Typography, Illustration, and Narration in Three Novels by Alasdair Gray: Lanark, 1892, Janine and Poor Things.

Abstract

The impetus of the thesis emerged through an academic interest in how experimental uses of typography and illustration functioned as a method of narration within literature. This was followed by investigations into the use of typography and illustration yielded that while there is a growing field of literary study examining non-linguistic elements within narratives, there are few studies into typography and illustration and how an author utilises and develops them as a method of narration. In light of this, this thesis examines attempts to expand upon the act of narration through the use of typography and illustration in both experimental and common forms. This is focused through Scottish artist Alasdair Gray and three of his novels: Lanark: A Life in Four Books, 1982, Janine and Poor Things. While Gray’s novels are contemporary his use of typography and illustration engages in wider print cultures that facilitated experiment into literature involving the manipulation of typography, illustration and the traditions of narrative. Experimentation in literature from 1650 to 1990, be it through illustration, typography or the composition of narrative, often emerged when printing practice and its product were no longer seen as efficient at communicating to modernising audiences. This act often coincided with larger changes within print cultures that affected laws, politics, the means of distribution, views of design and methods of distribution. These changes facilitated poets, authors and artists to break with traditions of communication and restrictions to methods of printing to create new forms further inspired by emerging print and audio / visual media, methods of printing production, views toward the composition of artworks and a modernising society. The traditions of print history related to experiment form one area that create the foundations of Gray’s employment of illustration and typography. Traditions of printing history are also an area to build foundations for how to examine the usage drawn from Gray’s work. Similar aspects of standardisation permeate Scottish language history and its literary market. Scottish engagement with Britain, religion and politics as well as the introduction of the printing press had ramifications for the state, nationalism and independence, affecting literary markets, but also drawing new methods of using and thinking about language. Engaged with European print cultures, through literature and non-standard typography, artists explored Scottish identity and how language reflected and represented this, often highlighting the disparity between the use of thought and speech. The examination of aspects of Scottish literature in this manner shows the path of Scottish literary markets, including those for Gray’s work, but also alternative methods for the use of non-standard typography related to characterisation and character speech. This again forms methods through which to explore how narration is expanded through typography and illustration. Gray’s novels emerge from the foundation of earlier print cultures and history, built through Gray’s wide reading, political engagement, his broad art-schooling and his involvement in literary markets. Through the three novels closely studied here, Gray builds and expands upon earlier artistic and literary examples and examined against theories of narration they reveal how typography and illustration are developed as a method of narration. Throughout Lanark: A Life in Four Books, typography and illustration serve multiple aspects of narration in the forging of an epic narrative. In 1982, Janine, typography is utilised as a means to render aspects of consciousness that cannot be easily accomplished through traditional methods, while adhering to the narrative limitations of the character’s point of view. In Poor Things both typography and illustration function as a method to represent aspects of printed materials as a means to present multiple points of view and explore the theme of the complex nature of the truth. Ultimately through Alasdair Gray and three of his novels this thesis explores the cultures of printing and application of experimental and common uses of typography and illustration within literature. More importantly it explores how typography and illustration are extended as a method of narration.