standardized and preserved knowledge
which had been much more fluid in the age of oral manuscript circulation". Eisenstein
recognizes this period of time to be very important in the development of human culture;
however, she feels that it is often overlooked, thus, the 'unacknowledged revolution'.

Summary

The revolution may be unacknowledged because it is very difficult to find reliable historical
sources from the pre-print era. Plus scholars cannot properly investigate pre-print (oral)
cultures because they have to rely on printed sources to do this.

In the late fifteenth century, the reproduction of written materials began to move from the
copyist's desk to the printer's workshop. This shift, which revolutionized all forms of learning,
was particularly important for historical scholarship. Ever since then, historians have been
indebted to Gutenberg's invention; print enters their work from start to finish, from consulting
card-files to reading page-proofs. Because historians are usually eager to investigate major
changes and this change transformed the conditions of their own craft, one would expect the
shift to attract some attention from the profession as a whole. Yet any historiographical
survey will show the contrary to be true. It is symbolic that Clio has retained her handwritten
scroll. So little has been made of the move into new workshops, that after five hundred
years, the muse of history still remains outside. ‘History bears witness to the cataclysmic
effect on society of inventions of new media for the transmission of information among
persons. The development of writing and later the development of printing are examples…’
Insofar as flesh-and-blood historians who turn out articles and books actually bear witness to
what happened in the past, the effect on society of the development of printing, far from
appearing cataclysmic, is remarkably inconspicuous. Many studies of developments during
the last five centuries say nothing about it at all.

Main Argument

Eisenstein studies the cultural impact of the transition from scribal culture to print culture and
suggests that historians have not properly acknowledged the significance of this revolution.
The impact of the printing press on the flow of information allowed major intellectual
revolutions (Renaissance, Reformation, Scientific Revolution) to take place. Ideas and
information could not have spread as rapidly with hand-copied manuscripts.

The printing press allowed better:

● Access – more books, available more quickly. People were able to learn by reading
and educate themselves
● Reliability – less errors introduced in the copying process

“Orality and Literacy: Chapter 4: writing restructures consciousness.” Walter Ong

Ong’s basic argument is that the creation of recording and writing has allowed humans to
express increasingly more complex thought. Writing also creates definitive meaning for
signifiers, allowing humans to communicate very specific utterances in a way that a graphic
image, like a hieroglyph, is not able to do. Hieroglyphs might have specific meaning within a
particular community, but once an item with a hieroglyph appears somewhere else, it is
subject to interpretation, and the specificity of intended meaning may be lost.

He makes an analogy between Plato’s disgruntled writing that says writing will destroy
memory (remarks on the irony of Plato’s use of writing a bit excessively–but I guess I don’t
really care for Plato, either) and the curmudgeonly anti-computer arguments.

Essentially, we can trace the evolution of communication and technology through the history
of the technology of writing. It also changes the way we think because, in addition to the
oral-aural nature of oral cultures, writing adds a visual element, engaging another sense,
thus changing how we actually think.

Grapholect: the “official” national language. It’s basically a dialect that outsurvives others,
encompasses others, and has rules about grammar. It is essentially the “common
tongue”–the baseline that most people in that region can access. The problem with
non-grapholects (perhaps what we would just call dialects) is not that they aren’t
grammatical (every language has a grammar), but that they limit understanding due to their
insularity.

Ong's central argument in this excerpt from his book Orality and Literacy is that human
beings' thought processes "do not grow out of simply natural powers but out of these powers
as structured, directly or indirectly, by the technology of writing".

Writing, a process, for Ong, of "putting spoken language into writing" is ruled by "contrived,
articulatable rules".

(One of Ong's most famous disciples, Marshall McLuhan, once wrote that "Nobody ever
made a grammatical error in a non- literate society.") But, for Ong, this isn't a problem. As he
says, to call writing artificial is "not to condemn it, but to praise it".

"Technology," he says, "properly interiorized, does not degrade human life but on the
contrary enhances it".

But what does he mean by "properly interiorized"?

Ong refers to a violinist or an organist interiorizing an instrument through years of practice,

resulting in the "shaping of a tool to oneself." This, he says, "is hardly dehumanizing"

The concept of writing is one that has undergone remarkable changes in the intelligentsia of
the Western countries in the past few decades. Due to the theories introduced by
deconstructive critics like Derrida or that of Walter J. Ong, writing is no longer regarded
simply as a substitute for oral speech. As a matter of fact, writing is not merely for the
purpose or transmission or preservation of knowledge. On the other hand, writing has
emerged as a cultural agency which is both powerful and penetrative.

I agree with Walter J. Ong’s viewpoint that writing would restructure the human
consciousness. Like Ong, I believe that literacy in
human beings is not innate. Every human being acquires knowledge as part of a learning
process. There is a clear demarcation between conceiving an idea and writing it down.
Writing is indeed a technology that has revolutionized the field of
communication.

In this essay, I will be discussing that the written language has a direct impact on the
mentality of an individual, transforming and restructuring his thought process in the long run.

According to Walter J. Ong, writing has completely altered the way human beings perceive
and think. However, Greenber (2014) argues that writing is not that important, as far as the
human consciousness is concerned. This may be said to be in compliance with Plato’s
theory. Plato had claimed that writing could potentially destroy the memory of a person. One
must agree with Ong who says that a thought can only be called valid if it has been written
down. He opines,

“Once reduced to space, words are frozen, and in a sense dead...removed from the living
human life world, its rigid fixity, assures its endurance and its potential for being resurrected
into limitless living contexts by a limitless number of living readers. The dead, thing like text
has potentials far outdistancing those of the simply spoken word.”

He also argues that the process of writing is a kind of humanizing technology that develops
human consciousness. I agree with Ong, who says that although human beings ignore the
importance of writing in their day to day lives, writing happens to be the most potent of the
three kinds of technologies that exist in the world.

In fact, it is writing that initiated the advent of printing and other technologies like electronics.
His basic argument would be that the practice of writing down an idea would allow human
beings to increasingly express more complex and intricate thoughts. The fact that something
is written endows it with a very definite meaning.

This enables human beings to communicate through utterances, which would be impossible
through graphic images or oral speech. Essentially speaking, the process of writing would
help in altering the mentality and consciousness of an individual. This is because in the case
of oral speech, the person would not actually be able to visualize or view the language he or
she is speaking. On the other hand, by writing it down, the person would be concretizing his
point of view in paper.

First and foremost, it is important to differentiate between people using written word and
those who rely on oral speech. According to Berger and Iyenger (2013), there is a common
tendency to view the process of writing as mechanical. However, that is untrue because
writing demands a more complex thought process that can be equated with technology, not
mechanical skills. The way writing affects the human thought and consciousness is quite
simple. The mind of a person can grasp truth only when it is presented in its entirety. When
words are spoken, they lack depth and wholesomeness, which can make them seem false.
However, when a person writes something down, words cease to be simply a sequence of
myriad sounds. It makes the person feel that the idea or the concept he or she is writing
about is real. Moreover, it must be remembered that oral speech is ethereal or temporary in
nature.
AN EMPIRE OF BOOKS by Ulrike Stark

Stark's work helps to make the landscape of late 19th century North Indian publishing much
less stark. This is a long awaited work on the most important publisher in 19th century India
and his publishing house. She includes a great amount of helpful information on Newal
Kishore's publishing history, the way in which he commercialized print and how he helped to
shape new forms of knowledge production while preserving older literary, cultural and
religious traditions. This is a great resource for anyone working on the history of the book in
South Asia, late 19th century literary history, Hindi-Urdu walas, and historians of modern
South Asia. While the book contains a plethora of information I think that Stark could have
made better use of the material. For example, apart from showing the reader how Newal
Kishore combated linguistic and religious secretarianism by publishing religious works from
both Hindu and Islamic traditions she offers very few theoretical or historical insights. With
the material she painstakingly collected I think she could have gone further in her analysis,
venturing to make some larger historical and theoretical claims. That said it is still a great
work of scholarship and is a must have for all scholars working on modern South Asia.

DEMOCRATIZATION OF CENSORSHIP by Mini Chandran

This book offers a comprehensive account of the censorship of literature in India since
Independence and the recent trends in literature banning
The author recalls the literary censorship of books in India, both in English and in regional
languages, and the impact of Emergency on banned books. The book highlights recent
trends and current challenges to free literary expression in the country and attempts to
locate it in the tradition of Indian literary history.

