Reading Practices in Europe — part I (Ancient Greece)
People have not always been reading books in the way they do it now.
These days I am greatly interested in the issues of reading and history of the changes which occurred in the reading practices. How people switched from reading aloud to silent reading? Why reading became popular? When people began to read for pleasure? This post is my first attempt to find answers to these questions. It is the start of a series of posts devoted to the history of reading practices in different epochs of the European history. I will start with specifics of reading in the ancient world and trace the history up until modernity. I am also planning to devote a separate series of posts about the history of reading solely in Russia.
Ancient Greece
(from the end of the III — II millennium BC since the 30th BC)
«Modern reading is a silent, solitary, and rapid activity. Ancient reading was usually oral, either aloud, in groups, or individually, in a muffled voice» [3].
Oral word played an extremely important role in Ancient Greece. Script appeared in Ancient Greece just because people needed to write down epitaphs (gravestone inscriptions), which would provide a new way for the deceased to go down in history. But the first Greek readers read texts aloud, and silent reading seemed ridiculous for them.
Silence for the ancient Greek culture was a synonym for oblivion. The society was confident that it was the oral tradition which was capable of providing the continuous evolution of culture on the basis of memory and human’s voice. The texts were also written without spaces between the words, so reading aloud helped readers understand texts which would have remained dead if not read out loud [1].
«The ancient reader’s success in finding a reasonably appropriate meaning in the text acted as the final control that the task of separation [of the words — P.M.] has been accurately performed» [3].
The absence of spaces between words was increased by ancient syntax, where formal means of grammatical connection between words were omitted and where inflection was used. It means that the familiar word order was constantly violated and it was difficult to group grammatically related words. So the ancient reader did not have any other chance to understand the text expect as to read it out loudly, because overt physical pronunciation of the words helped him to retain phonemes of ambiguous meaning [3].
The thing is, that in the ancient world people did not want like in the modern age to make reading easier and swifter. «Because the advantages that modern readers perceive as accruing from ease of reading were seldom viewed as advantages by the ancients. These include the effective retrieval of information in reference consultation, the ability to read with minimum difficulty a great many technical, logical, and scientific texts, and the greater diffusion of literacy throughout all social strata of the population» [3]. The reading habits of the ancient world, which were mostly oral and rhetorical (both by physiological necessity and because of their taste), were concentrated on a limited and intensely scrutinized set of literary works.
«Because those who read relished the mellifluous metrical and accentual patterns of pronounced text and were not interested in the swift intrusive consultation of books, the absence of interword space in Greek and Latin was not perceived to be an impediment to effective reading, as it would be to the modern reader, who strives to read swiftly» [3].
We learn about the specific of reading practices in ancient Greece mostly not from written evidences which would describe the process of reading, but from the terms which the Greek used for the word «read». There are more than 10 verbs with this meaning in ancient Greek. Analyzing these verbs we can understand the patterns of the ancient reading practices, because they indicate how the process of reading was perceived. It means that the difference in reading practices was enshrined by the language [1].
For example, there was a verb nе́mein, which meant «read out loud» and «distribute something, including yourself among recipients». It means, that the words which were read aloud were addressed not only to the listeners, but also to the reader itself. It is just one of the examples of the verbs which were used in Ancient Greece to specify one of the aspects of the reading process [1].
Other ancient Greek verbs with the meaning of reading also refer to reading aloud. It means, that people of that epoch read not much and with difficulty and it also means, that exactly the sounding word played crucial role in the culture. Moreover, for the concept of reading in ancient Greece the man and his voice were considered to be instruments at the service of the text. Written speech demanded mandatory scoring, it was considered to be not complete by its nature. Until the writing began to sound, it meant not more than just a set of symbols. That is why it was not the reader who was the addresser of the text, but the listener — he was listening to the text which was read to him [1].
The idea that the bigger part of the population should be autonomous and self-motivated readers «was entirely foreign to the elitist literate mentality of the ancient world. For the literate, the reaction to the difficulties of lexical access arising from scriptura continua did not spark the desire to make script easier to decipher, but resulted instead in the delegation of much of the labor of reading and writing to skilled slaves, who acted as professional readers and scribes» [3].
