Jacob 1996,Le pouvoir des bibliothe`ques: la me ́moire des livres en Occident;
Gratien and Hanoun 1997,Lire l’e ́crit: textes, archives, bibliothe`ques dans
l’antiquite ́; Cavallo 1998,Le biblioteche nel mondo antico e medievale;
Casson 2001, Libraries in the Ancient World;Hoepfner 2002, Antike
Bibliotheken. More specialized studies are Pesando 1994,Libri e biblioteche
(in Rome); Sider 2005,The Library of the Villa dei Papiri at Herculaneum;
Dix and Houston 2006, ‘‘Public Libraries in the City of Rome.’’ The fate
of the library of Alexandria exercises a particular fascination over biblio-
philes: Canfora 1986,La biblioteca scomparsa¼ 1989 The Vanished Li-
brary, is a novel written with a vivid historical imagination; on this topic
see also El-Abbadi 1992 (1st ed. 1990),Life and Fate of the Ancient Library
of Alexandria. Scholars have striven to create a more definite outline or to
establish significant details of how libraries originated and functioned,
what resources they may have contained, and how they may have been
used in other places throughout the ancient world (to list a limited
number of examples—Carthage: Baurain 1992; Roman Africa: Tlili
2000; Pergamon: Mielsch 1995, Wolter von dem Knesebeck 1995;
Rome/Italy: Fedeli 1988, Canfora 1993, Strocka 1993, Meneghini 2002,
Houston 2002, 2004). Papyrological and material evidence for personal
collections of books open up further intriguing areas of inquiry (e.g.,
Longo Auricchio and Capasso 1987, Bagnall 1992, Funghi and Messeri
Savorelli 1992, Puglia 1996, 1998, Otranto 2000, Houston 2007).
Readers’ interactions with books are examined from a material perspec-
tive by, for example, McNamee 2001, 2007 (on readers’ annotations in
literary papyri), and Johnson 2005 (on readers’ marks in the Posidippus
epigram collection).
Broader questions in the realm of literacy studies concern the cultural
aspects of reading. To attain perspective on positions classical scholars of
the last century have taken on ancient reading, we may mention the
controversy—by now largely moribund—about reading aloud. An argu-
ment that readers almost always read aloud, and that silent reading was
marked and unusual in antiquity, was first put forth emphatically in the
earlier part of the twentieth century (Balogh 1927; this view was largely
demolished by Knox 1968 but has been marvelously tenacious; it was
revived by Saenger 1997 in the context of medieval reading and writing;
for bibliography and analysis of the issues see Johnson 2000). Recent work
on reading, writing, and oral tradition—which promises to provoke con-
tinuing and productive discussion—has challenged ‘‘the static definitions
of oral and literate as mutually exclusive modes of creation’’ (as formu-
lated by Yamagata 2001, reviewing Mackay 1999,Signs of Orality;Tho-
mas 1989 has already been mentioned; Worthington [ed.] 1996,Voice
into Text) and has stressed the role of oral practices even within the literate
culture of Rome (Vogt-Spira [ed.] 1990,Strukturen der Mu ̈ndlichkeit in
der ro ̈mischen Literatur;Benz 2001 [ed.],Die ro ̈mische Literatur zwischen
Mu ̈ndlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit; Habinek 2005,The World of Roman
Song). And although Horsfall 2003,The Culture of the Roman Plebs, ‘‘is
Literacy Studies in Classics 337