The term ‘censorship’, used in the book, is a rubric that includes various repressive
measures, both governmental and non-governmental, in banning a book after publication,
withdrawing a book using coercive tactics or suppression of a work on other grounds. It adds
a literary perspective to the process of reception of these books by the reader.

Censorship in India is part of the embittered legacy that the British bequeathed when they
left a fragmented subcontinent in 1947. Faced as it was with the hydra-headed nature of
problems peculiar to India, the incoming native government retained most of these
bureaucratic and legal systems, along with the laws dealing with free expression. If it was
the government that was alert on these matters in the initial days, the task of monitoring art
and literature now seems to be a public responsibility. The Indian public is today the judiciary
and the executive, demanding suppression of “objectionable” materials, and occasionally
even capable of preventing books from reaching the reading public. In this essay, I attempt
to trace the trajectory of literary censorship in India from 1947 to the present day, and try to
understand this new trend of “public” censorship. The British Raj in India in the late 19th and
early 20th centuries was characterised by indecision regarding matters of free expression.

Culture and Consumption- fiction, the reading public and the british novel in colonial
india by priya joshi summary

Priya Joshi wishes to "investigate how," in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
"literate Indians addressed, absorbed, consumed, and otherwise responded to the world of
textuality and print that originated in and arrived from Britain" There are of course many
archives—commercial, legal, administrative, educational—that constitute this "world of
textuality and print," but the particular subject of Joshi's study is the fortunes of the English
novel, and later, the novel in English, in India.

She understands this relation between novelistic practices to be a process of "narrative

indigenization, a process by which first Indian readers and then writers transmuted an
imported and alien form into local needs that inspired and sustained them across many
decades".

The ground covered by Joshi has been mapped by literary historians of the Indian novel in
English, or even of Indian novels in languages other than English, but Joshi's work is
distinguished by her focus, in the first half of her book, on the history of novels imported into
nineteenth-century India and their reception by Indian readers, about which she makes
available interesting facts and figures. Thus, when she writes of "importation and
indigenization" she has in mind not only cultural and ideological translation. Indeed the first
half of this study combines an interest in the history of the book (publishers' choices, import
lists) with a sociology of reading (based on an analysis of circulation lists from lending
libraries) to paint its picture of books British publishers sent to India and of novels Indians
chose to read. Joshi suggests that Indian "literary consumption . . . eventually began to
inspire literary production in the metropolis" (by which she means that successful marketers
like Macmillan published books that they thought would sell well in India).

The "colonial marketplace," she argues, thus contributed to "the shape of the English novel."
Fair enough; the choices made by consumers do influence the production of commodities
marketed to them, and it is not surprising to learn that this was also the case with novels sold
by British publishers to Indians. Nor, I suppose, is it inappropriate to read into such
market-sensitive publishing the larger lesson that the colonial encounter was "characterized
by transaction and exchange" rather than being "marked exclusively by dominance and
conquest".

Indians were colonized, but they chose to buy some British novels and not others, and that is
evidence enough that, at least as consumers, they were free. Free to buy and read, as it
turns out, a great deal of G. W. M. Reynolds (1814-1879), many of whose politicized
melodramas were very popular with Indian readers.

Joshi suggests, unfortunately without much demonstration or evidence, that these readers
found in Reynolds's novels "not just consolation . . . but a way of 'plotting' and seeing the
world commensurate with their own fantasies." She goes on to suggest that "melodrama
both sent and received psychological signals to Indian readers, who eventually . . . used its
tropes to fashion a liberation struggle that 'really' took place, in the world and not just in their
dreams".

I am not sure about the "psychological signals" at play here, but if their reading of Victorian
melodramas led Indians to liberation, I suppose we should be grateful both for Victorian
England and for melodrama. Joshi also knows why "the excruciatingly complex plottedness"
of Victorian melodrama worked for Indians: it "resonated fully with the circularity and intimacy
of the epic plot in Indian letters . . . so familiar from the Mahabharata and the Ramayana".
Once again, this may well be true, or at least partially the case, but a critic who makes these
Hindu epics the primary frame of explanatory reference for late nineteenth- and
twentieth-century Indian readers of English novels understands them as functioning in a
cultural and historical bubble—surely there were other intervening cultural texts, not to
mention more recent social experiences and practices, that mediated the relation between
Indian reader and English text?

Her theory on the ideological war waged by colonial Britain on India after 1857, ranging from
quantitative estimates of book shipments from Britain to India, to library lendings make Priya
Joshi’s research compelling.
Her narrative explains the methodology by which national cultures can be subverted,
modified and ultimately disfigured. Carrying that logic further, it makes us examine the entire
basis of using English in the Indian education system.

Notes on Jerome McGann, “The Rationale of Hypertext”

Main Idea

In his essay, McGann argues that a hypermedia archive is the ideal type of digital archive.
Hypermedia programs have the ability to include relevant audial, visual, or other textual
documents within its system. This type of organization allows for scholars and other
researchers to “escape the focus on a single text,” and easily explore related evidence and
topics during their research. Additionally, hypermedia is open to alterations at any time,
allowing its editors to change its contents and organization as needed.

McGann highlights the Rossetti Archive as an example of a hypermedia archive. As you can
see with Rossetti’s poem “Adieu,” the archive offers many resources for the scholar to
examine: the copy of the manuscript, scholarly commentary, and hyperlinks to learn about
other types of his related works. As you click on other hyperlinks and move throughout the
archive, even more hyperlinks and multimedia become available to the scholar.

In order for hypermedia archives to become the norm, McGann encourages others to do the
following with their digital projects:
1. Design it in terms “of the largest and most ambitious goals of the project,” rather than
staying confined to the immediate or contemporary hardware and software options
2. Create a flexible design structure so the project and its system will not be drastically
affected as hardware and software evolve throughout time

The Issue with Physical Books

McGann states that current scholarly editions, such as facsimile editions and those with
notes and contextual information in the margins, limit the scholar during their analysis. Due
to its purely bookish form, the edition’s author strictly constrains the scholar to the
information they provide as they analyze the sources. Hypermedia programs avoid this type
of engagement with sources because the documents are organized in a “noncentralized
form,” which means no source is privileged over the others — it is created to “disperse
attention as broadly as possible.”

What are Facsimile Editions?

I honestly had no idea what these were until I read this article! However, these types of
books try to make an exact copy of the original text through photographic reproduction.

For example, companies like Marvel and DC often create facsimile editions of their comics
that include its original cover, story pages, as well as the original advertisements that were
featured in the comics at the time of publication.

McGann argues that these editions have minimal analytic power, since it “stands in a
one-to-one relation to its original,” but are usual for increasing access to rare works.

What are Critical and Commentary Editions?

We’ve all read Shakespeare in high school English class, right? The Folger Shakespeare
Library editions were the first thing that came to mind when I read this!

For example, the Folger edition of Romeo and Juliet includes explanatory notes placed on
pages facing the text of the play, scene-by-scene plot summaries, and more to help the
reader understand the writing. However, while McGann states that these editions are helpful,
he also states they are difficult to read and use.

The author of the edition has to “invent analytic mechanisms that must be displayed and
engaged at the primary reading level.” Additionally, if the reader wants to “hear the
performance of a song or ballad” mentioned within the text, McGann points out that the
reader cannot. This is where hypermedia archives and programs come in and flex their
power.

Conclusion

While hypermedia archives and programs have their own set of issues, like questions of
copyright, McGann believes that scholars will use this method and technology for a long
time.

Hypermedia allows scholars to break away from their traditional “single focus” analysis and
employs them a vast study space that contains an array of documents and endless
possibilities in their research. As McGann says, hypermedia resembles a “circle whose
center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.”

“The change from paper-based text to electronic text is one of those elementary shifts — like
the change from manuscript to print — that is so revolutionary we can only glimpse at this
point what it entails… The computerized edition can store vastly greater quantities of
documentary materials, and it can be built to organize, access, and analyze those materials
not only more quickly and easily, but at depths no paper-based edition could hope to
achieve. At the moment these works cannot be made as cheaply or as easily as books. But
very soon, I am talking about a few years, these electronic tools will not only be far cheaper,
they will also be commonplace” — Jerome McGann

Discussion Questions

1. As McGann states, hypermedia has the ability to evolve and change over time, as
well as gather new material. If you were a scholar doing academic research with a
hypermedia archive, what issues might you face with this factor, if any? How would it
affect your analysis? OR how would it benefit your research?

