The Black Block : Opaque Page as a Graphic Device

The black block, a rectangle of black printing ink on the page of a book, surrounded by blank margins, is a peculiar graphic device. Its literary tradition has usually been considered to start from Tristram Shandy, which includes a renowned black page in memory of “poor Yorick”. Nevertheless, Sterne’s gimmick can be seen as an allusion to an older typographical tradition of the so-called mourning pages, which were featured in books remembering the departed decades before Tristram Shandy. In this article, we analyze the ways in which the black block is used in narrative literature, with examples chosen mainly from 20th century experimental fiction. The block proves ambivalent in that it seems to fall somewhere between text and image and, moreover, between the storyworld and the world of the book. Often, it underscores the technological aspect of print literature but, at the same time, gives rise to comical effects.