the autonomy of textual meaning: thus, an altered practice and under-
standing of reading and interpretation, rather than of writing, was respon-
sible at that time for changing the relationship between what was said to
what was meant by it.
These approaches point to an understanding of reading not as a simple,
isolated act but as a set of cultural practices: in the words of Johnson
2000: 603 ‘‘reading is not simply the cognitive process[ing] by the indi-
vidual of the ‘technology’ of writing, but ratherthe negotiated construction
of meaning within a particular sociocultural context.’’ We can and perhaps
should compare the role ofmousikeas an ‘‘endlessly variegated, rich set of
cultural practices’’ that ‘‘lies at the very heart of,’’ and in a sense defines,
‘‘culture’’ in Greece (Murray and Wilson [eds.] 2004: 1,Music and the
Muses). Such a perspective is relevant to the very concepts of literate
culture, of literary culture, and of literature. No honest attempt can be
made in this essay to come to terms with the flood of publications on the
literary cultures, cultural identities, and cultural histories of the Greek
and Roman worlds: for a selective listing of writings in these areas that
have a bearing on literacy, the reader may consult the rubric ‘‘Literate/
Literary Culture’’ in the bibliographical index. Some illustrative examples
are mentioned here. Of scholarship with a particular focus on the social
relationships of writers, and on writers and intellectuals in society, one
may point to work on the relations of the poet with people of power
(White 1993,Promised Verse, on Augustan poets; Nauta 2002,Poetry
for Patrons, on Martial and Statius); and on the intellectual life of
public figures and the role of intellectuals in public life (N. Lewis 1981,
Dillon 2002, Reay 2005). In contrast to elite literature and literary prac-
tices, there arose a ‘‘literature of consumption’’ produced for people
sufficiently literate to enjoy entertainment and escapist literature (Pecere
and Stramaglia [eds.] 1996,La letteratura di consumo).
Scholarship exploring the relationship between literate and oral prac-
tices and memory includes both work with a highly theoretical focus
(Connerton 1989,How Societies Remember) and work focusing on the
role of memory, remembering, and recording (Rossi [ed.] 1988, La
memoria del sapere, Small 1997,Wax Tablets of the Mind, Corbier 2006,
Donner avoir, donner a lire, Rodrı ́guezMayorgas 2007,La memoria de
Roma; cf. above on archives and below on ancient scholarship and tech-
nical writing) and on techniques of memory training in antiquity (for an
older study see Blum 1969, Die antike Mnemotechnik; Pelliccia 2003
argues in detail against ‘‘the unsupported dogma that the culture [of the
late archaic and classical periods] possessed no concept or practice of
verbatim accuracy in the reproduction of poetic texts’’). There are
book-length studies of communication in Greece (Coulet 1996,Commu-
niquer en Gre`ce ancienne, Nieddu 2004,La scrittura ‘‘madre delle muse’’)
and Rome (Achard 1991,La communication a` Rome). The power dynam-
ics in which literacy is implicated have been variously tackled by Bowman
and Woolf (eds.) 1994a,Literacy and Power in the Ancient World; Habinek
Literacy Studies in Classics 339