2. If students and scholars have issues with critical and facsimile editions, how will they
gain the skills to effectively use the hypertext editions? Do you think it is natural for
students these days to be comfortable with technological resources? How can
primary education adjust to these increasingly important and common place online
resources?

In his essay, “The Rationale of Hypertext”, Jerome McGann makes the case for de-centered,
hypertext editions of literary works. According to McGann, who is a textual scholar, current
critical editions (editions that offer authoritative versions of texts and include critical
commentary or variants) are limited by the book form: “The logical structures of the ‘critical
edition’ function at the same level as the material being analyzed. As a result, the full power
of the logical structures is checked and constrained by being compelled to operate in
bookish format”. Basically, books establish formal limits to the study of literature. Because
the book determines how the scholar engages with the text, it constrains his analysis.
Throughout the essay, McGann offers several examples of nontraditional texts that cannot
be adequately represented in book form—poems set to music, based off pictures/paintings,
or relying on the specifics of inscription/medium.

In the example of Emily Dickinson, who often created her poems to fit the scraps of paper
available, McGann explains that it would be difficult to combine the “facsimiles” (exact
copies, or images of text) with appropriate scaffolding and criticism in a book form. The
result would be too vast and unwieldy. McGann concludes that hypertext editions offer an
opportunity for presenting texts in a more flexible way. He makes the comparison between
hypertext editions and libraries (which are collections of texts, rather than a single text) and
the internet (where information is connected through a network). He argues for presenting
texts and all their variants, components, and critical materials in non-centralized form, so
“when one goes to read a poetical work, no documentary state of the work is privileged over
the others. All options are presented for the reader’s choice”. This dramatically breaks open
the traditional text to new ways of reading, and therefore, of analysis.

I have one major question about McGann’s proposal. It’s obvious from his essay that his
main audience consists of other textual scholars or literary scholars in general. I’m
wondering how he might present such a proposal to students of literature, or people in other
disciplines? Re-reading this text (I first read it several years ago, when I was much more
idealistic and less familiar with teaching), I was struck by the pedagogical implications, or
lack thereof. I’m not sure how students would interact with these “non-centered” texts. How
would undergraduates, especially those who don’t have much experience handling the book,
or experience with literature in the first place, have the confidence to confront and navigate
through the hypertext edition? How could we scaffold the experience in a way that doesn’t
constrain them? To spur your thinking, I’m going to link to the Rossetti Archive which is
McGann’s project. I’m also going to link to one of my favorite online editions, on Virginia
Woolf’s To The Lighthouse. Both of these resources are non-centralized, and it’s up to the
user to determine her engagement with them. How might today’s students (who are largely
familiar with hypertext, but less so with literature) interact with these resources?

"The Rationale for Hypertext," extends McGann's argument about the use of the digital
medium as a machine for thinking. McGann argues for hypertext editions of a book over
paper editions of a book. As the number of online editions grows and their use becomes
commonplace, the importance of this chapter shifts from simply arguing for digital editions to
making clear once again what it is readers do when working with an online edition. The
digital tools provide a new reflexive heuristic for editing and reading. The problem with book
editions is that "they deploy a book form to study another book form. This symmetry between
tool and its subject forces the scholar to invent analytic mechanisms that must be displayed
and engaged at the primary reading level--for example, apparatus structures, descriptive
bibliographies, calculi of variants, shorthand reference forms, and so forth". Hypertext
editions provide "nested series of operational possibilities" for both editors and readers,
manifesting how different editions serve the purposes of different scholars. Readers no
longer find order; rather, they make it. McGann illustrates the new operational possibilities
through several editing examples: Burns's "Tam Glen," McGann's New Oxford Book of
Romantic Period Verse, Emily Dickinson's corpus, Landon's picture-poems, and
Wordsworth's multiple versions of The Prelude. He concludes that "Precisely because an
electronic edition is not itself a book, it is able to establish itself in a theoretical position that
supervenes the (textual and bookish) material it wishes to study".

The rationale for hypertext editions, as well as for readers as performers (actors and agents)
of meaning, continues in "Visible and Invisible Books in N-Dimensional Space." The focus
here is on how web archives of literature can better meet the needs of scholars than a
page-based edition of a literary work. When marking a text for digital archiving, e.g., in
SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language), an archivist must decide what parts of the
literary work should be tagged and how the parts function in relation to one another.
Secondly, an archivist must decide how to represent the literary work. In what McGann calls
"conscious deformation," editors manipulate the perceptual field to generate dominant
conceptual patterns for reading and understanding the text. A digital archive allows for
greater storage and means of serving data. Consequently, in digital archives, the meaning of
the textual object can be de/reformed "on the fly." In selecting particular textual features from
the archive, readers create a version of the text and at the same moment are performing a
reading through their choices. McGann points out that an informational text seeks to
minimize attention to its perceptual features. However, as his readings of several poems
show, it is the interplay between percept and concept--between visible and invisible--that
makes for aesthetic meaning. While we can order fields of information
hierarchically--semantic, syntactic, and rhetorical features--it is a topological interplay among
fields that carries richly textured meaning. Using hypertext markup and databases, the
reader can run through topological fields of meaning without being bound by the dictates of a
particular perceptual or conceptual feature. Texts may then reach toward an N-dimensional
space. It is worth noting that in The Ivanhoe Game, the topological fields and N-dimensional
space become the playing fields for critical gaming.

If on a winter's night a traveler Summary

The book opens with a curious line: "You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new
novel, If on a winter's night a traveler". From the get-go, the book places you, the Reader, as
its main character.

The story begins in a train station, where the narrator introduces himself as someone who is
implicated in some sort of grand plot that he doesn't fully understand. Okay, Calvino, you've
got our attention. Just when this story becomes interesting, though, it breaks off because of
an error with the book's printing.

Frustrated, you (yes, you) return to the bookstore where you bought it and meet Ludmilla, an
attractive young woman who's had the same problem. Now you not only want to read the
book for its own sake, but to also have something to talk about with Ludmilla. In pursuit of
Ludmilla, you agree to meet her at "the university," where you run into a nutty professor of
dead languages named Uzzi-Tuzii. You also meet Lotaria, Ludmilla's academic sister, who
reads novels only so she can project her political and overbearing theories onto them.
As the novel unfolds, you begin to read other books, only to have them break off the same
way the first one did. Eventually, you go to the books' publisher and demand an explanation.

A man named Mr. Cavedagna explains that a fraudulent translator named Ermes Marana
has intentionally sent the entire publishing house (and possibly the publishing world) into
chaos by swapping books' titles, contents, and authors until it seems almost impossible to
set everything back in order. In the meantime, you continue to come across new novels that
Marana has counterfeited only to find yourself completely engrossed. For one reason or
another, though, you're never able to get past a first chapter.

Your search for an explanation sends you poring over Marana's letters, which eventually
lead you to a reclusive old author of detective fiction named Silas Flannery. After confronting
him, you learn that Marana might be in Ataguitania, and go there in search of—well, you're
no longer entirely sure.

After landing in Ataguitania, you encounter a woman who goes by many different names, but
who you're certain is Ludmilla's sister, Lotaria. When you arrive in the country, the police
swipe the book you were trying to read (foiled again!) and you find yourself embroiled in
some insane war between dictators and revolutionaries. Crestfallen after all your failed
readings, you retreat to a library that seems to have copies of all the books you've begun to
read.

While at the library, you encounter numerous readers, one of whom seems to point out a
secret buried within all of the books you've been trying to read. (You'll have to finish the book
to find out what.) After he explains to you that stories traditionally only have two endings,
marriage and death, you decide that you want to marry Ludmilla.
Italian writer Italo Calvino’s novel If on a Winter's Night a Traveler is partially written in the
second-person narrative and tells the story of the Reader (or, "you") who attempts to read a
book sharing the same title, the hindrance of which leads to an adventurous foray through
unfinished novels. The first part of each chapter describes the Reader’s attempt to read the
book while the second half is a transcription of whatever book the Reader comes upon. First
published in Italian in 1979, William Weaver later translated it into English in 1981. The novel
is considered postmodernist.

The unconventional story begins with an introduction telling the Reader to relax, concentrate,
and let the real world fade away.

The Reader reads a story where a man at a railway station is about to hand off a large piece
of luggage to a stranger. The story abruptly ends, due to what the Reader believes must be
a printer's mistake, as the story is simply repeated over and over for some thirty pages.

