Chapter 3:
Throughout the Asian culture, objects and ideas were being formed. Looking at the Chinese writing system, it is a visual language. The Chinese, having a completely different spoken language and written language, never broke syllables up. There were four major phases that China took throughout the evolution of calligraphy. These include chiaku-wen (bone-and-shell), chin-wen (bronze scripting), Hsiao chuan (small-seal), and chen-shu (regular style). After writing on bamboo and wooded strips throughout history, paper was invented in 105 A.D. with the help of Ts’ai Lun. Shortly after this invention, printing was also discovered in which examples of this include relief printing, chops, as well as inked rubbings. The first books created resembled scrolls until stitched books were developed.
As the Chinese language developed, the written and spoken language had no correlation with each other. It is hard to understand how a culture never broke down their language into syllables using cuneiform. To learn the total vocabulary of the Chinese involved knowing 44,000 characters. Only the professionals could memorize these characters over a long period of time. The language of China seemed very hard to learn and very different from the rest of the world.
Since the Chinese language was so different from the rest of the world, how did China translate with other cultures? How would one go about learning Chinese for translation purposes since the written and spoken languages are different?
Chapter 4:
Illuminated manuscripts began its journey around 1450 A.D. beginning in Europe. Manuscript production, being costly and time consuming, involved many different people to fulfill the jobs needed to create a manuscript. The earliest surviving illustrated manuscript comes from the classical style of developing manuscripts. New letter styles and uncials were developed at this time. After the classical style of manuscripts came, Celtic book design became popular. Different ornaments and frames were used to fill the whole page as well as decorative bindings were used. It was not until Charlemagne in 768 A.D. rose up to bring back the quality of the manuscripts and writing. At that time, illustrations were poorly drawn and text was almost impossible to read. Charlemagne standardized pages layouts and writing styles to create a uniform look. The Caroline minuscule was created and is the predecessor of our current lowercase alphabet. Spanish manuscripts displayed intense colors and intricate geometric designs. When it came to Gothic manuscripts, textura was the dominant Gothic lettering. It had unique strokes and serifs that contained no rounded edges. But, when Islamic manuscripts began to emerge, figurative illustrations were forbidden due to religious beliefs. Some of the most important people in this time period include the Limbourg brothers, who with their education and skill, they created an illustrated calendar as well as handmade books.
One thing that I find interesting when reading this chapter is fact that Celtic manuscripts contain spelling errors and misreading. You would think that if a beautiful manuscript was put together, everything would be perfect down to the last letter. The imagery on these Celtic manuscripts are elegant and the text is unique as well. So would it be the scribes fault for the spelling errors? I feel that the scribes who were hired to write in these manuscript layouts would be skilled enough to know how to spell words.
One question that I pose is how did the black plague affect what the scribes and designers wrote about. Chosen imagery comes from the bible, poetry and other sources. You do not see many manuscripts about the black plague or even manuscripts with poetry in them about it. How did this plague affect them at the time?
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