Download or read book Ancient Literacies written by William A Johnson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-02-05 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Classicists have been slow to take advantage of the important advances in the way that literacy is viewed in other disciplines (including in particular cognitive psychology, socio-linguistics, and socio-anthropology). On the other hand, historians of literacy continue to rely on outdated work by classicists (mostly from the 1960's and 1970's) and have little access to the current reexamination of the ancient evidence. This timely volume attempts to formulate new interesting ways of talking about the entire concept of literacy in the ancient world--literacy not in the sense of whether 10% or 30% of people in the ancient world could read or write, but in the sense of text-oriented events embedded in a particular socio-cultural context. The volume is intended as a forum in which selected leading scholars rethink from the ground up how students of classical antiquity might best approach the question of literacy in the past, and how that investigation might materially intersect with changes in the way that literacy is now viewed in other disciplines. The result will give readers new ways of thinking about specific elements of "literacy" in antiquity, such as the nature of personal libraries, or what it means to be a bookseller in antiquity; new constructionist questions, such as what constitutes reading communities and how they fashion themselves; new takes on the public sphere, such as how literacy intersects with commercialism, or with the use of public spaces, or with the construction of civic identity; new essentialist questions, such as what "book" and "reading" signify in antiquity, why literate cultures develop, or why literate cultures matter. The book derives from a conference (a Semple Symposium held in Cincinnati in April 2006) and includes new work from the most outstanding scholars of literacy in antiquity (e.g., Simon Goldhill, Joseph Farrell, Peter White, and Rosalind Thomas).
Download or read book Ancient Literacy written by William V. Harris and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1989 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The subject of this study is in any case the literacy of the Greeks and Romans from the time when the former were first provably able to write a non-syllabic script, in the eighth century B.C., until the fifth century A.D.
Download or read book Ancient Literacy written by William V. HARRIS and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How many people could read and write in the ancient world of the Greeks and Romans? No one has previously tried to give a systematic answer to this question. Most historians who have considered the problem at all have given optimistic assessments, since they have been impressed by large bodies of ancient written material such as the graffiti at Pompeii. They have also been influenced by a tendency to idealize the Greek and Roman world and its educational system. In Ancient Literacy W. V. Harris provides the first thorough exploration of the levels, types, and functions of literacy in the classical world, from the invention of the Greek alphabet about 800 B.C. down to the fifth century A.D. Investigations of other societies show that literacy ceases to be the accomplishment of a small elite only in specific circumstances. Harris argues that the social and technological conditions of the ancient world were such as to make mass literacy unthinkable. Noting that a society on the verge of mass literacy always possesses an elaborate school system, Harris stresses the limitations of Greek and Roman schooling, pointing out the meagerness of funding for elementary education. Neither the Greeks nor the Romans came anywhere near to completing the transition to a modern kind of written culture. They relied more heavily on oral communication than has generally been imagined. Harris examines the partial transition to written culture, taking into consideration the economic sphere and everyday life, as well as law, politics, administration, and religion. He has much to say also about the circulation of literary texts throughout classical antiquity. The limited spread of literacy in the classical world had diverse effects. It gave some stimulus to critical thought and assisted the accumulation of knowledge, and the minority that did learn to read and write was to some extent able to assert itself politically. The written word was also an instrument of power, and its use was indispensable for the construction and maintenance of empires. Most intriguing is the role of writing in the new religious culture of the late Roman Empire, in which it was more and more revered but less and less practiced. Harris explores these and related themes in this highly original work of social and cultural history. Ancient Literacy is important reading for anyone interested in the classical world, the problem of literacy, or the history of the written word.
Download or read book Literacy in Ancient Everyday Life written by Anne Kolb and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2018-08-21 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores the significance of literacy for everyday life in the ancient world. It focuses on the use of writing and written materials, the circumstances of their use, and different types of users. The broad geographic and chronologic frame of reference includes many kinds of written materials, from Pharaonic Egypt and ancient China through the early middle ages, yet a focus is placed on the Roman Empire.
Download or read book Ancient Literacies written by William Allen Johnson and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume attempts to formulate new interesting ways of talking about the entire concept of literacy in the ancient world - literacy not in the sense of whether 10% or 30% of people in the ancient world could read or write, but in the sense of text-oriented events embedded in a particular socio-cultural context.
Download or read book Literacy and Orality in Ancient Greece written by Rosalind Thomas and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1992-09-25 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the role of written and oral communication in Greece.
Download or read book Orality Literacy and Performance in the Ancient World written by Elizabeth Minchin and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2011-12-09 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This ninth Orality and Literacy volume considers oral composition, performance, reception, and the mutual interplay between oral performance and written text. Authors under consideration are Homer, Hesiod, Plato, Isocrates, orators of the Second Sophistic, and Proclus. Cross-cultural studies are included.