The Reader takes the book back to the bookstore. The manager tells him there was an error
during the binding and that some of the novel's pages were accidentally mixed with a Polish
novel by Tazio Bazakbal called Outside the Town of Malbork. This, it seems, is the book that
the Reader had been reading all along.

The Reader decides to grab a new book and picks up another copy of Outside the Town of
Malbork, only this book isn't the same as the book he had started before. The new book
portrays a boy leaving a farm. None of the names in the book are Polish, so the Reader tries
to find the region mentioned, "Cimmeria," in his atlas and encyclopedia. He finds that
Cimmeria was an independent nation that rose up between wars, but was short-lived. The
Reader realizes that this copy must have been made in error as well, as there are two blank
pages for every printed page.

While at the bookstore, the Reader meets Ludmilla, an attractive woman who has arrived
under the same circumstances. Ludmilla accompanies the Reader to the Department of
Bothno-Ugaric Languages and Literature at a nearby university to see if they can find more
information. There, they meet professor Uzzi-Tuzii who specializes in dead languages. The
Reader also meets Ludmilla's sister, Lotaria.

The Reader and Ludmilla learn that the novel they have been reading is actually Leaning
from the Steep Slope, a Cimmerian novel by Ukko Ahti. The story is about a man who uses
his meager pension to buy a grapnel, which he then gives to a woman he admires. Ahti
committed suicide before he finished the work.

Several books later with no real ending, the Reader goes to the publisher, Mr. Cavedagna.
Cavedagna tells the Reader that Ermes Marana, a translator, has swapped content, titles,
and authors in several books creating chaos.

Marana's letters lead the Reader to a man who suggests that Marana might be in
Ataguitania. The Reader goes there in search of Marana. There, the Reader is reading On a
Carpet of Leaves in the airport, but a policeman confiscates it, as it's a banned book.
The Reader meets Corinna, who invites him into her car and gives him another book,
Around an Empty Grave by Calixto Bandera. The car is intercepted by a policeman, but
Corinna explains that they are actually fake police. The Reader begins to suspect that
Corinna is actually Lotaria.

Lotaria shows the Reader a machine that reads and analyzes books. The machine produces
a copy of Around an Empty Grave, which the Reader begins to read.

The Reader is having tea with the Director General of Police State Archives, Arkadian
Porphyrich of Ircania. The two discuss Marana's movement, the Apocryphal Power
conspiracy. Arkadian mentions a book similar to the one the Reader was most recently
attempting to finish. The book is called What Story Down There Awaits Its End?.

The Reader meets the author of the book Arkadian suggested. The author gives the Reader
the manuscript, but some of the pages blow away. The policemen arrest the author.

In the manuscript, a man is going to meet a woman named Franziska. He begins erasing
everything in the world, first women, then people, then everything else until it is just him on
an empty planet. He comes upon Franziska who is surrounded by men he cannot erase. A
crack opens between him and Franziska. The text ends.

The Reader has been keeping a list of the books he encounters, and he finds a library that is
supposed to have each book. A man at the library gives him the title of another book called
He Asks, Anxious to Hear the Story, and the Reader writes it down.

As the man and the Reader look at the list, they discover that all of the titles make up the
beginning of a novel. "If on a winter's night a traveler, outside the town of Malbork, leaning
on the steep slope without fear of wind or vertigo, looks down in the gathering shadow in a
network of lines that enlace, in a network of lines that intersect, on a carpet of leaves
illuminated by the moon and an empty grave—What story down there awaits its end? he
asks, anxious to hear the story."

The man tells the Reader that books don't need an end, but assures him that they usually
end in marriage or death. The Reader decides in his ending, he will marry Ludmilla.

The book ends with Ludmilla and the Reader in bed together. The Reader asks Ludmilla to
wait a minute before turning out the light, as he's just about to finish If on a Winter's Night a
Traveler by Italo Calvino.

THEMES

Literature and Language

It's kind of impossible to sum up what Calvino thinks about literature and language, since all
of If on a winter's night a traveler is pretty much one big chaotic treatise on it. How are we
supposed to read? Is there truth within or behind words? What does literature have to offer
us? One thing we can say for sure is that Calvino is pretty sure there's no such thing as
completion or perfection in language and literature. At least in his ideal world, there would
always be new ways to read a text. Shmoop would have to agree.

Questions About Literature and Language

1. What's with all the vague talk about the "silence" or "void" that lurks behind words?
How can we know about this silence if it's impossible to talk about?
2. How does Calvino's description of the train station in If on a winter's night a traveler
challenge your normal understanding of how words work in books? What is the effect
of saying that "steam from a piston covers the opening of the chapter, a cloud of
smoke hides part of the first paragraph"?
3. Why has the dude named Irnerio taught himself not to read? How has he done it?
Could you ever see yourself learning such a skill? What would be the biggest
challenge in doing it?
4. If you were Silas Flannery, why would you wish that you could write without feeling
like you were an individual person? Isn't the point of writing to do something great
and slap your name on it? Isn't that why authors' names are printed in larger letters
than the titles of books?

Chew on This

In If on a winter's night a traveler, Italo Calvino suggests that all language and all knowledge
is ultimately meaningless in the face of a real world that has nothing to do with words.

Calvino's novel shows us that true communication is impossible, since we can never break
through the personal "spin" that someone else's brain puts on our words.

Jealousy

Want to experience jealousy in If on a winter's night a traveler? Just get a lady involved.
Whether it's you (the character), Silas Flannery, or Ermes Marana, someone's always feeling
the envies about a girl. And of course, jealously even rears its ugly head in a few of the
fictional novels that Calvino puts out in his book. If one thing's for sure, it's that it's a guy
thing. The desire to read and to somehow capture meaning is connected to the desire to
capture or possess a woman sexually. Reading will never be the same again.

Questions About Jealousy

1. In a nutshell, what possible connection can the book draw between your jealousy of
other men in Ludmilla's life and the fact that she likes to read many books at once?
2. How is your jealousy as a reader connected to Silas Flannery's jealousy as a writer,
or more specifically, his jealousy toward the book that gives such great pleasure to
the woman he watches through a spyglass?
3. In what way is jealousy "a kind of game that you [play] with yourself" (13.53)? Is there
something enjoyable about feeling jealous? In what way can jealousy in this book be
considered as a form of lying to yourself?
Chew on This

In If on a winter's night a traveler, feelings of jealousy are deeply connected to the male
Reader's desire to possess a woman and have her all to himself.

Jealousy shows a person's desire to get between someone else and his or her book; it's
basically just anger about the fact that reading is like an inside joke, filled with private
meanings and secrets.

Lies and Deceit

The trickster-translator Ermes Marana has counterfeited and mistranslated text to the point
where titles are constantly confused, books with completely different storylines are posing as
the same text, and there's actually an international literature conspiracy based completely on
lies. Ultimately, Calvino brings into question the authenticity of any text you read, which is
kind of concerning.

Questions About Lies and Deceit

1. What is Ermes Marana's main motive for all of his lying and counterfeiting? What
does he hope to accomplish by doing it? Is it possible to sympathize with him, or is
he just a jerk?
2. What about Marana's lies makes them so difficult to untangle? By the end of this
book, is it possible to trust anything the narrator tells you?
3. What is the significance of the word "apocryhpa" in Marana's activities? What does
this word add to your understanding of his role in this book?
4. By the time you get to the end of the book, it's impossible to tell who anyone is, who
the real and fake police are, or which kidnappings are real and fake. Does this
completely take you out of the action as a reader, or does it serve some worthwhile
purpose?

Chew on This

Ultimately, Ermes Marana is the true hero of If on a winter's night a traveler.

In the conflict between two sects of The Organization of Apocryphal Power, Calvino is on the
side of The Archangel of Light, the group that believes it can encounter absolute truth if it
finds the right book.

Disappointment

As the actual human reader of If on a winter's night a traveler, you'll probably be able to
identify pretty closely with this one. Over and over, Calvino offers you really interesting
beginnings to novels, only to break them off just when they're starting to get good. And it's all
crafted, too—it's a technique he's using to show how pleasure is connected to your sense of
potential in what you're reading.

As much as you, the Reader, are disappointed with books in this text, your way with the
ladies is no different. You're continually attempting to find concrete points of connection with
Ludmilla, only to see them swept away by her pesky insistence on being her own person
(what nerve). This sort of disappointment arises whenever you try to make the world mean
something, then have it constantly contradict your reading. Ugh, world.

