Tristram Shandy & the art of black mourning pagesusers.clas.ufl.edu/.../TristramShandytheartofblackmourningpages.pdf · Tristram Shandy & the art of black mourning pages Tags: mourning

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Tristram Shandy & the art of black mourningpagesTags: mourningSEPTEMBER 17TH 2012

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Inventive visual design and typography have made Laurence Sterne'sTristram Shandy a canonical favorite among all sorts of "material book"types, with the black page after Yorick's death --

-- typically cited as one of the book's enduring innovations. In fact, theLaurence Sterne Trust hosted a quite lovely exhibit on the 250th anniversaryof the black page, inviting 73 artists (note the page number) to reinterpretSterne's "most famous experimental device."

The thing is, though: while Sterne's use of the black page in a literary storyis innovative, the mourning page itself is not so much. In fact, Sterne isdrawing on a (by then 150-year-old) tradition -- perhaps "seventeenth-century phenomenon" would be more accurate? -- of including mourningpages or all-black prints, sometimes with a coat of arms or other insigniaetched out, in printed funeral sermons and memorial verse.

Anonymous, An elegy on the death of the Right Honourable Spencer, Earleof Northampton, who died a conquerour at the battaile of Hopton-heath(Oxford, 1643)

Abraham Darcie, A monumentall pyramide to all posterities erected to theeuer-liuing memory, and perpetuall honour of the all-vertuous and euer-glorious prince, Lodovvick, late Duke of Richmond and Lenox... (London,1624)

Some of the earliest examples I've found come from elegies upon the deathof Prince Henry, King James I's son. Henry was well loved, and his death atage 18 of typhoid fever inspired a national outpouring of grief in print.Sylvester's elegy (below) includes not only a mourning page on every verso,facing the lines, but heavy mourning borders with skeleton woodcutsframing each recto.

Josuah Sylvester, Lachrimae lachrimarum. or The distillation of tearesshede for the vntymely death of the incomparable prince Panaretus(London, 1612)

It's a bit hard to get the full impact of this printing style on the reader throughgrainy EEBO scans -- but I imagine the inky blackness getting on thereader's fingers, marring the margins. (Of course, ink didn't spread then likenewspaper print does now; but that's what I imagine.) Because each pageof text is backed by a mourning block, the verse would be dimmed; little lightcould filter through the page to bring the letters into relief. The entire effectis heavy with grief. Another elegy for Henry highlights the lachrymoseintentions of the mourning page by including a pattern of tears:

Christopher Brooke, Tvvo elegies consecrated to the neuer-dying memorieof the most worthily admyred; most hartily loued; and generally bewayledprince; Henry Prince of Wales (London, 1613)

In his elegy for Prince Henry, aptly titled Great Britaine, all in black, JohnTaylor incorporated not only a full mourning page, opposite a much lighterwoodcut of Henry, but a kind of mourning title-page recto, backed by asecond mourning block verso. To get the idea, you have to imagine how thepages are printed on a sheet, and pay close attention to the juxtapositionscreated by the openings. For instance, the white space in the title page wasbacked by another mourning page, dimming the contrast between text andborder.

John Taylor, Great Britaine, all in blacke For the incomparable losse ofHenry, our late worthy prince (London, 1612)

Upon the death of King James, Taylor produced another elegy; and whilethis one doesn't have a full-page mourning block, its heavy, blackened titlepage is part of the same tradition --

John Taylor, A liuing sadnes, in duty consecrated to the immortal memory of

our late deceased albe-loued soueraigne Lord, the peereles paragon ofprinces, Iames, king of great Brittaine, France and Ireland (London, 1625)

-- as is Robert Markham's elegy for Sir John Burgh, which ends with a small,heavily bordered epitaph, followed by a shortened mourning block:

Robert Markham, The description, of that euer to be famed knight, Sir IohnBurgh... (London, 1628)

The tradition seems to get some new steam with the beheading of Charles I.In his elegy for the martyred king -- which went through several printings --John Quarles, like Sylvester before him, turns every verso into a mourningpage. The repetition results in a kind of doleful deadening of the entire book,as the reader confronts a page black with grief at every opening.

John Quarles, Regale lectum miseriae: or, A kingly bed of miserie In whichis contained, a dreame: with an elegie upon the martyrdome of Charls, lateKing of England (London, 1649)

While not all printed elegies or funeral sermons included mourning pages,many did include mourning borders, a variant in which heavy black blocksare used to frame title pages.

In some cases, bones, skulls and other memento mori break the blackmonotony of the mourning border --

-- while in other cases, thick black borders on every page recall full-pagemourning blocks:

While Sterne's famous black page upon Yorick's death creatively pulls themourning block tradition into a work of fiction, it was hardly an innovation ofprint in the eighteenth century. In fact, Sterne is recalling a way of makingmeaning through the visual design of books that flourished over onehundred years before Tristam Shandy was published. Did eighteenth-century readers recognize this move as retro, harkening back to the rhetoricof an earlier age? Why pull the elegiac print tradition into the novel? Is therean intentional linkage here to the flurry of mourning pages produced inelegies on the death of Prince Henry, then King James I, then the martyredKing Charles I?

That last question is perhaps a bit of a stretch, but I'm just ignorant enoughof eighteenth-century British novels to feel okay posing it. Regardless ofSterne's intentions, what seems innovative and experimental to us is less sowithin the context of early modern print culture, and in fact may have evenseemed like a memorial to an earlier time -- as if a novelist today were toinclude a mezzotint engraved frontispiece covered with tissue paper.

As I was finishing up this post, I decided to check ECCO for any instancesof mourning pages. The one hit for the term "mourning page" brought upthis, from the second volume of William Coombe's The Philosopher inBristol (1775) (pages 60-62):

I guess that about sums it up.

This post first appeared on D I A P S A L M A T A, pleaseread the originial post: here

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