Download or read book Writing and Literacy in the World of Ancient Israel written by Christopher A. Rollston and published by Society of Biblical Lit. This book was released on 2010 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Dictionary of Daily Life in Biblical Post Biblical Antiquity Literacy written by Edwin M. Yamauchi and published by Hendrickson Publishers. This book was released on 2022-05-17 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unique reference article, excerpted from the larger work (Dictionary of Daily Life in Biblical and Post-Biblical Antiquity), provides background cultural and technical information on the world of the Hebrew Bible and New Testament from 2000 BC to approximately AD 600. Written and edited by a world-class historian and a highly respected biblical scholar, each article addresses cultural, technical, and/or sociological issues of interest to the study of the Scriptures. Contains a high level of scholarship. Information and concepts are explained in detail and are accompanied by bibliographic material for further exploration. Useful for scholars, pastors, teachers, and students—for biblical study, exegesis, or sermon preparation. Possible areas covered include details of domestic life, technology, culture, laws, or religious practices. Each article ranges from 5 to 20 pages in length. For the complete contents of Dictionary of Daily Life in Biblical and Post-Biblical Antiquity, see ISBN 9781619708617 (4-volume set) or ISBN 9781619701458 (complete in one volume).
Download or read book A History of Hittite Literacy written by Theo van den Hout and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-01-07 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first comprehensive overview of the development of literacy, script usage, and literature in Hittite Anatolia (1650-1200 BC).
Download or read book Literacy and Power in the Ancient World written by Alan K. Bowman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1996-12-05 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection attempts to set the study of literacy in the ancient world in the wider contexts of the debates among anthropologists over the impact of writing on society.
Download or read book Reading Writing and Bookish Circles in the Ancient Mediterranean written by Jonathan D.H. Norton and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-06-30 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By integrating conversations across disciplines, especially focusing on classical studies and Jewish and Christian studies, this volume addresses several imbalances in scholarship on reading and textual activity in the ancient Mediterranean. Contributors intentionally place Jewish, Christian, Roman, Greek and other reading circles back into their encompassing historical context, avoiding subdivisions along modern subject lines, divisions still bearing marks of cultural and ideological interests. In their examination, contributors avoid dwelling upon traditional methodological debates over orality vs. literacy and social classifications of literacy, instead turning their attention to the social-historical: groups of people, circles and networks, strata and class, scribal culture, material culture, epigraphic and papyrological evidence, functions and types of literacy and the social relationships that all of these entail. Overall, the volume contributes to an emerging and important interdisciplinary collaboration between specialists in ancient literacy, encouraging future discussion between two currently divided fields.
Download or read book Between Orality and Literacy Communication and Adaptation in Antiquity written by Ruth Scodel and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2014-06-05 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in Between Orality and Literacy address how oral and literature practices intersect as messages, texts, practices, and traditions move and change, because issues of orality and literacy are especially complex and significant when information is transmitted over wide expanses of time and space or adapted in new contexts. Their topics range from Homer and Hesiod to the New Testament and Gaius’ Institutes, from epic poetry and drama to vase painting, historiography, mythography, and the philosophical letter. Repeatedly they return to certain issues. Writing and orality are not mutually exclusive, and their interaction is not always in a single direction. Authors, whether they use writing or not, try to control the responses of a listening audience. A variable tradition can be fixed, not just by writing as a technology, but by such different processes as the establishment of a Panhellenic version of an Attic myth and a Hellenistic city’s creation of a single celebratory history.
Download or read book Literacy in Ancient Everyday Life written by Anne Kolb and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2018-08-21 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores the significance of literacy for everyday life in the ancient world. It focuses on the use of writing and written materials, the circumstances of their use, and different types of users. The broad geographic and chronologic frame of reference includes many kinds of written materials, from Pharaonic Egypt and ancient China through the early middle ages, yet a focus is placed on the Roman Empire.
Download or read book Realms of Literacy written by David B. Lurie and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-03-17 with total page 538 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In the world history of writing, Japan presents an unusually detailed record of transition to literacy. Extant materials attest to the social, cultural, and political contexts and consequences of the advent of writing and reading, from the earliest appearance of imported artifacts with Chinese inscriptions in the first century BCE, through the production of texts within the Japanese archipelago in the fifth century, to the widespread literacies and the simultaneous rise of a full-fledged state in the late seventh and eighth centuries. David B. Lurie explores the complex processes of adaptation and invention that defined the early Japanese transition from orality to textuality. Drawing on archaeological and archival sources varying in content, style, and medium, this book highlights the diverse modes and uses of writing that coexisted in a variety of configurations among different social groups. It offers new perspectives on the pragmatic contexts and varied natures of multiple simultaneous literacies, the relations between languages and systems of inscription, and the aesthetic dimensions of writing. Lurie’s investigation into the textual practices of early Japan illuminates not only the cultural history of East Asia but also the broader comparative history of writing and literacy in the ancient world."
Download or read book Scribal Culture in Ben Sira written by Lindsey A. Askin and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-07-17 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Scribal Culture in Ben Sira Lindsey A. Askin explores scribal culture as a framework for analysing features of textual referencing throughout the Book of Ben Sira (c.200 BCE), revealing new insights into how Ben Sira wrote his book of wisdom.
Download or read book Jerome of Stridon and the Ethics of Literary Production in Late Antiquity written by Thomas E. Hunt and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-12-30 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jerome of Stridon and the Ethics of Literary Production in Late Antiquity offers a new account of the development of Jerome’s work in the period 386-393CE. Focusing on his commentaries, his translation projects, and his work against heresy, it argues that Jerome has a consistent theology of language and embodiment.
