The written word has been a central bearer of culture since antiquity. But its position is now being challenged by the powerful media of electronic communication. In this penetrating and witty book James O'Donnell takes a reading on the promise and the threat of electronic technology for our literate future.

In Avatars of the Word O'Donnell reinterprets today's communication revolution through a series of refracted comparisons with earlier revolutionary periods: the transition from oral to written culture, from the papyrus scroll to the codex, from copied manuscript to print. His engaging portrayals of these analogous epochal moments suggest that our steps into cyberspace are not as radical as we might think. Observing how technologies of the word have affected the shaping of culture in the past, and how technological transformation has been managed, we regain models that can help us navigate the electronic transformation now underway. Concluding with a focus on the need to rethink the modern university, O'Donnell specifically addresses learning and teaching in the humanities, proposing ways to seek the greatest benefit from electronic technologies while steering clear of their potential pitfalls.

Winner, PROSE Award, Classics, Association of American Publishers (AAP), 2018

Writing down the epic tales of the Trojan War and the wanderings of Odysseus in texts that became the Iliad and the Odyssey was a defining moment in the intellectual history of the West, a moment from which many current conventions and attitudes toward books can be traced. But how did texts originally written on papyrus in perhaps the eighth century BC survive across nearly three millennia, so that today people can read them electronically on a smartphone?

Classics from Papyrus to the Internet provides a fresh, authoritative overview of the transmission and reception of classical texts from antiquity to the present. The authors begin with a discussion of ancient literacy, book production, papyrology, epigraphy, and scholarship, and then examine how classical texts were transmitted from the medieval period through the Renaissance and the Enlightenment to the modern era. They also address the question of reception, looking at how succeeding generations responded to classical texts, preserving some but not others. This sheds light on the origins of numerous scholarly disciplines that continue to shape our understanding of the past, as well as the determined effort required to keep the literary tradition alive. As a resource for students and scholars in fields such as classics, medieval studies, comparative literature, paleography, papyrology, and Egyptology, Classics from Papyrus to the Internet presents and discusses the major reference works and online professional tools for studying literary transmission.

In this study, Christian Vandendorpe examines how digital media and the Internet have changed the process of reading and writing, significantly altering our approaches toward research and reading, our assumptions about audience and response, and our theories of memory, legibility, and context. Reflecting on the full history of the written word, Vandendorpe provides a clear overview of how materiality makes a difference in the creation and interpretation of texts.

Surveying the conventions of reading and writing that have appeared and disappeared in the Internet's wake, Vandendorpe considers various forms of organization, textual design, the use (and distrust) of illustrations, and styles of reference and annotation. He also examines the novel components of digital texts, including hyperlinks and emoticons, and looks at emergent, collaborative genres such as blogs and wikis, which blur the distinction between author and reader. Looking to the future, reading and writing will continue to evolve based on the current, contested trends of universal digitization and accessibility.

The Material Culture of Writing opens up avenues for understanding writing through scholarship in material culture studies. Contributors to this volume each interrogate an object, set of objects, or writing environment to reveal the sociomaterial contexts from which writing emerges. The artifacts studied are both contemporary and historical, including ink, a Victorian hotel visitors’ book, Moleskine notebooks, museum conservators’ files, an early twentieth-century baby book, and a college campus makerspace. Close study of such artifacts not only enriches understanding of what counts as writing but also offers up the potential for rich current and historical inquiry into writing artifacts and environments.
 
The collection features scholars across the disciplines—such as art, art history, English, museum studies, and writing studies—who work as teachers, historians, museum curators/conservators, and faculty. Each chapter features methods and questions from contributors’ own disciplines while at the same time speaking to writing studies’ interest in writers, writing identity, and writing practice. The authors in this volume also work with a variety of methodologies, including literary analysis, archival research, and qualitative research, providing models for the types of research possible using a material culture studies framework. The collection is organized into three sections—Writing Identity, Writing Work, Writing Genre—each with a contextualizing introduction from the editors that introduces the chapters themselves and imagines possible directions for writing studies research facilitated by material culture studies.
 
The Material Culture of Writing serves as an accessible introduction to work in material culture studies for writing studies scholars, graduate students, and undergraduates, especially as it makes a distinctive contribution to writing studies in its material culture studies approach. Because of the interdisciplinarity of material culture studies and this volume’s contributors, this collection will appeal to a wide range of scholars and readers, including those interested in writing studies, the history of the book, print culture, genre studies, archival methods, and authorship studies.
 
Contributors: Cydney Alexis, Debby Andrews, Diane Ehrenpreis, Keri Epps, Desirée Henderson, Kevin James, Jenny Krichevsky, Anne Mackay, Emilie Merrigan, Laura R. Micciche, Hannah J. Rule, Kate Smith
 
 

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.

In Western thought, the modern period signals a break with stagnant social formations, the advent of a new rationalism, and the emergence of a truly secular order, all in the context of an overarching globalization. In The Twilight of the Literary, Terry Cochran links these developments with the rise of the book as the dominant medium for recording, preserving, and disseminating thought. Consequently, his book explores the role that language plays in elaborating modern self-understanding. It delves into what Cochran calls the "figures of thought" that have been an essential component of modern consciousness in the age of print technology--and questions the relevance of this "print-bound" thinking in a world where print no longer dominates.

Cochran begins by examining major efforts of the eighteenth century that proved decisive for modern conceptions of history, knowledge, and print. After tracing late medieval formulations of vernacular language that proved crucial to print, he analyzes the figures of thought in print culture as they proceed from the idea of the collective spirit (the "people"), an elaboration of modern history. Cochran reconsiders basic texts that, in his analysis, reveal the underpinnings of modernity's formation--from Dante and Machiavelli to Antonio Gramsci and Walter Benjamin. Moving from premodern models for collective language to competing theories of history, his work offers unprecedented insight into the means by which modern consciousness has come to know itself.

Written Voices, Spoken Signs is a stimulating introduction to new perspectives on Homer and other traditional epics. Taking advantage of recent research on language and social exchange, the nine essays in this volume focus on performance and audience reception of oral poetry.

These innovative essays by leading scholars of Homer, oral poetics, and epic invite us to rethink some key concepts for an understanding of traditional epic poetry. Egbert Bakker examines the epic performer's use of time and tense in recounting a past that is alive. Tackling the question of full-length performance of the monumental Iliad, Andrew Ford considers the extent to which the work was perceived as a coherent whole in the archaic age. John Miles Foley addresses questions about spoken signs and the process of reference in epic discourse, and Ahuvia Kahane studies rhythm as a semantic factor in the Homeric performance. Richard Martin suggests a new range of performance functions for the Homeric simile. And Gregory Nagy establishes the importance of one feature of epic language, the ellipsis. These six essays centered on Homer engage with fundamental issues that are addressed by three essays primarily concerned with medieval epic: those by Franz Bäuml on the concept of fact; by Wulf Oesterreicher on types of orality; and by Ursula Schaefer on written and spoken media. In their Introduction the editors highlight the underlying approach and viewpoints of this collaborative volume.