Questions About Disappointment

1. What point is Calvino making by intentionally (and continually) disappointing your

normal expectations as a reader?
2. Is it possible for a book to be more enjoyable because it disappoints you? Are you on
board with what Calvino's doing, or would he do better to stick to a traditional plot?
3. Do you think that Calvino is actually pulling a dirty trick by cutting off his fictional
novels the way he does? Is this his way of breaking the promises that truly great
writers are able to fulfill? In other words, is this book too gimmicky?
4. What is the connection between your desire to continue reading the books you've
begun and your desire to possess Ludmilla as a sexual object? What do you learn
about both by the end of the book?

Chew on This

The "disappointment" experienced by the Reader isn't actually disappointment at all, but
rather a prolonged feeling of excitement.
Calvino's text suggests that Readers who come to books expecting a clear, straightforward
plot are ignorant and don't deserve to feel satisfied.

Gender

The men in If on a winter's night a traveler love them some sexy women. The dynamic of
male desire for a female sex object is actually present in every one of the ten phony first
chapters Calvino writes into his book. And as a matter of fact, they become increasingly
explicit and aggressive as the novel goes on. There's no question about it: for Calvino,
there's a major connection between the pleasure of reading and the pleasure guys get from
chasing women.

Questions About Gender

1. Do you think that Calvino gives a fair portrayal of women in this book? Why do you
think he chose to have only male protagonists for all ten of his fictional novels?
2. Do you feel like you have a good general idea of what kind of person Ludmilla is,
based on what the book gives you?
3. Is Calvino's overall depiction of Lotaria, the angry feminist, downright sexist? Why or
why not?
4. What connection do you see between the male desire to possess and penetrate
women, and the Reader's desire to have a final and definitive ending to a book? How
is a sense of closure connected to both of them?
Chew on This

Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler, both through its general depiction of women and
specific depiction of Lotaria, is a sexist book.
In this book, the Reader's final scene with Ludmilla shows that the man has overcome his
desire to possess women and books as objects.

Education

Throughout the novel, Calvino satirizes university education without mercy. Lotaria's political,
feminist reading of books is often scorned, contrasted against Ludmilla's innocent desire to
simply read for pleasure. Shmoop is all for literary theory and analyzing great books (duh),
but we agree with Calvino that there should be pleasure in reading, too. Professor Uzzi-Tuzii
gets the royal Calvino mockery treatment, too, because he shuts himself up in a dusty office
and studies stuff that no one else care about. Bottom line: no one associated with the
university is getting out unscathed in this one.

Questions About Education

1. In this book, does Calvino suggest that all university education is stupid? Why or why
not? How does this relate to the fact that he's clearly had his share of education?
2. How does the book make you feel about Professor Uzzi-Tuzii? Do you have any
sympathy for his situation, or is he just a sad little man who studies boring things?
3. Frankly speaking, is this book too bookish? Do you find Calvino's philosophical rants
effective or just irritating? What might he be trying to accomplish with some of his
more highbrow passages?
4. Based on your reading of this book, do you think that too much education truly ruins
your ability to read for pleasure? Did you enjoy reading before you were forced to
start doing it for school? Is there a "fall from innocence" that happens when you start
analyzing books too closely?

Chew on This

In If on a winter's night a traveler, Calvino is essentially telling us to torch all of the

institutions of higher learning so we can live in a world where we can read completely for
pleasure.
Calvino's approach to education in this book is socially irresponsible, since our ability to
question what we read is what keeps us from falling under the spell of propaganda.

Fate and Free Will

In If on a winter's night a traveler, you, the Reader, are constantly being pulled along by a
conspiracy that works in ways you don't understand. And you have no say in the matter.
Every time you act or think, you have to wonder if this is the way you've been intended to act
or think by some higher power. This question finds its biggest expression when Silas
Flannery wonders if his thoughts are secretly being dictated to him by aliens. (Um, what?) It
might seem really weird and out of place, but it refers back to the larger question of how
much free will you actually have as a human being—especially when you're immersed in the
world of reading. In this world, interpretation might belong to you, but the world itself has
been created by some author you've probably never met.

Questions About Fate and Free Will

1. What active role, if any, do you have in this book as a reader? Are you just being
carried along for the ride, or is there something more to what you can do with this
book?
2. Why does Calvino include the little plot point about Silas Flannery and the
extraterrestrial messages? What bearing does it have on the book's larger themes?
3. Why would writers ever want to give up control of what they are writing? Why would
they want to lose their individual personalities in writing? What would the benefit be?
4. Why does Calvino go to such pains to constantly remind you that you are living inside
a story that he has written?

Chew on This

In If on a winter's night a traveler, Calvino suggests that you have just as much control over
what happens in a book as you do in real life. It all depends on how you look at it.
By constantly talking about how wonderful the pleasure of innocent reading is, this book
basically teaches its readers to take a more passive approach to life, and to accept whatever
happens to them with a smile.

Innocence

Innocence comes in all shapes and forms, but have you ever thought about being an
innocent reader? If on a winter's night a traveler introduces us to this idea by exploring
Ludmilla's desire to avoid authors, publishers, and anyone else who has any part in the
creation of a book. She wants to remain innocent—i.e., reading only for pleasure. In this
way, Ludmilla is always contrasted with her sister, Lotaria, who is a very analytical, political,
and intellectual reader.

Questions About Innocence

1. Does the novel in fact side with Ludmilla over Lotaria? If so, how much does it side
with her? Which sister do you like more? Why?
2. Do you think Mr. Cavedagna from the publishing house has any chance of recovering
the lost innocence of his youth? In a symbolic way, will he ever truly be able to go
back to his family's chicken coop and read in the corner?
3. Do you sympathize at all with Ludmilla's decision to stay away from the publishing
house? What legitimate reasons does she give? Is she just being weird about the
whole thing?
4. How does being a professional writer ruin the pleasure of reading for Silas Flannery?

Chew on This

Innocence in reading is the highest value put forward by If on a winter's night a traveler. It
should be pursued at all costs.
Even while Ludmilla, Cavedagna, and Flannery all have some desire to read innocently,
Calvino recognizes that this type of reading could be considered ignorant and irresponsible.

If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, avant-garde novel by Italo Calvino, published in 1979 as Se

una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore. Using shifting structures, a succession of tales, and
different points of view, the book probes the nature of change, coincidence, and chance and
the interdependence of fiction and reality. It examines living and reading as interchangeable
metaphors for each other. Also investigated are the expectations of the reader, the intentions
of the author, and the tension between the two.

The novel, which is nonlinear, begins with a man discovering that the copy of a novel he has
recently purchased and is about to begin reading is defective, a Polish novel having been
bound within its pages. He returns to the bookshop the following day and meets a young
woman who is on an identical mission. They both profess a preference for the Polish novel.

The act of reading has brought these two strangers together; the balance of the novel
juxtaposes scenes from their lives with the fiction that they read. Interposed between the
chapters in which the two strangers attempt to authenticate their texts are 10 excerpts that
parody genres of contemporary world fiction, such as the Latin American novel and the
political novel of eastern Europe.

ANALYSIS

Tone
Playful, Satirical, Hypnotic

In a piece for the New Yorker, John Updike described how Calvino "manages to charm and
entertain the reader in the teeth of a scheme designed to frustrate all reasonable readerly
expectations". In other words, it's mostly Calvino's tone that allows him to get away with what
he's doing in this book.

Our guys is conversational, intimate, and playful—but also deeply philosophical. In fact,
there are certain passages in this book where you can actually see all four elements working
at once. Take this mesmerizing opening passage, for example:

Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade. Best to close
the door; the TV is always on in the next room. Tell the others right away, "No, I don't want to
watch TV!" Raise your voice—.

Calvino understands that if you want to change the way people think, you can't just get in
their faces and shout like Lotaria. You need to give them something new to enjoy, and open
them up to all the pleasure they could experience if they'd change their thinking. Right away,
he makes you feel great about the fact that you've sat down to read, and then he throws in
some humor to make you feel like his ally. During his time, Calvino knew that TV was going
to make it hard for books to survive, and this no doubt motivated him to find new ways of
making books fresh and enjoyable.
Author is trying to challenge your assumptions as a reader; but his witty, charming tone
shows that he's also willing to do what it takes to get you on board with his way of thinking.

Writing Style
Sometimes Crisp and Clear, Sometimes Ridiculously Long-Winded

Calvino seems to enjoy showing off his writing agility, moving from short, punchy passages
to really long philosophical meanderings on a whim. Overall, he leans a little bit more toward
longish sentences, although his educated and playful tone keeps them charming—we
promise.

