Et Cetera/Etcetera/&c; or, the Aposiopetic Page

Chapter 2 looks at the etcetera, a mark which today functions solely as an abbreviation, indicating the continuation of properties in a list. But in the early modern period that was only one of its several meanings. As a noun and a verb, early modern etcetera represents the body and bawdy (sexual parts and activities, or physical functions such as urination or defecation). As a punctuation mark, it is a forerunner of the punctuation mark which indicates silence or interruption—the em-dash. As a rhetorical term, it represents silence or the form of breaking off known rhetorically as aposiopesis. As an abbreviation at the ends of lists in stage directions, or lines in actors’ parts, it represents stage action, inviting continuation of dialogue or listed props. These four categories are linked in that etcetera directs the eye to a vacancy. We can see why it might be associated with aposiopesis, a rhetorical figure that is paradoxically about silence.

The Asterisk; or, the Gnomic Page

Like the blank and the etcetera, the asterisk is a typographical sign that draws attention to what it professes to conceal. But although the asterisk represents absence it also does the opposite: it is the thing it represents—a star. Part I of this chapter looks at this paradox in representation. It shows the asterisk as a stand-in for consciousness, for sexual terms, for strong emotion and for swearing, as well as for its look-alikes: stars and flowers. However, where early modern readers most often encountered the asterisk was in the margin and so Part II looks at early modern systems of navigating books, the material around the text (notes and indexes and stage directions), in all of which the asterisk has a role to play.

Introduction

The Introduction looks at blank space in an era in which the blank did not yet prompt readerly unease, suspicion of error, or the need for reassurance (as in Google books: ‘this page intentionally left blank’). It discusses the development of negative vocabulary for blanks, at cognitive research on how the brain responds to what is not there, at reading as an act of completion, and at typographical ways of representing stage business. It engages with the work of recent book historians on experimentation in early modern printed books. It reviews critical work on the architecture of the page and the page as a visual unit. It explores a number of early modern literary works that are thematically dependent on gaps of various kinds from things that are unsaid or glossed over to those that call attention to what cannot be articulated.

Epilogue

The Epilogue looks at the rich metaphoric afterlife that the typographical features explored in Chapters 1 to 3 have linguistically beyond the printed page. In one sense, metaphors from punctuation and typography are simply a subdivision of larger book-related metaphors, and writers in the nascent world of professional publication were understandably alert to printing-house imagery and the conversion of orality to print. But just as writing and type make their way into orality as metaphor, orality makes its way into type: writers and compositors are thinking creatively about how to turn the visual and aural experience of drama into print. The place where we see this most is in play layout. Thus, this epilogue concludes with a survey of compositor creativity in a period when systems and conventions were just coming into being and hence offered scope for flexibility and experimentation.

‘This Page Intentionally Left Blank’; or, the Apophatic Page

Chapter 1 explores how readers interact with and interpret blank space and blank spaces on the early modern page. This is the beginning of this chapter’s enquiry into the ways in which practical typography came to be seen as creative opportunity, for writers as well as readers, and how modern editorial treatment elides that creativity. Part I focuses on the interactive reader generally as he/she is faced with items that invite filling in: incomplete rubrication in incunabula, errata lists, blanks for topical and personal references, initials for names, censorship. Part II covers literary works that exploit gaps and incompletion from the disingenuous ‘desunt nonnulla’ through metrical half-lines, incomplete quotations and gaps in collaborative manuscripts to direct addresses to the reader to fill in blank space left for their use. This section also reviews blanks in different media such as sculpture and cartography. Part III shows how editors treat blanks in print editions and digital books, exploring literary material from the medieval to the early modern.