The alphabetic labyrinth : the letters in history and imagination

1. The alphabet in context. 2. Origins and historians. 3. The alphabet in classical history. Philosophy and divination. 4. Gnosticism, Hermeticism, neo-Platonism and neo-Pythagoreanism: the alphabet in the Hellenistic and early Christian era. 5. Calligraphy, alchemy and ars combinatoria in the medieval period. 6. The Kabbalah. 7. Rationalizing the alphabet: construction, real character and philosophical languages in the Renaissance. 8. The social contract, primitivism and nationalism: the alphabet in the 18th century. 9. The alphabet in the 19th century: advertising, visible speech and narratives of history. 10. 20th century: eclecticism, technology and the idiosyncratic imagination

'The alphabet is at once familiar and mysterious. Its letters have been the object of speculation since theiir invention almost four thousand years ago; the symbols represent sounds, yet they exist in their own right, often invested with quasi-magical power.'

Hardcover