Modernist Magazines and Digital Humanities

William Buckley's story "King Diarmuid" appears in August of 1904 in Dana magazine. It is about a traveling king who dreams of a stunning woman. He wakes up, and tells his best friend about it, who laughs. He is approached by an old woman who tells him that she once betrayed the honor of a great man, and was doomed. She was cursed to age immediately, and never die. She explains that if she can have the pity of a greater man, and talk to him for twenty minutes the curse will be reversed. She sobs and tells him that being old is terrible and hard. He sympathizes, and she transforms into the woman of his dream while he transforms into a feeble old man. The story ends tragically as the woman seduces his unknowing best friend, who takes her away from the disgusting old man in a royal chariot. Immediately following the story is one of James Joyce's first published poems: "Song." It is about nature, and the nature of love. The speaker seems delighted to be outside, in the presence of the woman he adores, and not at all afraid that she will turn him into a bitter old man. Perhaps Dana is suggesting that while one should certainly be cognizant of the deceitfulness of some, strange women, there are a few others that will age you slowly into a content man.

In "The New Age" magazine I found a form of bibliographic coding in the article intitled "The Difficulties of Temperance". In this article, they discussed the liquor trade being the core reason behind the troubles of society. G.R.S Taylor discussed in the first paragraph of this article how the reason for those troubles cannot be blamed on the liquor trade alone and the people who either sell or buy liquor. It continues to discuss how men can buy better houses and get better jobs if they stop spending their money on beer. I found this to be a form of bibliographic coding because from what I observed from our class lecture, bibliographic coding is where a writer takes a piece of literature or in this case a statement and writes it in their own perception or changes the original content of the meaning. I believe that after reading that article, the reader's perception or perhaps what they first thought of the liqour trade, may change because of G.R.S Taylors influencial words. When one's opinion is given and a strong opinion none the less, the readers perception may change, even if the original meaning or what Sir Toby Belch ment to say was correct during the time he wrote or said it.

        The journal, Poetry, published from 1912 to 1922, issued over twenty volumes of verse. In the early stages of its publication, the cover page was printed in caligraphic text, outlined by what appears like a wood block printed design, and displays the symbol of pegusus in the opening of the capital "P" in "Poetry." The design is traditional in appearance, and strikingly different from other journals such as The New Age, The Blue Review, or Cosmopolitan. It was not until the eighth volume, printed in April of 1916 that the journal removed the wood block design and changed the font to a more modern face, however keeping the pegasus image in the title. This shift in design might inform the reader something of the pre-war poet's positive attitude towards their lyric tradition. This argument might also be supported by the presence of an Whitman quote on the final page of the first issue to display the new cover. The quote reads, "To have great poets there must be great audiences, too." While the actual quote may be of little interest to this discussion, the fact that it is written in the calligraphic font face used in previous issues illustrates the editor or publisher's reluctance towards change.