Calvino can be almost journalistic in his simplicity:

So here you are now, ready to attack the first lines of the first page. You prepare to recognize
the unmistakable tone of the author. No. You don't recognize it at all. But now that you think
about it, who ever said this author had an unmistakable tone?

But just as often as you find passages like this, you'll also find ones like this [WARNING:
what you are about to read is all a single sentence]:

Little by little you will manage to understand something more about the origins of the
translator's machinations: the secret spring that set them in motion was his jealousy of the
invisible rival who came constantly between him and Ludmilla, the silent voice that speaks to
her through books, this ghost with a thousand faces and faceless, all the more elusive since
for Ludmilla authors are never incarnated in individuals of flesh and blood, they exist for her
only in published pages, the living and the dead both are there always ready to communicate
with her, to amaze her, and Ludmilla is always ready to follow them, in the fickle, carefree
relations one can have with incorporeal persons.

By varying his sentences so drastically, Calvino is essentially teasing you along his narrative
like a fisherman teases a hooked bass. He'll cut you some slack and give you a few
paragraphs of easy reading; then he'll jerk the line as hard as he can and bombarding you
with long, conceptual sentences that never seem to end.

Narrator Point of View

Third-Person Omniscient, Second-Person Limited, First-Person Limited

If you didn't notice the shift between third-, second-, and first-person narration, well, you
didn't read the book.
The third-person narrator likes to butt into your reading to guide you through the book as a
whole, but he also addresses you in the second person, making you the main character of
the story. And in case that wasn't confusing enough, all the fictional novels you begin to read
are narrated in first-person limited.

Why would Calvino go so crazy with narration? We're guessing it's because this book is an
experiment trying to find new ways to tap the potential of novels. Check out, um, any other
section of the book for more on this. But he also might be trying to convey his overall point
about how one should approach the reading process.
See, the book itself (speaking in third-person omniscient) wants to walk you, the Reader,
through an educational journey. But at the same time, it doesn't want you to excuse yourself
from its message by saying "well, it's not about me." Instead, it forces you to take on the role
of an average or normal reader. This way, the book can tell you things about "yourself"
without giving you the option of saying it's wrong, since the book can always pull back at this
moment and say "no, not you; the character you're playing."

Allusions
Literary and Philosophical References

● While If on a winter's night a traveler draws from many of the philosophical trends
that were popular during the time of his writing, the book itself is pretty insular,
meaning that its references deal mostly with things Calvino has made up from
scratch.
● There is one particular literary reference, though, that sneaks into the diary of Silas
Flannery (15.41-15.45): the opening lines of Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and
Punishment.
● The narrator of In a network of lines that intersect gives shout-outs to a couple of
obscure historical thinkers (14.3): Sir David Brewster (1781-1868), inventor of the
kaleidoscope; and Athanasius Kircher (1601-1680), a Jesuit priest and scholar.

Literary and Philosophical References

● Cimmerian. Cimmeria (mentioned mostly in the chapter labeled [4]) is a language

that once existed, although the attributes that Calvino gives to the country of
Cimmeria don't seem to have any basis in historical reality. The Cimmerians were a
tribal group that lived in southern Ukraine around 500 BCE, while Calvino has their
culture existing well into the modern era. Go figure.
● Cimbria. As with Cimmeria, Calvino draws on a culture and language called
Cimbrian that once existed, but which has few to none of the attributes he gives to it.
But believe it or not, the Cimbrian language is still spoken today, with fewer than
2,300 speakers remaining in northern Italy.

Pop Culture References

● The Snoopy Poster on Silas Flannery's Wall

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (Summary)

Fahrenheit 451 tells the story of Guy Montag and his transformation from a book-burning
fireman to a book-reading rebel. Montag lives in an oppressive society that attempts to
eliminate all sources of complexity, contradiction, and confusion to ensure uncomplicated
happiness for all its citizens. As Montag comes to realize over the course of the novel,
however, his fellow citizens are not happy so much as spiritually hollow. People in this world
are constantly bombarded with advertisements and shallow entertainments, leaving them no
space to think for themselves or assess their own emotional states. The result is a society
that grows increasingly selfish, pleasure-seeking, disconnected, and empty.

Montag begins to grow conscious of the problems his society faces soon after his initial
encounter with the free-spirited Clarisse McClellan. At first, the young woman confuses him.
For all of her puzzling, unorthodox behavior, Montag remains intrigued, and after they part
ways he fixates on Clarisse’s final question: “Are you happy?” In the moment he has no idea
how to answer, but the question strikes a chord. Upon arriving home, his first response is
denial: “Of course I’m happy. What does she think? I’m not?” Yet a realization dawns on him:
“He was not happy...He wore his happiness like a mask and the girl had run off across the
lawn with the mask and there was no way of going to knock on her door and ask for it back.”
The timing of this recognition has great significance in the novel, since it occurs just before
Montag discovers his wife, Mildred, unconscious in bed after overdosing on sleeping pills.
When the EMTs arrive to pump Mildred’s stomach and give her an emergency blood
transfusion, they casually inform Montag that this kind of event happens all the time. Mildred
appears unfazed by her near-death experience, and Montag realizes that his wife has
become so vacant that she’s essentially asleep even when she’s awake.

Between the recognition of his own unhappiness and the realization of his wife’s
vacuousness, Montag becomes dimly aware that something is wrong with the status quo.
The shock of witnessing a rebellious woman burn herself alive incites Montag’s
transformation. He awakens into full consciousness of his society’s deep-seated problems
when he witnesses this woman choose to die rather than let the firemen take away her
books.

When Montag steals a book during the episode with the rebellious woman, he draws himself
into a tense conflict with the sinister Captain Beatty and with society at large. Beatty
immediately suspects Montag of harboring illegal books and pays him a visit, during which
he explains the social and technological history that led to the banning of books. Beatty
wishes to deter Montag from reading, but his speech has the opposite effect. After Beatty
leaves, Montag decides to make sense of the very thing he’s dedicated his life to destroying:
books.

Montag’s decision to seek out the value of books leads directly to the novel’s climax. Mildred
strongly resists Montag’s reading project, and the conflict between the two comes to a head
when Montag returns home to find Mildred and her friends watching television in the “parlor.”
Montag grows furious with their shallowness and forces them to listen to a passage from a
book. Although he tries to shrug his actions off as a joke, he visibly upsets the women, who
leave the house and immediately turn him in to the firemen. The novel’s climax comes when
Beatty orders Montag to burn his own house down. Instead of obeying, Montag sets Beatty
on fire and flees. Montag escapes the city, floating down a river that ushers him out of the
city and into the country. There he meets a roving band of like-minded intellectuals who
devote their lives to preserving great books by committing them to memory. The novel
concludes with a bomb falling on the city, reducing it to rubble. The band of intellectuals, led
by Montag, head toward the destroyed city, hoping to rebuild.

By novel’s end, Montag’s transformation is complete. Although he has yet to master the
information he receives from books, his thinking undergoes enough of a change to enable
him to reject his society and embrace the possibility of a new one. Whereas the previous
society collapsed due to its refusal of knowledge, knowledge will serve as the foundation for
the new society.

Major Themes in Fahrenheit 451

Knowledge and Individuality vs. Ignorance and Conformity

The overarching theme of Fahrenheit 451 explores the struggle between man’s desire for
knowledge and individuality in a society that expects ignorance and conformity. Supporting
themes centered around censorship as a means to control society and the destructive nature
of technology are used to amplify the overarching theme.

The story’s protagonist, Guy Montag, is a fireman in a society where firemen no longer put
out fires but rather start them in homes known to be hiding books. Though the story opens
with an image of Montag appearing to relish the feeling of burning things, it’s not long before
he meets Clarisse and is struck by how different she is from everyone else he knows.

Set in a future vision of America, society has become an empty shell of humanity. Having
disregarded books and the knowledge contained in them, people have become ignorant,
addicted to mass media and the constant barrage of sights and sounds that never stop to
allow one to process and think. There is no room for the development of individual identity
and ideas. Ideas lead to differences, and differences lead to conflict, which is avoided at all
costs. To be different is to be an outcast; society has chosen conformity because life is
simpler when everyone is the same.

