Byzantine Bibliophilia

For those interested in books as such, the University of Toronto, which just sent me their new catalogue, has two new books of interest. The first is edited by Barbara Rosenwein, Reading the Middle Ages: Sources from Europe, Byzantium, and the Islamic World, Second Edition (U Toronto Press, 2013), 552pp.

About this book we are told:

Covering over one thousand years of history and containing primary source material from the European, Byzantine, and Islamic worlds, Barbara H. Rosenwein's Reading the Middle Ages, Second Edition once again brings the Middle Ages to life. Building on the strengths of the first edition, the second edition contains 40 new readings, including 13 translations commissioned especially for this book, and a stunning new 10-plate color insert entitled "Containing the Holy" that brings together materials from the Western, Byzantine, and Islamic religious traditions. Ancillary materials, including study questions, can be found on the History Matters website

The second is William A. Johnson, Bookrolls and Scribes in Oxyrhynchus (U Toronto Press, 2013), 416pp.

About this book we are told:

Lying now under the sand 300 kilometres south of the coastal metropolis of Alexandria, the town of Oxyrhynchus rose to prominence under Egypt's Hellenistic and Roman rulers. The 1895 British-led excavation revealed little in the way of buildings and other cultural artefacts, but instead yielded a huge random mass of everyday papyri, piled thirty feet deep, including private letters and shopping lists, government circulars, and copies of ancient literature.

The surviving bookrolls - the papyrus rolls with literary texts - have provided a great deal of information on ancient books, ancient readers, and ancient reading. Examining only those texts that survive in full form in medieval manuscripts, William Johnson has analysed over 400 bookrolls to understand the production, use, and aesthetics of the ancient book. His close analysis of formal and conventional features of the bookrolls not only provides detailed information on the bookroll industry - manufacture, design, and format - but also, in turn, suggests some intriguing questions and provisional answers about the ways in which the use and function of the bookroll among ancient readers may differ from modern or medieval practice. Meticulously erudite, this work will be of great importance to all papyrologists, classicists, and literary scholars.

From Scroll to Codex to Book

Any Eastern Christian bibliophile--or any bibliophile for that matter--should be paying attention to Alan Jacobs. If you go here you can read his latest and completely absorbing essay, "Christianity and the Future of the Book," on the cultural implications of moving from biblical scrolls to the codex to the modern book--and possibly beyond, to e-readers and the like. Christians were the first to adopt the codex for four practical and organizational reasons. He ends by reflecting on what it means when many Christians today encounter Scripture not in books but instead de-contextualized and chopped into bits that are projected on large screens in churches:

the obligation to defend the book remains far greater. It is the book, largely as it emerged from the early Christian Church’s understanding of its own Scriptures, that has enabled much of the best that has been thought and said in the past fifteen hundred years. And its key virtues can be preserved, and perhaps even extended, in forms other than the paper codex.

As you can see he does not go on a rant against electronic publishing, but read the whole thing for yourself in The New Atlantis, which often publishes such long and fascinating essays on a variety of culturally important topics.
  
Jacobs is the author of such books as The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction (Oxford UP, 2011, 176pp.) and  A Theology Of Reading: The Hermeneutics Of Love (Westview Press, 2001), 196pp.

About this latter book the publisher tells us

If the whole of the Christian life is to be governed by the “law of love”—the twofold love of God and one’s neighbor—what might it mean to read lovingly? That is the question that drives this unique book. Jacobs pursues this challenging task by alternating largely theoretical, theological chapters—drawing above all on Augustine and Mikhail Bakhtin—with interludes that investigate particular readers (some real, some fictional) in the act of reading. Among the authors considered are Shakespeare, Cervantes, Nabakov, Nicholson Baker, George Eliot, W.H. Auden, and Dickens. The theoretical framework is elaborated in the main chapters, while various counterfeits of or substitutes for genuinely charitable interpretation are considered in the interludes, which progressively close in on that rare creature, the loving reader. Through this doubled method of investigation, Jacobs tries to show how difficult it is to read charitably—even should one wish to, which, of course, few of us do. And precisely because the prospect of reading in such a manner is so offputting, one of the covert goals of the book is to make it seem both more plausible and more attractive.

What is a Book?

The University of Notre Dame Press--which, let's be honest, publishes, as we all know, only the most outstanding of books--will, in March, be bringing out a volume sure to interest all bibliophiles, Eastern Christian and otherwise: Joseph A. Dane, What Is a Book?: The Study of Early Printed Books (UND Press, 2012, 288pp. 

Dane is the author of numerous previous and related works, including: 

• The Myth of Print Culture: Essays on Evidence, Textuality, and Bibliographical Method 
• Out of Sorts: On Typography and Print Culture
• Abstractions of Evidence in the Study of Manuscripts and Early Printed Books.