It was the slave who had to read the text not only because it made the perception of the text easier for the receiver, but also because the reader of the text would give his voice for the use of the text, for its service. So it practically meant, that the reader would become the text’s slave. For the Greek culture in which the absence of coercion was considered to be the basic characteristic of a citizen such perception of reading inevitably caused problems. Reading was generally compatible with the role of the citizen, but one needed to be moderate in it in order to remain a free human. The reader should not have identified himself with the role of the reader, if he did not want to be dependent on coercion of another person or of the text.
«Greek literature, at least up to Thucydides*, was intended for public delivery of performance, and from the the early part of the fourth century B.C. on to the end of antiquity, rhetoric was the foundation and eloquence the aim of the educational process. <…> the normal way to read a literary text <…> was out loud, whether before an audience, in the company of friends or alone» [2].
*Thucydides — 5th-century BC Athenian historian and general.
But if we suppose that silent reading did not exict in antiquity at all, there will occur a problem. It is difficult to imagine, that «Didymus* wrote his more than 3,000 volumes and read the countless books on which he based them, pronouncing every syllable out loud [italics mine — P.]» [2]. Moreover, several episodes from ancient Greek fiction indicate that the practice of silent reading after all existed at that time. How the shift from the reading aloud to the silent reading happened then?
*Didymus — an Alexandrian grammarian of the time of Cicero and the emperor Augustus (II — I century BC).
It was the theatre that showed the Greek that there was a different pattern of approaching a text. Reader’s «passivity» was born from the «passivity» of a theater viewer. The viewer in the theatre can not interfere in the text which is displayed on the scene — he can not talk to the heroes, can not foretell them the events which will happen to them. He can only listen to it and watch the play. It is a passive role.
And just like the viewer of a play is passive, so is the reader of the text when he reads it silently. His role is also passive, because like the viewer does not perceive the work of his ears to be the work as such (it is perceived just as passive absorption of information), so is the work of silent reading not perceived as an effort of deciphering the text.
One who reads silently does not need to use his voice to force the written text speak. The written text speaks for itself, while the reader is just listening to what sounds inside him.
That is how through watching theatre plays people in ancient Greece began to understand that there was a different way of interacting with texts, not only reading aloud. Written text is kind of a scene which — according with the logic of a theatre play — assigns the reader the role of a viewer. In Athens at the end of VI B. C. there existed the practice of silent reading already and the practice of interiorisation of the written text. Interiorisation is the process during which outer actions are directed into the internal plan. Interiorisation of the written text means, that from now on text’s location served as a «scene» and the reader played a passive role of a viewer reading silently, while the text was an active «actor».
But still in Ancient Greece silent reading remained a marginal phenomenon. It was practiced only among professionals who devoted themselves to the written texts and who had to read so many texts that they had a demand to do it silently (because it is an easier and faster way of reading). For an average reader reading aloud remained the main reading strategy.
In the Hellenistic period* (from 323 B.C. to 30 B.C.) the book began to play the fundamental role, despite the persistence of some forms of oral transmission of information. Literature was now dependent on the script and the book which helped to create, spread and save texts for the descendants. Alexandrian philologists began to impose on society the idea that the literary work of art could only exist in the written form and that it can only be learnt thanks to the books which keeps it.
*The Hellenistic period — the Ancient Greek word Hellas was recognized as the name for Greece. Hellenistic period encompasses all ancient territories which were under Greek influence, in particular the East after the conquests of Alexander the Great.
That is all about Ancient Greece. The issues of different reading practices and their changes throughout history have really captivated me, so this series of posts will be continued. The next one will be about reading strategies in Ancient Rome!
P.
Literature:
- Cavallo G., Chartier R. Hitoire de la lecture dans le monde occidental. Moscow, 2008. 544 p.
- Knox B. M. W. Silent Reading in Antiquity // Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 9. 1968. P. 421–435.
- Saenger P. The Physiology of Reading. California, 1997. 502 p.
