Remediating the Past, Engaging the Present: The Digital Life of SFU’s Aldine Editions

The Aldus@SFU digital initiative, based on Simon Fraser University Library’s ongoing digitization of more than one hundred sixteenth-century volumes published by the Aldine press in Venice, is conceived to be a multifaceted work of remediation. In our effort to articulate the value of the Aldine collection at SFU—the historical, cultural, and technological significance of these books, and their potential to engage various audiences, both historically and today—we have given much thought to Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin’s (2000) theory of remediation, and the many ways in which it plays out in our project. In this article, we endeavour to navigate several layers of meaning and context around and within SFU’s Aldine editions, showing how the notion of remediation sheds light on not only our specific project but also on digital historical projects more broadly. Inspired by Johanna Drucker’s concept of “performative materiality” (2013) and Gabriela Aceves Sepúlveda’s creative enactment of remediation through her digital art project [Re]Activating Mamá Pina’s Cookbook (2017), we (re)consider this notion through the lens of performativity. Taking cues from Drucker’s proposed epistemological shift “from an entity-based to an event-based conception of media” (par. 30) and Aceves Sepúlveda’s approach to remediation as both a performative and archival practice, we ask: to what extent can the notion of performative remediation help us represent and interpret the complexity and polyvalency of rare book materials from the early days of print, as well as their twenty-first-century digital surrogates? Aldus Manutius has long been widely recognized—by both his contemporaries and for centuries afterwards—as the premier printer-publisher of the Italian Renaissance. In the early days of printing—from 1495 through the late 1500s—the Aldine press in Venice introduced a series of key innovations in the form and appearance of the book, and in modes of reading and the development of literary markets. Aldus’s series of “little handbooks” (libelli portatiles)—unadorned octavo editions that facilitated private, mobile reading habits—were his most famous contribution. The Aldine press also introduced and/or popularized dozens of more subtle changes to printing and publishing, from typography (advancing typeface design in Roman, Italic, and Greek fonts) and punctuation (helping standardize commas and semicolons) to navigational elements (including page numbering, alphabetical indexes, and tables of contents) that culminate in many of the features we now take for granted in the way books look and work. Indeed, early sixteenth-century Aldine editions look remarkably modern to us today. These bibliographic innovations were in service of Aldus’s larger cultural project, and Aldus himself can be viewed simultaneously as a product of and active participant in an extended and vibrant community of humanist scholars. The Aldine press was instrumental in establishing and circulating what we would now recognize as the classical canon and a significant selection of Renaissance humanist texts, printing these editions in quantity and distributing books throughout Europe. From its Venetian base, the Aldine press could tap trading networks through the Mediterranean and across the continent. Substantially, though, Aldus imagined and realized a market for these books, expanding the reach and readership of the classics and more contemporary discourse far beyond what it had been before. A substantial number of Aldus’s classical editions—especially those in Ancient Greek—are editiones principes: the first-ever printings of a work previously only circulated in manuscript form. As a whole, the output of the Aldine press provides a portrait of the evolution of the modern book and modern publishing as well as the origin of the humanities (Celenza). In 2015, to mark the quincentenary of the death of Aldus Manutius, Publishing@SFU and SFU Library Special Collections began to digitize and make available online the first …