Visible Voices: Translating Verse into Script Print 3000 BC-AD 2000

By Nicolas Barker

In Visible Voices Nicolas Barker traces the history of the "translation" of poetry from a spoken medium to a written, or printed, medium. The book moves from the pictograms of the Ancient Near East through the development of alphabetic scripts, the traditions of Medieval European manuscripts, the shift from script to print, all the way to the innovations and experiments of the modernist period. St?phane Mallarm?'s typographically exploded poem Un coup de d?s n'abolira pas le hasard, Barker writes, "takes the problem that has haunted poets and their audiences over 4000 years to a logical conclusion: that is, how the evanescent iridescent idea in the poet's mind is to be registered in graphic form - what, in short, is the art of poetry?" Illustrated throughout with photographs of the texts, this book provides a fascinating account of the history of this art.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1847772129
• ISBN13: 9781847772121
• Release Date: March 2016
• Publisher: Carcanet Press
• Length: 80 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.6" x 9.4"