| Date: 28 April 2011, 04:34
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A History of Reading (Globalities)
By Steven Roger Fischer
* Publisher: Reaktion Books
* Number Of Pages: 384
* Publication Date: 2004-09-15
* ISBN-10 / ASIN: 1861892098
* ISBN-13 / EAN: 9781861892096
Product Description:
"Takes in a wonderful diversity of things."-Nature
Now available in paperback, this final volume in the trilogy Language/Writing/Reading traces the complete story of reading from the time when symbols first acquired meaning through to the electronic texts of the digital age. The author concludes with an examination of "visual language" and modern theories of how reading is processed in the brain, and suggests a radical new definition of what reading truly is.
Preface
Everyone – young and old, past and present – has had to admit
its primacy. For an ancient Egyptian official it was a ‘boat on
water’. For an aspiring Nigerian pupil four thousand years later
it is ‘a touch of light in a deep dark well’. For most of us it will
forever be the voice of civilization itself . . . Reading.
Today’s white-collar worker spends more time reading
than eating, drinking, grooming, travelling, socializing or on
general entertainment and sport – that is, five to eight hours of
each working day. (Only sleep appears to claim as much time.)
The computer and Internet? Both are reading revolutions.
Yet reading embraces so much more than work or web.
What music is to the spirit, reading is to the mind. Reading
challenges, empowers, bewitches, enriches. We perceive little
black marks on white paper or a PC screen and they move us
to tears, open up our lives to new insights and understandings,
inspire us, organize our existences and connect us with
all creation.
Surely there can be no greater wonder.
The third and final volume of a trilogy (following A History
of Language, 1999, and A History of Writing, 2001, in the
Globalities series), A History of Reading is the story of this
wonder. It describes the act of reading, its practitioners and
their social environments, and reading’s many manifestations
on stone, bone, bark, wall, monument, tablet, scroll, codex,
book, screen and e-paper. Though the present volume focuses
on the West’s reading history, it also describes the development
of reading in China, Korea, Japan, the Americas and India.
Through such a history it is hoped one might gain a better
understanding not only of what reading has been in the past
and what it is today, but also how it may continue to inspire and
empower the world in future.
Though reading and writing go hand in hand, reading is
actually writing’s antithesis – indeed, even activating separate
regions of the brain. Writing is a skill, reading a faculty.
Writing was originally elaborated and thereafter deliberately
adapted; reading has evolved in tandem with humanity’s deeper
understanding of the written word’s latent capabilities.
Writing’s history has followed series of borrowings and refinements,
reading’s history has involved successive stages of social
maturation. Writing is expression, reading impression.
Writing is public, reading personal. Writing is limited, reading
open-ended. Writing freezes the moment. Reading is forever.
I am particularly indebted to Jeremy Black, Chair of History at
the University of Exeter and general editor of the Globalities
series, for his exceptional encouragement since 1988, under
remarkable circumstances, that has culminated in this trilogy.
My sincere gratitude goes also to Michael Leaman of Reaktion
Books, who suggested the topic and remained strongly supportive
throughout. To my brilliant copy editors, Andrea Belloli
(volumes One and Two) and David Rose (the present volume),
my appreciation and admiration.
To my wife Taki my abiding love.
This volume is dedicated to my dear friend Joan Seaver
Kurze, a fellow celebrant of the written word.
Steven Roger Fischer
Waiheke Island, New Zealand
October 2002
Contents
preface 7
1 The Immortal Witness 11
2 The Papyrus Tongue 45
3 A World of Reading 99
4 The Parchment Eye 141
5 The Printed Page 205
6 The ‘Universal Conscience’ 253
7 Reading the Future 307
references 347
select bibliography 365
illustration acknowledgements 373
index 374
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