A Note on the Title

While the paleographer's principle focus has been on the classification of individual letter forms, the student of the history of reading in the medieval West is primarily concerned with the evolution of the word shape, and the letter forms are important only to the degree that they play a role in determining that shape. Thus, the adoption of miniscule, that is, lowercase letters, as a book script is significant for the historian of reading insofar as it contributed, in conjunction with word separation, to giving each word a distinct image. Modern psychologists call this image the «Bouma shape.»

Paul Saenger, Space Between Words. The Origins of Silent Reading 18-19.

The theory developed by Saint Thomas in his short treatise on halos is instructive in this regard. The beatitude of the chosen, he argues, includes all the goods that are necessary for the perfect workings of human nature, and therefore nothing essential can be added. There is, however, something that can be added in surplus (superaddi), an «accidental reward that is added to the essential,» that is not necessary for beatitude and does not alter it substantially, but that simply makes it more brilliant (clarior).

The halo is this supplement added to perfection--something like the vibration of that which is perfect, the glow at its edges.

Giorgio Agamben, The Coming Community 54-55.

Language, that is,

writing, reading

to the essential stranger.

S. McCaffery
Toronto, 2 April, 2002