A History of Reading (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Alberto Manguel
- First Published: 1996
- Type of Work: History
- Time of Work: Approximately 3000 to the late twentieth century
- Setting: The Orient, Europe, and the Americas
- Principal Characters: Aristotle, Richard Bancroft, Jorge Luis Borges, Callimachus of Cyrene, Cicero, Anthony Comstock, Johannes Gutenberg, Francesco Petrarch, Pliny the Younger
- Genres: Nonfiction, History
- Subjects: History, Language or languages, Books, Libraries or librarians, Reading, Censorship, Literacy, Vision
- Locales: Europe, Asia, South America, North America
In his Confessions, Augustine expresses surprise at the silent reading of Ambrose, Bishop of Milan. Throughout antiquity and the Middle Ages, reading meant reading aloud; such reading was probably the most common form of ancient publication. The phrase scripta manet, verba volat—the written word remains stationary, the spoken word travels—implied that only when the word was given a voice could it serve as a means of communication. Manguel notes that the Hebrew and Aramaic word for reading also means to call, again expressing this view that one should not read silently....
[The entire page is 2102 words long]
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