Oakley-Brown and Killeen 2017

Oakley-Brown, Liz and Kevin Killeen, eds. Scrutinizing Surfaces, special issue of Journal of the Northern Renaissance 8 (2017). http://www.northernrenaissance.org/issues/issue-8-2017/

‘A unique instance of art’: The Proliferating Surfaces of Early Modern Paper, by Helen Smith

Stallybrass and de Grazia (1993) -- paper challenges surface/depth because it absorbs ink; connects to Derrida and Fleming 2016 -- but paper also a medium for other kinds of expression, not just vehicle for ink/writing

"Paper is always at once a real presence and an idea. ‘When we say “paper”, Derrida asks, ‘are we naming the empirical body that bears this conventional name? Are we already resorting to a rhetorical figure? Or are we by the same token designating this “quasi-transcendental paper,” whose function could be guaranteed by any other “body” or “surface”…?’ (52). This article explores these questions in response to specific early modern instantiations of paper and its tropes, arguing that paper formed both a practical and an intellectual resource. Early moderns looked into, as well as at and through, their paper, seeing it as a remarkable material and an instance of the changeability of matter. Restoring paper’s own capacity to fold, to create space and volume, I argue that its ‘multimedia’ potential is a function not of paper’s status as a support for writing but of its unique physical properties."

"Imaginatively cast as what is below, paper’s significance expands until it becomes exemplary of substance itself."