As Montag’s eyes are opened to the emptiness of his life, he is driven to find greater
meaning. Believing that books must contain the knowledge he seeks, Montag allows his life
to spiral out of control as he defies the laws he was meant to uphold. His desperation to
bring meaning to his life, to rid himself of the ignorance his society accepted, leads him on a
tumultuous journey. He must accept that the only way to save himself and humanity is by
destroying the world of ignorance and conformity he has been a part of for so long. Bradbury
uses one of the most extreme forms of destruction to emphasize the grim reality and fate of
a world that allows itself to fall to ignorance and conformity.

Censorship as a Means to Control Society

Though they are long past realizing it, the ignorance of the people in Fahrenheit 451 allows
them to be controlled through censorship. Without books to turn to for knowledge, society
has given the government and mass media the power to control all information. Having lost
the ability to think for themselves, the people stay electronically connected to media at all
times, either through the Seashell Radios in their ears or their immersive parlors with
wall-size screens.
The importance of
this theme lies within the how. Bradbury is not only trying to express the danger that comes
with censorship and control. He shows how people themselves choose to either retain the
right of individuality and knowledge or choose to succumb to the simplicity of a life without
thought or the need to make decisions. By choosing knowledge, one can see the difference
between manipulation and entertainment. By choosing individuality, one has the power to
control their own future.

The Destructive Nature of Technology

As with many of Bradbury’s works, Fahrenheit 451 contains a not-so-subtle message about
the danger that technology poses for humanity. Writing during a time of rapid acceleration in
technological capabilities, Bradbury saw how people became captivated by the excitement
and entertainment that came with the increased capacity for mass media. In the setting of
Fahrenheit 451, ignorance, conformity, censorship, and control are all the result of the
destructive nature of technology. Captain Beatty explains to Montag how the current role of
the fireman started: “The fact is we didn’t get along well until photography came into its own.
Then – motion pictures in the early twentieth century. Radio. Television. Things began to
have mass”. The increase in mass media technologies created a desire for quick and easy
consumption of entertainment.

While this entertainment lacks any depth, it stimulates the senses, and society has become
addicted to the immediate satisfaction provided by these forms of entertainment. Reading
takes time, thought, and consideration. For a society that has come to desire instant
gratification, books have no appeal. When society lost interest in books, it lost its ability to
think critically, process ideas, and develop unique ideas, creating an ignorant population with
no sense of individual identity. In this way, technology destroyed the capacity to be human.
While technology has destroyed humanity through mass media, Bradbury also includes
physically destructive forms of technology. The highly advanced Mechanical Hound is used
for hunting down and killing or anesthetizing people. Cars have become tools for reckless
danger, as their high-speed capabilities encourage quick thrills that often result in deadly
accidents. Advanced weaponry creates the most physically destructive force in the novel, as
an atomic bomb wipes out the entire city at the end of the novel. By fleeing the city and
ridding himself of his society’s technological tools, Montag can begin his journey to find
meaning and purpose in his life.

Motifs and Symbols in Fahrenheit 451

Motifs and symbols are used throughout literature to represent ideas and concepts that help
develop the story’s themes. Bradbury weaves many motifs and symbols throughout
Fahrenheit 451 to help bring attention to and emphasize the critical messages he conveys.
Motifs related to religion and paradoxes are found throughout the text, and they are often
designed to make the reader question various aspects of the society in Fahrenheit 451. In
contrast, nature imagery helps to illustrate the distinction between Montag’s society and a
world untouched by the destructive nature of technology. Symbols are often used to
represent the dual purposes of fire, the threat posed by technology, and the importance of
self-awareness and identity.

Motifs

Religion
Religion plays a recurring role throughout the text of Fahrenheit 451. When the reader first
sees Montag stealing a book during a burning, he later discovers that it is a copy of the
Bible. The significance of religion, or lack thereof, is discussed when Montag meets with
Faber and shows him the Bible. While Faber explains that he is not a religious man, he
describes how far removed religion is from the days when the Bible was allowed to exist.

When Montag is with Mildred’s friends Mrs. Bowles and Mrs. Phelps, he is reminded of a
time in his childhood where he had entered a church and looked at the faces of saints that
meant nothing to him. Though he tried to find a way to be a part of the religion, to feel
something, he found nothing he could connect to. His frustration with finding someone to
help him learn what is in the books leads him to start ripping pages out of the Bible in front of
Faber, who finally agrees to help him.

As Montag joins Granger and his group, it is determined that he will be keeper of the Book of
Ecclesiastes, as Montag can remember part of this Book, in addition to a small amount of
the Book of Revelations. The novel ends with Montag recalling lines from both Books as the
group begins their walk back towards the city.

Paradoxes

Paradoxes can be complicated ideas to understand. At its core, a paradox is something

self-contradictory. Bradbury makes a number of paradoxical statements throughout the text,
primarily when describing Mildred or the Mechanical Hound.

At the beginning of the novel, when Montag first arrives home, he hears the hum of the
Seashell radio and states that the room is not empty; however, after imagining how his wife
lays in bed, lost in the sounds of the Seashell, he changes his description of the room to
empty. Calling the room empty, yet knowing his wife is there, is a contradiction to logic. The
emptiness is based on the reality that while Mildred might be physically in the room, her
mind is elsewhere.

When Montag is arguing about books with Mildred, he says, “I saw the damnedest snake in
the world the other night. It was dead but it was alive. It could see but it couldn’t see”
(Bradbury 73), recalling the mechanical snake that had pumped the poison from Mildred’s
stomach and blood when she overdosed on sleeping pills. These statements help to portray
Mildred as an empty shell of a person, a machine appearing to have more life than her.
When first describing the Hound, Montag states, “The Mechanical Hound slept but did not
sleep, lived but did not live”. When he destroys the Hound that joined the firemen at his
home, he refers to it as “the dead-alive thing”. Watching a different Hound being televised as
it hunted for him, he says, “Out of a helicopter glided something that was not machine, not
animal, not dead, not alive, glowing with a pale luminosity”. In comparing the paradoxical
statements made about Mildred, the mechanical snake, and the Mechanical Hound, the
reader can see that Bradbury pushes the reader to question what it truly means to be alive.

On a much larger scale, one of the greatest paradoxes in the novel appears in the character
of Captain Beatty. Beatty’s character, as a whole, can be seen as a paradox. He seems to
relish the knowledge he has gained through his illegal consumption of books, yet he calls a
book a loaded gun that he wouldn’t stomach for a minute. His recounting of how books came
to be illegal is overwhelmingly patronizing, yet he speaks of his firm commitment to keep
society free of books. His tirades against books are filled with lines he has snatched from
those very same books. He is a contradiction to himself.

Nature

Nature imagery is often used in literature to represent both innocence and enlightenment.
Nature is a natural counterpart to technology, which permeates the society in Fahrenheit
451. Bradbury uses nature imagery to emphasize things that represent a change from the
norms that Montag has become so used to and to highlight the destructive force of society
as he knows it. When nature is perverted with creations such as the Mechanical Hound, or
the electronic-eyed snake used to pump Mildred’s stomach, they become images of
darkness and death.

Montag’s interactions with Clarisse occur throughout the first thirty pages of the novel,
broken apart by events that are part of his normal, everyday life. These interactions are
riddled with references to nature, creating shifting moods each time Clarisse enters and exits
Montag’s days. The first time he sees her, she nearly appears to be a part of nature.
Clarisse often talks about her joy with the natural world as a contrast to her unsettling
descriptions of other kids her age. She is considered antisocial for being so different from
her peers and forced to see a psychiatrist, who “wants to know why [she goes] out and
hike[s] around in the forests and watch[es] the birds and collect[s] butterflies” (Bradbury 23).
Her love of the natural world sets her apart from most others, and Montag grows increasingly
fascinated by her. In the short amount of time he knows her, she fills his world with images of
the natural world. When she is gone, Montag feels the emptiness of his world.

It fits, then, that Montag’s transformation occurs when he is immersed in nature after fleeing
the city. He becomes enlightened by the sights and smells of nature, feeling as though the
natural world can truly see him.

Symbols

Fire

Fire serves as one of the most visible symbols in the text. The title of the novel itself,
Fahrenheit 451, is itself a reference to fire, as it is the temperature at which paper will burn
on its own. Bradbury uses fire to symbolize destruction, rebirth, as well as knowledge. The
decision to be reborn into a world of knowledge or be destroyed by a self-destructing society
is the critical choice that Montag must make.

