Who Is Hugues Demeude

Hugues Demeude was born in 1969 and has published works in French. From his website it is evident that his expertise is on heritage and biodiversity, though he has written various travel books about Jordan, Israel, France, Portugal, and Peru among other destinations.The selection we read for class today is an excerpt from his book “The Animated Alphabet”, published in 1997. Demeude begins the chapter with a history of alphabetic writing and then of decorated letters, more specifically, the decorated initial. He deals with the picture/writing dichotomy(?) Elkins writes about by quoting Victor Hugo “All letters were once signs and all signs were once pictures” proposing, perhaps that within the family of gramma, Elkin’s neologism, letters are …show more content…
One argument is illustrated in the dialogue Demeude quotes. It is that of the Cistercian who argues ornamentation does nothing to inspire virtue or piety and that, in fact, the creative urge could potentially be dangerous. This irrepressible creative urge, as Demeude puts it, proved to be much more powerful than the limits and regulations imposed on artists, such as the iconoclast’s violent objections in the Byzantine era or the later, failed prohibitions under St. Bernard. Counter arguments to these views typically promised that the surprise and interest inspired by the images would influence the reader’s attitudes toward the accompanying …show more content…
The transition to print in the Gutenberg Era brought with it a standardization of the letter, as could be assumed. Perhaps most relevant to this class is the “great paradox of the Gutenberg era” , described by McLuhan. Throughout the course of the Renaissance, the continued presentation of imagery within or as a letter began to take away from the letter’s intrinsic importance, yet the very practices that contributed to this effect expanded the modes in which a typographic letter could convey