Reading, Writing, and Bookish Circles in the Ancient Mediterranean (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781350265066)

By integrating conversations across disciplines, especially focusing on classical studies and Jewish and Christian studies, this volume addresses several imbalances in scholarship on reading and textual activity in the ancient Mediterranean. Contributors intentionally place Jewish, Christian, Roman, Greek and other reading circles back into their encompassing historical context, avoiding subdivisions along modern subject lines, divisions still bearing marks of cultural and ideological interests.

In their examination, contributors avoid dwelling upon traditional methodological debates over orality vs. literacy and social classifications of literacy, instead turning their attention to the social-historical: groups of people, circles and networks, strata and class, scribal culture, material culture, epigraphic and papyrological evidence, functions and types of literacy and the social relationships that all of these entail. Overall, the volume contributes to an emerging and important interdisciplinary collaboration between specialists in ancient literacy, encouraging future discussion between two currently divided fields.

Author: Jonathan D. H. Norton
ISBN-10: 1350265063
ISBN-13: 9781350265066
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Language: English
Published: 02/22/2024
Pages: 272
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.84lbs
Size: 9.21h x 6.14w x 0.56d