Literary Traditions: Molly Chan—Illuminated Alphabet Book for “Sir Gawain & the Green Knight”

Illuminated Alphabet Book by Molly Chan
Music: YoYo Ma and Allison Krauss: The Wexford Carol

Sir Gwain and the Green Knight, Book 3, XII, trans. Jessie L. Weston


Writes Molly Chan (’22)  for Professor Norrie Epstein:

I chose to do “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” as an illuminated alphabet book because I researched illuminated manuscripts for the presentation, and found it really inspiring. Being a communication design major, typography is a very large part of our curriculum, but the illuminated letters allowed me play with form and design in a way that you cannot do in typography because these letters were made before the printing press was created and all the typographic rules were made.

The major plot developments in the story all seemed to take place during the holidays, specifically Christmas and New Years, so I defaulted to red, and even more so green, because of both Christmas and the Green Knight/Green Man.


Read Molly Chan’s whole Illuminated Alphabet essay here.

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