A History of Reading in the West

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Edited by Guglielmo Cavallo and Roger Chartier,

Translated by Lydia G. Cochrane

University of Massachusetts Press

Due/Published September 1999, 488 pages, cloth

ISBN 1558492135

A distinguished group of international contributors analyzes the transformation of reading methods and materials over the ages.

Review

Your eyes are moving across the page (and now the screen) as you silently read this text. This is, of course, the standard way we now read written matter in the West, but it was not always this way. The contributors to this valuable collection examine the changes in the the habits of reading in the West from the Ancient Greeks to today, exploring how texts have been used, comprehended, and appropriated. Needless to say, looming large in these essays is the figure of the reader whose approach to a text as well his community shapes the meaning of the text.

The international group of contributors include: Roger Chartier, Jesper Svenbro, Jacqueline Hamesse, Paul Saenger. Robert Bonfil, Anthony Grafton, Jean-Francois Gilmont, Dominique Julia, Richard Wittmann, Martyn Lyons, Armando Petrucci.

In a review of the book, Natalie Zemon Davis writes, “Who reads, how they read to themselves and others, what they read, where they read, and what difference reading makes -- these are the questions asked and answered, using the best techniques of social and cultural history and literary theory. An immense body of scholarship has been distilled into accessible and beautifully translated essays...[This] volume makes a fascinating voyage."