In What is a Book? the publisher tells us that Dane offers 

an introduction to the study of books produced during the period of the hand press, dating from around 1450 through 1800. Using his own bibliographic interests as a guide, Dane selects illustrative examples primarily from fifteenth-century books, books of particular interest to students of English literature, and books central to the development of Anglo-American bibliography. Part I of What Is a Book? covers the basic procedures of printing and the parts of the physical book—size, paper, type, illustration; Part II treats the history of book-copies—from cataloging conventions and provenance to electronic media and their implications for the study of books. 

Dane begins with the central distinction between a “book-copy”—the particular, individual, physical book—and a “book”—the abstract category that organizes these copies into editions, whereby each copy is interchangeable with any other. Among other issues, Dane addresses such basic questions as: How do students, bibliographers, and collectors discuss these things? And when is it legitimate to generalize on the basis of particular examples? Dane considers each issue in terms of a practical example or question a reader might confront: How do you identify books on the basis of typography? What is the status of paper evidence? How are the various elements on the page defined? What are the implications of the images available in an online database? And, significantly, how does a scholar’s personal experience with books challenge or conform to the standard language of book history and bibliography? Dane’s accessible and lively tour of the field is a useful guide for all students of book history, from the beginner to the specialist.

Then, the following month, the University of Toronto Press will be bringing out a book that looks at the process of writing, editing, and publishing: Darcy Cullen, ed., Editors, Scholars, and the Social Text. 

About this book the publisher tells us:

An academic book is much more than paper and ink, pixels and electrons. A dynamic social network of authors, editors, typesetters, proofreaders, indexers, printers, and marketers must work together to turn a manuscript into a book. Editors, Scholars, and the Social Text explores the theories and practices of editing, the processes of production and reproduction, and the relationships between authors and texts, as well as manuscripts and books. By bringing together academic experts and experienced practitioners, including editorial specialists, scholarly publishing professionals, and designers, Editors, Scholars, and the Social Text offers indispensable insight into the past and future of academic communication.

In Praise of Reading

While looking for something else tonight on the Oxford UP website, I came across a new book by Alan Jacobs that should be of interest to all bibliophiles: The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction.

About this book, the publisher tells us:

In recent years, cultural commentators have sounded the alarm about the dire state of reading in America. Americans are not reading enough, they say, or reading the right books, in the right way.  In this book, Alan Jacobs argues that, contrary to the doomsayers, reading is alive and well in America. There are millions of devoted readers supporting hundreds of enormous bookstores and online booksellers. Oprah's Book Club is hugely influential, and a recent NEA survey reveals an actual uptick in the reading of literary fiction. Jacobs's interactions with his students and the readers of his own books, however, suggest that many readers lack confidence; they wonder whether they are reading well, with proper focus and attentiveness, with due discretion and discernment. Many have absorbed the puritanical message that reading is, first and foremost, good for you--the intellectual equivalent of eating your Brussels sprouts. For such people, indeed for all readers, Jacobs offers some simple, powerful, and much needed advice: read at whim, read what gives you delight, and do so without shame, whether it be Stephen King or the King James Version of the Bible. In contrast to the more methodical approach of Mortimer Adler's classic How to Read a Book (1940), Jacobs offers an insightful, accessible, and playfully irreverent guide for aspiring readers. Each chapter focuses on one aspect of approaching literary fiction, poetry, or nonfiction, and the book explores everything from the invention of silent reading, reading responsively, rereading, and reading on electronic devices.  Invitingly written, with equal measures of wit and erudition, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction will appeal to all readers, whether they be novices looking for direction or old hands seeking to recapture the pleasures of reading they first experienced as children.

Books in Russia

Though reports of the future of the book as such have, for more than a decade, been pessimistic, there is no denying the importance of the book in shaping past history. Along comes a new book to demonstrate just that: Miranda Remnek, ed., The Space of the Book: Print Culture in the Russian Social Imagination (University of Toronto Press, 2011), 320pp.

About this book, the publisher tells us:

From the Enlightenment to the Internet age, reading practices in Russia have been shaped by factors such as artistic and cultural trends, economics, and state scrutiny. The Space of the Book provides the most comprehensive overview to date of salient topics in Russian print culture, in a volume that promises to become the leading introduction to current research in the field.

This collection features illustrated essays by premier Russian historians, literature specialists, and innovative younger scholars on topics including the influence of commerce, diversifying readerships, education and rural libraries, reception theory, and censorship. Miranda Remnek begins each chapter with an introduction on digital applications. Skilfully connecting multidisciplinary sources along broad historical continuum, The Space of the Book will be a valuable resource as the study of Russian print culture takes on new directions in a digitized world.

Though the whole volume looks fascinating, two chapters in particular may be of especial interest:

6. Reading Between the (Confessional) Lines: The Intersection of Old Believer Manuscript Books and Images with Print Cultures of Late Imperial Russia / by Kevin M. Kain (University of Wisconsin – Green Bay

7. The Moral Self in Russia’s Literary and Visual Cultures: The Late Imperial Era and Beyond / by Jeffrey P. Brooks (Johns Hopkins University)