9. Assessing the responses of readers
Monique Hulvey, "Not So Marginal: Manuscript Annotations
in the Folger Incunabula," Papers of the Bibliographical Society
of America 92:2 (1998), 159-176.
The effect that the presentation of a text actually has on its readers is
a related but quite different matter from the effect the producers intended
to create. The actual impact on readers is one of the hardest relationships
to determine, at least with any certainty, but nonetheless is an area in which
possibilities quickly drift into probabilities in the minds of their proposers,
without the hindrance of supporting evidence. The easiest situation for
ascertaining results occurs when annotations appear in the margins of the
book in question. Monique Hulvey's study "Not So Marginal: Manuscript
Annotations in the Folger Incunabula" shows not only that early manuscript
notations can be guides to the transmission of the text but especially that
"readers' annotations document individual reading habits and suggest the
kind of dialogue which took place between Renaissance readers and their
books" (pp. 161-162). Psychological studies likewise measure with some confidence
the effect of textual features on readers. Periodicals such as Visible
Language or Applied Ergonomics carry numerous reports on the effects on
perception of elements such as line length, spacing, right-margin justification,
and serifs. The greatest challenge is to determine whether and how
textual features have actually had an aesthetic influence. Consider the following
example. Some seventeenth-century editions of the Westminster
Catechism have the catechetical text completely surrounded by notes, which
are the Biblical verses adduced in support of the theological statements. Has
this arrangement influenced readers to think that Scripture is "marginal"
here, or is that interpretation merely equivocation on the term "marginal,"
with a better explanation being that the layout has persuaded readers that
the catechism is embedded in Scripture? The question is an historical one
and must be answered by historical evidence rather than by commitment to
a conclusion the examiners wish to establish. But for present purposes the
point is that no answer at all can make sense, or the question even arise,
without awareness of the artifact itself.
