Download or read book Bibliophobia written by Brian Cummings and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-02-10 with total page 591 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bibliophobia is a book about material books, how they are cared for, and how they are damaged, throughout the 5000-year history of writing from Sumeria to the smartphone. Its starting point is the contemporary idea of 'the death of the book' implied by the replacement of physical books by digital media, with accompanying twenty-first-century experiences of paranoia and literary apocalypse. It traces a twin fear of omniscience and oblivion back to the origins of writing in ancient Babylon and Egypt, then forwards to the age of Google. It uncovers bibliophobia from the first Chinese emperor to Nazi Germany, alongside parallel stories of bibliomania and bibliolatry in world religions and literatures. Books imply cognitive content embodied in physical form, in which the body cooperates with the brain. At its heart this relationship of body and mind, or letter and spirit, always retains a mystery. Religions are founded on holy books, which are also sites of transgression, so that writing is simultaneously sacred and profane. In secular societies these complex feelings are transferred to concepts of ideology and toleration. In the ambiguous future of the internet, digital immateriality threatens human equilibrium once again. Bibliophobia is a global history, covering six continents and seven religions, describing written examples from each of the last thirty centuries (and several earlier). It discusses topics such as the origins of different kinds of human script; the development of textual media such as scrolls, codices, printed books, and artificial intelligence; the collection and destruction of libraries; the use of books as holy relics, talismans, or shrines; and the place of literacy in the history of slavery, heresy, blasphemy, censorship, and persecution. It proposes a theory of writing, how it relates to speech, images, and information, or to concepts of mimesis, personhood, and politics. Originating as the Clarendon Lectures in the Faculty of English at the University of Oxford, the methods of Bibliophobia range across book history; comparative religion; philosophy from Plato to Hegel and Freud; and a range of global literature from ancient to contemporary. Richly illustrated with textual forms, material objects, and art works, its inspiration is the power that books always (and continue to) have in the emotional, spiritual, bodily, and imaginative lives of readers.
Download or read book Bibliophobia Remarks on the Present Languid and Depressed State of Literature A in a Letter Adressed to the Author of the Bibliomania written by Thomas Frognall Dibdin and published by . This book was released on 1832 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Fear of Books written by Holbrook Jackson and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the violence, destruction, and suppression that have hounded books throughout their history and the fears that lead to such treachery. This book identifies three deeply seated fears: fear of insurrection, fear of blasphemy, and fear of pornography.
Download or read book The Ferrante Letters written by Sarah Chihaya and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2020-01-07 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Like few other works of contemporary literature, Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels found an audience of passionate and engaged readers around the world. Inspired by Ferrante’s intense depiction of female friendship and women’s intellectual lives, four critics embarked upon a project that was both work and play: to create a series of epistolary readings of the Neapolitan Quartet that also develops new ways of reading and thinking together. In a series of intertwined, original, and daring readings of Ferrante’s work and her fictional world, Sarah Chihaya, Merve Emre, Katherine Hill, and Juno Jill Richards strike a tone at once critical and personal, achieving a way of talking about literature that falls between the seminar and the book club. Their letters make visible the slow, fractured, and creative accretion of ideas that underwrites all literary criticism and also illuminate the authors’ lives outside the academy. The Ferrante Letters offers an improvisational, collaborative, and cumulative model for reading and writing with others, proposing a new method the authors call collective criticism. A book for fans of Ferrante and for literary scholars seeking fresh modes of intellectual exchange, The Ferrante Letters offers incisive criticism, insouciant riffs, and the pleasure of giving oneself over to an extended conversation about fiction with friends.
Download or read book Bibliomania written by Thomas Frognall Dibdin and published by . This book was released on 1876 with total page 808 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Victorian Publisher written by Royal A. Gettmann and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-06-10 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a study of the rise and activity of the London publishing house which started in 1829 as Bentley and Colburn and was finally absorbed by Macmillan in 1898. Professor Gettmann has worked from the surviving papers of the firm and it is probable that he has here given more detail about the aims, methods and successes of an English publisher of the time than can be found anywhere else. Since there is constant reference from the activities of Bentley to that of his contemporaries, it is also a microcosm of English authorship and publishing from the time of Scott to that of Meredith: one of the great period of English publishing enterprise. It discusses movements of taste and cycles of popular reading and illustrates the relationship between publisher and author. It also deals with authors' contracts and rewards and in short, deals with every aspect of English publishing in an important period.
Download or read book Phobophobia written by and published by . This book was released on 2011-11 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is nothing to fear but fear itself... Twenty six original tales of horror by established masters of terror and talented new voices lie within this Lexicon of Fear. Beware the dark power of words in BIBLIOPHOBIA...a carnival double act made in Hell can be found in the clown cemetery in COULROPHOBIA...an artist loses his power to create ice sculptures because of his fear of cold in FRIGOPHOBIA, but that is the least of his problems as his therapist suffers the same phobia... The fear of open spaces manifests itself in KENOPHOBIA, a tale of the ultimate emptiness - the Great Void that awaits us all...the fear of beautiful women is fully justified in VENUSTROPHOBIA, a tale of futile defence against the Succubus... ...but beware: the cure may be worse... Denying yourself a place in Heaven is one way to avoid JESUSPHOBIA, but the only alternative means Hell to pay...a playwright fights his fear of the colour yellow by creating an unusual addition to his Dramatis Personae in XANTHOPHOBIA...a Witchfinder's fear of open water will only be relieved by imbibing one of two deathly fluids in AQUAPHOBIA...and a widower follows the age-old advice of turning to face your fear in QIQIRN, only to uncover the true nature of an Inuit dog spirit that carries the essence of cold terror from its ancient homeland into the realm of human grief... Open the pages. It is time to learn your A to Dread...
