Non-Codex Books: Textual Landcapes in Argentina, Brasil and Spain

In this presentation Dr. Rafael Climent-Espino examines the main theoretical contributions on the concept of book by demonstrating the flexibility of such a concept. For practical reasons, the rise of the codex led to the disappearance of an important variety of textual formats and homogenized the different possibilities of transmission by relegating a great variety of textual transmitters to extinction. Dr. Climent-Espino analyzes textual transmitters edited in formats other than the codex from Argentina, Brazil, and Spain, some of them everyday objects converted into original books. He will show how the material support of writing enhances and enables distinct possibilities of the usages of those objects and allows the text to comprise diverse connotations of which it is a transmitter. This union between object and writing creates a synergy that offers the reader highly unique literary objects.