Fire is most readily seen as a symbol of destruction from the opening line where Montag
expresses his pleasure in burning. Books are burned in an attempt to keep society “free” of
the harmful knowledge contained in them. The firemen are meant to appear as though they
are protecting society through their use of fire, but the reality is that they are using fire to
destroy individual identity, ideas, and thoughts. Captain Beatty represents fire as a
destructive symbol through his life as a fireman and his death by fire.

The bombing of the city shows how fire serves simultaneously as a symbol of destruction
and rebirth. The fire rids the city of all that is wrong with society while cleansing it to be
reborn into a new and enlightened place. As knowledge is a form of enlightenment, fire is
often placed in areas of the text where knowledge and enlightenment are present, such as at
the campfire where Granger brings Montag. References to candlelight are used when
Montag thinks about Clarisse and the “snuffing” of a candle when the firemen burn a home
with books.

Salamander & Phoenix

The salamander is directly used as the symbol for the firemen in Fahrenheit 451. The
firemen wear a patch with a salamander; the image of a salamander is etched onto the
firehose used to blast kerosene and fire; the firetruck is called the Salamander. Likewise, the
image of a phoenix is printed on the front of the firemen’s suits, and Captain Beatty has a
phoenix on his hat and drives a Phoenix car.

The symbol of the salamander and the phoenix have been associated with fire since ancient
times. Salamanders were believed to be born in fire and could shoot fire from its mouth.
Ancient mythology includes stories of the phoenix, devoured by flames only to be reborn in
its ashes. As the phoenix also holds a symbolic meaning of rebirth, it is vital to notice the
duality of its use with Captain Beatty. He is killed by fire, allowing Montag to be reborn in his
ashes. At the end of the novel, Granger looks into the fire and recalls the image of the
phoenix, comparing it to humankind.

Seashell Radio

Throughout the text, Montag regularly refers to the Seashells, most often seen in Mildred’s
ears. The Seashells are small radio devices nearly everyone in Montag’s society wears to
receive constant broadcasts of information. The Seashell Radios symbolize the overt
government control of society. While screens provide a regular barrage of media, the
Seashell Radios are seen to be worn nearly 24/7 by Mildred and likely most of society. Even
in sleep, the Seashells are broadcasting a constant stream of media. This continuous
stimulation works to distract people from thinking or clearly notice the reality around them.
When Faber gives Montag a Seashell that he had modified for two-way communication, it
symbolizes a break from the conformity that the government tries to maintain in society.

Mirrors

Mirrors, in the literal sense, reflect oneself. Symbolically, mirrors are used to represent
self-awareness and seeing one’s true self. The reference to a mirror is first used immediately
following Montag’s introduction to Clarisse. He describes her face as being like a mirror,
surprised to find someone that “refracted your own light to you”, indicating that Clarisse had
recognized a part of his true self.

When the bombs fall on the city at the end of the novel, Montag imagines he hears Mildred
screaming after seeing her true self in a mirror in a fraction of the moment just before the
bombs consumed her. He imagines that “it was such a wildly empty face, all by itself in the
room, touching nothing, starved and eating itself, that at last she recognized it as her own”.
As the novel closes, Granger states, “Come on now, we’re going to build a mirror factory first
and put out nothing but mirrors for the next year and take a long look in them”, suggesting
that part of being reborn requires one to truly see oneself.

Conclusion

Authors always have a purpose for their writing. The messages embedded in a story often
provide an important lesson or insight about life. Bradbury felt an urgent need to send a
message about the fears he saw manifested in the world around him. Fahrenheit 451 is his
message to humanity about the importance of knowledge and identity in a society that can
so easily be corrupted by ignorance, censorship, and the tools designed to distract from the
realities of our world.

Censorship

Fahrenheit 451 doesn’t provide a single, clear explanation of why books are banned in the
future. Instead, it suggests that many different factors could combine to create this result.
These factors can be broken into two groups: factors that lead to a general lack of interest in
reading and factors that make people actively hostile toward books. The novel doesn’t
clearly distinguish these two developments. Apparently, they simply support one another.
The first group of factors includes the popularity of competing forms of entertainment such
as television and radio. More broadly, Bradbury thinks that the presence of fast cars, loud
music, and advertisements creates a lifestyle with too much stimulation in which no one has
the time to concentrate. Also, the huge mass of published material is too overwhelming to
think about, leading to a society that reads condensed books (which were very popular at the
time Bradbury was writing) rather than the real thing.

The second group of factors, those that make people hostile toward books, involves envy.
People don’t like to feel inferior to those who have read more than they have.
But the novel implies that the most important factor leading to censorship is the objections of
special-interest groups and “minorities” to things in books that offend them. Bradbury is
careful to refrain from referring specifically to racial minorities—Beatty mentions dog lovers
and cat lovers, for instance. The reader can only try to infer which special-interest groups he
really has in mind. As the Afterword to Fahrenheit 451 demonstrates, Bradbury is extremely
sensitive to any attempts to restrict his free speech; for instance, he objects strongly to
letters he has received suggesting that he revise his treatment of female or black characters.
He sees such interventions as essentially hostile and intolerant—as the first step on the road
to book burning.

Knowledge Versus Ignorance

Montag, Faber, and Beatty’s struggle revolves around the tension between knowledge and
ignorance. The fireman’s duty is to destroy knowledge and promote ignorance in order to
equalize the population and promote sameness. Montag’s encounters with Clarisse, the old
woman, and Faber ignite in him the spark of doubt about this approach. His resultant search
for knowledge destroys the unquestioning ignorance he used to share with nearly everyone
else, and he battles the basic beliefs of his society.
Technology

Technological innovation represents the central source of society’s problems in Fahrenheit

451. Throughout the book, Bradbury treats technology as inherently anesthetizing and
destructive. In the prehistory of the novel, technology played an important role in the social
decline of reading. As technology improved, it gave rise to new forms of media, like
television and in-ear radios. The televisions in Bradbury’s future are the size of whole walls,
and when installed to form three-dimensional entertainment spaces called “parlors,” they
have a mesmerizing, immersive effect. Despite being more immersive than books, television
programs feature simplified content meant primarily to entertain. As Montag observes over
the course of the novel, the television programs his wife Mildred watches are pointless and
often gratuitously violent. Whenever Mildred isn’t watching television, she’s listening to a
constant stream of music and advertisements that play through her in-ear radio. Mildred
remains “plugged in” at all times, and Montag ascribes her emotional vacancy and lack of
empathy to her addiction to these forms of technology. By extension, the shallowness and
heartlessness of Montag’s society as a whole derives from its collective addiction to
entertainment.

In contrast to the anesthetizing effect of new media technologies, other forms of technology
in Bradbury’s future have a more materially destructive force. For instance, the
automobiles—or “beetles”—that appear everywhere in the city can easily reach top speeds
of more than one hundred miles per hour. As such, they encourage fast, reckless driving and
result in many fatal accidents. Mildred frequently lets off steam by driving fast, which
particularly distresses Montag after he learns that a speeding beetle killed Clarisse. Another
example of technology’s destructiveness appears in the Mechanical Hound, a metal
contraption designed to track down and kill lawbreakers. Although the Hound must be
specifically programmed with the biometrics of the person it’s meant to attack, early in the
novel the Hound acts aggressively toward Montag, suggesting that Hound technology may
be easy to manipulate to nefarious ends. However, the most destructive technology of all is
the atomic bomb. Two nuclear wars occurred in the novel’s recent past, and the book ends
with an atomic bomb falling on the city. Nuclear technology makes war both easier and more
destructive, and in Fahrenheit 451, the ever-present threat of atomic war maintains an
atmosphere of anxiety.

Dissatisfaction

In Fahrenheit 451, the theme of dissatisfaction has close connections to the themes of
technology and censorship. The dystopian society Bradbury represents in the novel arose in
its present form because of technological innovation. Technological innovation led to the
ascendency of television, which in turn led to the devaluing and, eventually, the censoring of
books. As Captain Beatty explains to Montag, the social history that led to the present state
of affairs had everything to do with ensuring people’s peace of mind by keeping them
entertained. As long as everyone remains entertained, they’ll be happy.

However, Montag realizes early in the novel that constant entertainment has bred deep
dissatisfaction. For instance, Mildred can’t live without entertainment. She’s always watching
television in her “parlor” or listening to her in-ear radio. The only reason she steps away from
these entertainments is to seek cathartic release while driving around in her beetle at top
speeds. Mildred insists that she’s happy, yet her near-suicide at the beginning of the novel
suggests otherwise. Dissatisfaction rages just beneath the surface, even for those who don’t
consciously realize it.