Maniculan

Abstract

The Manicule. Literature’s Guiding HandThe ☛ manicule ☚ or typographical pointer has a unique place in literary history. Originally a reader’s annotation, it became a printer’s mark and an advertiser’s tool-in-trade before making the leap into narrative as a fictional object in its own right. In this essay I trace the manicule’s evolution from the medieval scriptorium to electronic publishing in the late age of print before examining its narrative and aesthetic functions in V. F. Palmblad’s Törnrosens Bok (1840), August Strindberg’s Röda rummet (1879), and Hjalmar Söderberg’s Doktor Glas (1905). In this trio of novels, I argue, the manicule is not just another element of narrative realism but a way to thematize historic changes in the material conditions of literary production. More than visual gimmicks, these pointing hands invite us to reassess the wider significance of these landmark works of Swedish literature.