| THIS BIBLIOGRAPHIC WORK charts
and examines the evolution of the inscriptionóparticularly as a literary
formóand its transition from stone to paper, by investigating the production
of some "key" texts. Surveying these works, Sparrow identifies significant
changes from century to century. Until the fifteenth century, most inscriptions
were factual and formulary. The rediscovery of classical inscriptions and
the disappearance of the inscribed verse epitaph heralded the extended
prose epitaph (12ñ13). In the sixteenth century, epigraphists examined
the lineated lapidary inscription (lapidary having been defined
by Emanuele Tesauro in Il Cannochiale Aristotelico (Venice, 1655)
as "half-way between the oratorical and the poetical" [192]). In the seventeenth
century the inscription began a process of transference from stone to paper
(25). The development of the inscription was also affected by the custom
for erecting temporary monuments on important occasions (102), and by the
fashion of witty writing or argutezza (103). By the end of the seventeenth
century the lapidary form had died; epigraphists thereafter confined themselves
to stone, wood, or canvas (131), and texts came to be excessively lineated
with little regard to meaning (131).
This popularity of the lapidary during the seventeenth century allowed a freedom of composition (136) and the opportunity to display Baroque wit (137). Whilst suggesting that it is commendable that the laws of "how prose is to be printed" were challenged by the lapidary, and two hundred years later by Mallarmé, Sparrow concedes that the "literary effect that can be achieved by visual presentation [is] limited" (144). (Julia Bleakney.) |
Michael Hancher Department of English, University of Minnesota URL: <http://umn.edu/home/mh/txtimjb2.html> Comments to: mh@umn.edu Created 24 December 1997 Revised 2 January 1998