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War and the Book: The Diarist, the Cryptographer, and The English Patient

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Alice Brittan
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Abstract

I trace the historical connection between Gutenberg's invention of the printing press and the development of print-based cryptography to examine how war transforms the cultural meaning of books as mobile objects and as readable texts. The first section of the essay, “War and Print,” argues that the spatial portability of print is key to our understanding its role in the two forms of national aggression at the center of Michael Ondaatje's novel-namely, British colonialism and the Second World War. The second section, “War and Handwriting,” turns to The English Patient and proposes that in Ondaatje's novel the admiration of immobile works of art and the act of handwriting attempt to defy the violent human displacements that print enabled. (AB)

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 121 , Issue 1: Special Topic: The History of the Book and the Idea of Literature , January 2006 , pp. 200 - 213
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2006

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