The two chapters of “A History of Reading” we were assigned for today’s class were eye-openers. Now I see how those lines and lines of uninterrupted letters on ancient manuscripts I’ve seen in museums make sense—they were just used, more or less, to cue the memory for reading out loud. And while it makes perfect sense that humankind’s transition from oral culture to literary culture should pass through a whole lot of mumbling and reading out loud in between, it’s something I had never thought about.
What struck me the most about the chapter entitled "The Shape of the Book" was the steady march through history toward reading as a private act, and how profoundly that has fostered the individualism that is a hallmark of western civilization. Our own era, which further democratizes information through the internet, giving individuals even more reach and control, is another quantum leap down that road.
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