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Full-Text Articles in Art and Design
Multisensory Tristram Shandy, Cynthia N. Malone
Multisensory Tristram Shandy, Cynthia N. Malone
English Faculty Publications
An absorbed reader typically pays little conscious attention to the visual, tactile, and sometimes aural sensory experiences of reading. Unexpected formal and visual features of Laurence Sterne’s nine-volume fictional narrative, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, startle readers out of absorption and call attention to familiar operations like decoding black figures on white paper and turning pages. My edition of Volume I is designed to engage the senses through its visual structure, textures, and unexpected materials (buttons, marbled paper strips, and ribbons) and through formal surprises (interpolated documents, accordion-fold inserts, and paper lace). In its structure …
Noses In Books: Orientation, Immersion, And Paratext, Cynthia N. Malone
Noses In Books: Orientation, Immersion, And Paratext, Cynthia N. Malone
English Faculty Publications
Paratextual aids to reading in medieval codex books, printed codex books, and Kindle ebooks are compared. Medieval scribes designed paratextual elements that enhanced diverse reading practices, from lectio divina to scholarly textual study. Printers adopted and standardized many elements of paratext, and contemporary readers depend on these elements to navigate printed books. Because familiar paratextual aids to reading are less visible in Kindle ebooks, readers find those ebooks harder to navigate. Development of effective ebook paratext must take into account the needs and practices of readers.