The Story of O

by Jaffe, Michele

• ISBN13: 9780674839519
• ISBN10: 067483951X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-09-30
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr

Summary

This work unfolds the idea of "nothing" out of a Titian painting of Danaeuml; and the shower of gold. Jaffee's philological and pictorial argument links, across several languages, such seemingly disparate concepts as money, coins, mothers (through the mint's matrix), subjects, courtiers, prostitutes (through etymologies that join minting, standing-under, standing-for), ciphers, codes, and the codex form.This ambitious book is a cultural history of the "cipher" zero as code and as nothing, as the absence of value and the place-holder constructing value. It traces the wide-ranging implications of "nothing"-not only in mathematics but also in literature. Along the way, it makes important points about the orthography and editing of early modern texts, and about the material affinities of these texts with painting and minting.

Table of Contents

Preface	vi
I.O.U.	ix
Ground Zero	1	(24)
Counting	25	(27)
Counting Becomes Accounting	52	(30)
Code Inside the Codex	82	(40)
Petrarch	122	(22)
From Petrarch to Petrarchism	144	(20)
Conclusion Nothing More	164	(9)
Appendix Bellaso's Method 3	173	(3)
Bibliography	176	(16)
Index and Glossary	192