Page Composing and Lettering Games: Experimentation in Italy in the 1930s

Authors

  • Sarah Bonciarelli Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21825/aj.v2i1.763

Keywords:

italian futurism, modernism, the middlebrow, book design, the new typography

Abstract

The objective of this article is to analyze how or in what ways the most advanced visual experiments centred on “the book” as an object in the period between 1900 and 1930 in Italy, in particular in relation to the development of middlebrow literature. The article’s hypothesis is that the revolution brought about by Futurism soon touched on literature intended for a middlebrow reading public, attracted and interested by the paratextual presentation of the book and its physical aspects. This article focuses in particular on changes in page layout and on lettering games in paratextuality, to give a precise idea of how strong the thrust of Futurism was and how book design affected the visual culture of the beginning of the twentieth century in Italy.

Author Biography

Sarah Bonciarelli, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

Sarah Bonciarelli is a postdoctoral fellow at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. She is involved in the research programme MDRN (www.mdrn.be) with the project The Book in Italy between 1900 and 1950: Paratextual elements and typographic techniques in middlebrow literature. She holds a PhD in Textual Criticism and is a member of the Permanent European Observatory on Reading at Siena University. Her main interests are Italian literature, semiotics  and book history. She has lectured at the Universidad de Cantabria,  Università di Viterbo, Università di Siena, Università di Perugia, Università per Stranieri di Perugia, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Universitè Catholique de Louvain.

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Published

2012-12-18

How to Cite

Bonciarelli, S. (2012). Page Composing and Lettering Games: Experimentation in Italy in the 1930s. uthorship, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.21825/aj.v2i1.763

Issue

Vol. 2 No. 1 (2012)

Section

Articles

License

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