The rhetoric of a book binding. A few touches and glances at the overall concept

Abstract

The rhetoric of a book binding seems to be an ambivalent concept, certainly one distant from the traditional perception of this physical part of a book. The commonly used term “book cover” limits a binding to a single dimension, reduces its spatial complexity, shifts it towards a poster. The need for a new definition of the rhetoric of a book binding stems from the realisation that the previous approaches are incomplete and overlook the entirety of its impact in the cultural environment. Contemporary theories of perception and emotions, neuropsychology, psychiatry and cognitive science may serve as a source of inspiration, although on an ad hoc basis it is enough to embed these deliberations in the anthropology of painting, sculpture, performing arts and performance. In this context, it is necessary to evolve towards the approach in which a book binding is a sign, a construct that is semantic, ideological, graphic-figurative, and rhetorical (linguistic), yet at the same time dynamic, relational, and performing; it becomes a visual act. If a book binding cannot be limited to image and imagery, much less to graphic representations of its verbal components, if materiality affects its perception, which takes shape of a flickering result of individual or collective symbolisation, a binding may be defined as a visual-verbal-textural rhetorical figure – a composition which dictates the specific type of an open communicative relationship, the context of which is both the content (text) of the book and the socio-historical-cultural environment, and the process of its perception is conditioned by the reader’s personality.