Literacy and Power in the Ancient World PDF Download

Author: Alan K. Bowman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521587365
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264

View

Book Description
This collection attempts to set the study of literacy in the ancient world in the wider contexts of the debates among anthropologists over the impact of writing on society.

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 249

View

Book Description

Author: William V. Harris
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674033818
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 410

View

Book Description
The subject of this study is in any case the literacy of the Greeks and Romans from the time when the former were first provably able to write a non-syllabic script, in the eighth century B.C., until the fifth century A.D.

Author: Hella Eckardt
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108418058
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 293

View

Book Description
This book focuses on the material practice of ancient literacy through a contextual examination of Roman writing equipment.

Author: Anne Kolb
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110592029
Category : History
Languages : de
Pages : 436

View

Book Description
This volume explores the significance of literacy for everyday life in the ancient world. It focuses on the use of writing and written materials, the circumstances of their use, and different types of users. The broad geographic and chronologic frame of reference includes many kinds of written materials, from Pharaonic Egypt and ancient China through the early middle ages, yet a focus is placed on the Roman Empire.

Author: Alberto Manguel
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0698178971
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 384

View

Book Description
At one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of a book—that string of confused, alien ciphers—shivered into meaning, and at that moment, whole universes opened. You became, irrevocably, a reader. Noted essayist and editor Alberto Manguel moves from this essential moment to explore the six-thousand-year-old conversation between words and that hero without whom the book would be a lifeless object: the reader. Manguel brilliantly covers reading as seduction, as rebellion, and as obsession and goes on to trace the quirky and fascinating history of the reader’s progress from clay tablet to scroll, codex to CD-ROM.

Author: Teresa Morgan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521584661
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 396

View

Book Description
This book offers an assessment of the content, structures and significance of education in Greek and Roman society. Drawing on a wide range of evidence, including the first systematic comparison of literary sources with the papyri from Graeco-Roman Egypt, Teresa Morgan shows how education developed from a loose repertoire of practices in classical Greece into a coherent system spanning the Hellenistic and Roman worlds. She examines the teaching of literature, grammar and rhetoric across a range of social groups and proposes a model of how the system was able both to maintain its coherence and to accommodate pupils' widely different backgrounds, needs and expectations. In addition Dr Morgan explores Hellenistic and Roman theories of cognitive development, showing how educationalists claimed to turn the raw material of humanity into good citizens and leaders of society.

Author: Frank Furedi
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472914783
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 273

View

Book Description
Here is a natural companion to Christopher Booker`s bestselling The Seven Basic Plots (Continuum) and John Gross`s seminal study The Rise and Fall of the Man of Letters (Weidenfeld and Nicolson). The most eminent cultural and social historian Frank Furedi presents an eclectic and entirely original history of reading. The very act of reading and the choice of reading material endow individuals with an identity that possesses great symbolic significance. Already in ancient Rome, Cicero was busy drawing up a hierarchy of different types of readers. Since that time people have been divided into a variety of categories- literates and illiterates, intensive and extensive readers, or vulgo and discreet readers. In the 19th Century, accomplished readers were praised as `men of letters` while their moral opposites were described as `unlettered`. Today distinctions are made between cultural and instrumental readers and scorn is communicated towards the infamous `tabloid reader`. The purpose of this book is to explore the changing meanings attributed to the act of reading. Although it has an historical perspective, the book`s focus is very much on the culture of reading that prevails in the 21st Century. There are numerous texts on the history of literacy (Hoggart), yet there is no publication devoted to the the history of readers and their relationship with wider culture and society. It is thus a fascinating insight into understanding the post-Gutenberg debates about literacy in a multimedia environment with such a strong emphasis on the absorption of information. Taking a cue from George Steiner, Furedi argues vigorously for the restoration of the art of reading- every bit as important as the art of writing.

Author: Irene Vallejo
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0593318897
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 465

View

Book Description
A rich exploration of the importance of books and libraries in the ancient world that highlights how humanity’s obsession with the printed word has echoed throughout the ages • “Accessible and entertaining.” —The Wall Street Journal Long before books were mass-produced, scrolls hand copied on reeds pulled from the Nile were the treasures of the ancient world. Emperors and Pharaohs were so determined to possess them that they dispatched emissaries to the edges of earth to bring them back. When Mark Antony wanted to impress Cleopatra, he knew that gold and priceless jewels would mean nothing to her. So, what did her give her? Books for her library—two hundred thousand, in fact. The long and eventful history of the written word shows that books have always been and will always be a precious—and precarious—vehicle for civilization. Papyrus is the story of the book’s journey from oral tradition to scrolls to codices, and how that transition laid the very foundation of Western culture. Award-winning author Irene Vallejo evokes the great mosaic of literature in the ancient world from Greece’s itinerant bards to Rome’s multimillionaire philosophers, from opportunistic forgers to cruel teachers, erudite librarians to defiant women, all the while illuminating how ancient ideas about education, censorship, authority, and identity still resonate today. Crucially, Vallejo also draws connections to our own time, from the library in war-torn Sarajevo to Oxford’s underground labyrinth, underscoring how words have persisted as our most valuable creations. Through nimble interpretations of the classics, playful and moving anecdotes about her own encounters with the written word, and fascinating stories from history, Vallejo weaves a marvelous tapestry of Western culture’s foundations and identifies the humanist values that helped make us who we are today. At its heart a spirited love letter to language itself, Papyrus takes readers on a journey across the centuries to discover how a simple reed grown along the banks of the Nile would give birth to a rich and cherished culture.

Author: Jeffrey D. Wilhelm
Publisher: Teachers College Press
ISBN: 0807770825
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 273

View

Book Description
This book lays out a new vision for the teaching of English, building on themes central to Wilhelm's influential "You Gotta BE The Book." With portraits of teachers and students, as well as practical strategies and advice, they provide a roadmap to educational transformation far beyond the field of English. --from publisher description