Download or read book From David to Gedaliah written by Bob Becking and published by Saint-Paul. This book was released on 2007 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ten essays in this volume all deal with various aspects of the interpretation of the Book of Kings. Bob Becking tries to set a course between Scylla and Charibdis. Both 'minimalism' and 'maximalism' are avoided by trying to apply a variety of methods: narratology, historical criticism and theological analysis. This implies that extra-biblical evidence -- the Tell Dan inscription, Assyrian royal inscriptions, West Semitic seal inscriptions -- are taken into account. Selected texts from this biblical book are read on the basis of a three-dimensional matrix: (1) the narrative character of the story/stories; (2) the value and function of extra-biblical material, be it of an epigraphical or an archaeological character; (3) the art of history-writing both ancient and modern. The essays are arranged according to the order in which the relevant texts or their main characters figure in the Book of Kings. Originally published between 1987 and 2005, they have been updated for publication in the present collection.
Download or read book The Anatomy of Bibliomania written by Holbrook Jackson and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 676 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inspects the allure of books, their curative and restorative properties, and the passion for them that leads to bibliomania. This title comments on why we read, where we read - on journeys, at mealtimes, on the toilet (this has 'a long but mostly unrecorded history'), in bed, and in prison - and what happens to us when we read.
Download or read book Reading and the Art of Librarianship written by John B. Nicholson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-12-05 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, first published in 1986, contains a collection of remarkable essays analysing such topics as the nature of reading, the power of books, literary creation, libraries and technology, and the freedom to read.
Download or read book Crusoe s Books written by Bill Bell and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-01-13 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a book about readers on the move in the age of Victorian empire. It examines the libraries and reading habits of five reading constituencies from the long nineteenth century: shipboard emigrants, Australian convicts, Scottish settlers, polar explorers, and troops in the First World War. What was the role of reading in extreme circumstances? How were new meanings made under strange skies? How was reading connected with mobile communities in an age of expansion? Uncovering a vast range of sources from the period, from diaries, periodicals, and literary culture, Bill Bell reveals some remarkable and unanticipated insights into the way that reading operated within and upon the British Empire for over a century.
Download or read book The Reading Teacher s Word a Day written by Edward B. Fry and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-04-15 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the best-selling author of The Reading Teacher’s Book of Lists comes this hands-on reference containing 180 challenging and engaging lessons—one for each day of the school year. The book is designed to expand the vocabularies of students in grades 6-12 and help them become excited about the life-long process of learning new words. It can be used equally well for in-class activities, self-study, tutoring, or homeschooling. The lessons contained in this book are perfect for “sponge activities”—five-minute lessons to start off or end each class period—or for a supplementary vocabulary lesson.
Download or read book The Spirit and Manners of the Age written by and published by . This book was released on 1828 with total page 728 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Senses and the English Reformation written by Matthew Milner and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-03 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is a commonly held belief that medieval Catholics were focussed on the 'bells and whistles' of religious practices, the smoke, images, sights and sounds that dazzled pre-modern churchgoers. Protestantism, in contrast, has been cast as Catholicism's austere, intellective and less sensual rival sibling. With iis white-washed walls, lack of incense (and often music) Protestantism worship emphasised preaching and scripture, making the new religion a drab and disengaged sensual experience. In order to challenge such entrenched assumptions, this book examines Tudor views on the senses to create a new lens through which to explore the English Reformation. Divided into two sections, the book begins with an examination of pre-Reformation beliefs and practices, establishing intellectual views on the senses in fifteenth-century England, and situating them within their contemporary philosophical and cultural tensions. Having established the parameters for the role of sense before the Reformation, the second half of the book mirrors these concerns in the post-1520 world, looking at how, and to what degree, the relationship between religious practices and sensation changed as a result of the Reformation. By taking this long-term, binary approach, the study is able to tackle fundamental questions regarding the role of the senses in late-medieval and early modern English Christianity. By looking at what English men and women thought about sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch, the stereotype that Protestantism was not sensual, and that Catholicism was overly sensualised is wholly undermined. Through this examination of how worship was transformed in its textual and liturgical forms, the book illustrates how English religion sought to reflect changing ideas surrounding the senses and their place in religious life. Worship had to be 'sensible', and following how reformers and their opponents built liturgy around experience of the sacred through the physical allows us to tease out the tensions and pressures which shaped religious reform.
Download or read book The Bibliomaniac written by Charles Nodier and published by . This book was released on 1894 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Reminiscences of a Literary Life written by Thomas Frognall Dibdin and published by . This book was released on 1836 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Al Jahiz In Praise of Books written by James E. Montgomery and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2013-11-13 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Edinburgh University Press will publish two self-contained guides to reading al-Jahiz that also shed light on his society and its writings. This first volume, 'In Praise of Books', is devoted to bibliomania and al-Jahiz's bibliophilia. Volume 2, In Censure of Books, explores Al-Jahiz's bibliophobia. Al-Jahiz was a bibliomaniac, theologian, and spokesman for the political and cultural elite, a writer who lived, counselled and wrote in Iraq during the first century of the 'Abbasid caliphate. He advised, argued and rubbed shoulders with the major power brokers and leading religious and intellectual figures of his day, and crossed swords in debate and argument with the architects of the Islamic religious, theological, philosophical and cultural canon. His many, tumultuous writings engage with these figures, their ideas, theories and policies. They give us an invaluable but much-neglected window onto the values and beliefs of this cosmopolitan elite.
