Again he writes: “Take breath and read it with the ears, as I 
always wish to be read, and my verse comes all right.” And 
Joyce never tired of explaining how in Finnegans Wake  “the 
words the reader sees are not the words that he will hear.” As 
with Hopkins, the language of Joyce only comes alive when read 
aloud, creating a synesthesia or interplay of the senses.

     But if reading aloud favors synesthesia and tactility, so 
did the ancient and medieval manuscript. We have already seen 
an example of a recent attempt to create an oral typography 
for modern English readers. Naturally, such a script presents 
the highly textural and tactile mode of an old manuscript. 
“Textura,” the name for Gothic lettering in its own time, meant 
“tapestry.” But the Romans had developed a much less textural 
and more highly visual lettering which is called “Roman” and 
which is the lettering we find in ordinary print, as on this page.