Dear Leon,
What an interesting question (can we open it up to key associations in
music, too?), but I'm not sure where to go to find an answer for all script
associations. I'm eager to read the article that Maura Tarnoff recommends.
You might find interesting, though--and I hope someone will correct me if
I'm wrong--that the typical script we think of as humanistic was developed
as an imitation of Carolinian writing of the 9th century, which the
Renaissance humanists thought of as Roman handwriting (how upset they would
have been to discover how messy real Roman writing was by comparison!)
since a number of important classical texts had been preserved in that hand
and earlier MSS, by-and-large, couldn't be found. "Roman" capitals--for
headings and so forth--imitated the chiseled writing of inscriptions...but
perhaps you're thinking of some other sort script called "Roman"? One
problem that plagues palaeography is the lack of any set system (or,
better, any ONE set system; see the introduction to A. Derolez' book on
Gothic MSS) for naming scripts.
3 good books, in any case:
B.L. Ullman, _The Origin and Development of Humanistic Script_
James Wardrop, _Script of Humanism: Some Aspects of Humanistic Script, ca.
1460-1560_
Bernhard Bischoff, _Latin Palaeography: Antiquity and the Middle Ages
Albert Derolez, _Palaeography of Gothic Manuscript Books: from the 12th to
the Early 16th Century_
Leigh Harrison
At 03:16 PM 2/14/2004 +0000, you wrote:
>Dear listmembers,
>
>Might I broaden the question of languages and their uses to scripts and
>their uses?
>
>I know that a lot of work has been done on the development of
>scripts and fonts in the early days of printing, but has anyone covered
>associations such as why Italian vernacular texts tend to be printed in
>italics; more formal ones in Roman, etc.?
>
>Writing books give a wide variety of fonts - let alone alphabets. Does
>anyone
>know whether anyone has done any work on the possible associations of
>suitability these may have had?
>
>Leon Conrad
>London, UK
