Ancient Literacies

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nature of the questions raised along these lines (see Goldhill, Habinek,


Parker) are a far remove from the likes of Eric Havelock and Walter Ong.


What we find instead is an intense interest in particulars. In what may


be taken as aleitmotivof our current generation of scholarship, local


variation is found to trump generalizing tendencies. Where generalities


are put forward, these tend to be tentative, with deep alertness to the


probability of real, essential exceptions among individual examples. Even


an overarching cognitive theory (Olson) is grounded in recognition of


different types of readers, of real exceptions, that is, to the working


theoretical principle. It is this urgent attention to local variation that led


us to take over the plural of Thomas’s essay,Ancient Literacies, for the title


of this book.


There are other striking tendencies, again consistent with some dom-


inant themes of our scholarly era. Texts, reading, and writing are seldom


considered in and of themselves. Books are taken as symbolic material-


ities, having strong social valuation. Reading and writing are events, to be


analyzed in broad and deep context, carrying social and cultural valuation,


embedded in particular institutions or communities. Several themes re-
peat themselves, with variation, time and again: the sociology of literacy;


the importance of deep contextualization; the necessity to see literacy as


an integrative aspect within a larger sociocultural whole. It is this strong


set of themes that conditioned our subtitle to this volume,The Culture of


Reading in Greece and Rome.


As said at the outset, this volume speaks, intentionally, with disparate


voices. And yet within the whole one can, I think, sense a strong move-


ment away from earlier work in ancient literacy, work in our view gone


stagnant, toward a rich field of new inquiries that frame books, readers,


and reading more clearly and interestingly within study of the culture that


produced them.


BIBLIOGRAPHY


Goody, J. 1977.The Domestication of the Savage Mind. Cambridge.
and I. Watt. 1963. ‘‘The Consequences of Literacy.’’Comparative Studies in
Society and History5: 304 45. Republished inLiteracy in Traditional Societies,
ed. J. Goody (Cambridge, 1968), 27 68.
Grillo, R. D. 1989.Dominant Languages: Language and Hierarchy in Britain and
France. Cambridge.
Harris, William V. 1989.Ancient Literacy. Cambridge, Mass.
Havelock, Eric A. 1963.Preface to Plato. Cambridge.


. 1986.The Muse Learns to Write: Reflections on Orality and Literacy from
Antiquity to the Present. New Haven.
Heath, Shirley Brice. 1982. ‘‘What No Bedtime Story Means: Narrative Skills at
Home and School.’’Language in Society11: 49 76.
Humphrey, J. H., ed. 1991.Literacy in the Roman World. Journal of Roman
Archaeology, Supplementary Series 3. Journal of Roman Archaeology 19.
Ann Arbor.


Introduction 9

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