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A Gallery of Reading
Guided by Nicholas Hoffman
We may take for granted that our ways of reading in the modern world have remained constant and unchanged for centuries. However, how we read—how we use our senses to engage with texts to arrive at a meaningful experience—has evolved over time. The evolution of reading processes is significant for a course like 2201, which will introduce you to literature over a 1,000-year timespan. Indeed, we hope this course will allow you to engage with a diverse cross-section of literature from the premodern world while also considering the various ways premodern audiences engaged with that literature—silently, orally, aurally, visually, etc.
The gallery below offers several juxtapositions of reading practices from the 8th century up to now. You will notice some key differences, such as reading practices that have fallen out of favor in modern times. You will also notice how premodern reading practices and concerns have survived into the digital age of literacy that we live in today. When looking at a piece of historical literature, we often have to “fill in the blanks” when it comes to reading practice; the texts you will be reading this semester do not come with explicit instructions on how to read them. We hope you will keep this list of reading possibilities in mind as we make our way through the bundles that follow. Draw connections, use your imagination, and ruminate on the diverse ways that premodern audiences “read” literature. Ultimately, throughout this course we will question how we may most effectively “read” this literature today!
Reading, Alone
A 1775 portrait of the prolific English writer, Samuel Johnson (1709–1784), furtively reading. Johnson was also a lexicographer and compiled the Dictionary of the English Language, a benchmark reference text even today. You may already recognize this image, since it achieved meme-fame back in 2012. Frequently captioned “DAFUQ DID I JUST READ,” this portrait of Johnson actually captures Johnson’s disability; he was extremely nearsighted. He managed to burn many of his wigs on one side, as he leaned in a bit too closely to his reading candles. When we think of “reading,” this is usually it—silent, solitary (and perhaps a bit distressing depending on the subject matter!).This miniature, taken from a 14th-century manuscript of the Roman de la Rose (Romance of the Rose), may lead us to believe that earlier reading and writing practices were similar to Johnson’s. Here the author sits at a dais, silently at work on his manuscript. Yet, the readings in the bundles that follow will show how diverse medieval reading practices actually were. Reading was predominantly communal in the centuries before the printing press (and indeed after printed books became widely available). Texts were seldom sequestered to a private book shelf. Instead, books were shared within households, read aloud over meals, and openly discussed in public spaces.
Reading, Aloud
Have you ever been to a poetry slam? An open-mic night? I like to think that this was the format preferred by many of our premodern writers and readers. Listening to texts was the norm. Listening allowed access to histories, romances, poetry, even novels, for those without physical access to books, which could be precious commodities. Not to mention, open-mic readings allow for improvisation, drama, and unique retellings of the same texts depending on the contexts, the staging, and the readers themselves.This is the frontispiece to Geoffrey Chaucer’s poem Troylus and Criseyde (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 61). You will become more acquainted with Chaucer’s complex life, legacy, and work later in the course. What is important to note here is how Chaucer is depicted: standing at a podium in the foreground, reading to a crowd of aristocratic readers. The frontispiece captures the premodern fascination with spoken literature and the performance of narratives. At the same time, it raises questions about the relationship between the author and audience. Imagine writing something today and having to read it aloud to your patrons—i.e., the powerful people that bankrolled that writing project! These author-audience relationships were bound to greatly influence the content of writing, but don’t be fooled: authors found creative ways to add humor and veiled criticisms to even the most “publicly authorized” works (and Chaucer was no exception)!Anicet Charles Gabriel Lemonnier, First reading in 1755 of Voltaire’s L’Orphelin de la Chine in the room of Madame Geoffrin (1812). Flash forward three centuries, and here we see the Enlightenment author and critic Voltaire (1694–1778) reading aloud in the drawing room of Marie Thérèse Rodet Geoffrin, one of the most influential patrons and catalysts of the French Enlightenment. Voltaire is reading his play, which was ultimately based on a 13th-century work by Ji Junxiang (紀君祥). Though L’Orphelin de la Chine was written for the stage, premodern audiences sought out and accommodated creative readings and re-tellings. Notice Voltaire, seated with a copy of the play in-hand. His posture and audience engagement seem to elicit mixed responses; some audience members are active listeners, others may be letting their minds wander, and still some are engaged in side discussions as Voltaire reads.
Touch Screens
No doubt about it, how we engage with media today, particularly through the use of assistive technology such as smart phones, tablets, and laptops, has vastly altered the human relationship to text. We have grown accustomed to being able to alter text, scroll, annotate, copy, share, and zoom, all with our fingertips. Yet, that doesn’t mean premodern writers and annotators didn’t have similar ideas about the accessibility of their writing!In this image, we can see the marginal annotations of a 15th-century reader that have survived in one manuscript (University of St Andrews Library, classmark Typ NL.A85JT). This “marginalia” will be covered in later bundles, but suffice it to say: premodern books are full of scribbles, notes, translations, catch-words, and other “glosses” that assisted reading. Here specifically we see an example of a “manicule” (or a “small hand”), pointing toward a portion of text that the reader found important. In other words, the annotator imagined touching or tapping on a particular piece of text as they made their way through the manuscript, much like bookmarking a page in your browser or highlighting some text on your iPad.
Social Networks
Text connects people, across space as well as time. It’s difficult to escape the orbit of social media nowadays, and despite criticisms against its invasive presence in every corner of our lives, it nonetheless provides an outlet for engaging with others. Much of our daily reading revolves around this social media correspondence. Though our premodern writers didn’t have instant messaging or places to post pictures of their brunch, that doesn’t mean they weren’t thinking of ways to best keep in touch and share their experiences.Above is a Latin letter from the 11th century (Beromünster, Stiftskirche St. Michael, Epistolar, f. 47v). At first glance it may appear totally different from a text message among friends or a Facebook post. On further inspection, you may be surprised! Do you see the dashes above many of the words? These dashes are actually special annotations found across medieval manuscripts, signaling a word has been shortened. Words have been shortened to economize space, just like our modern, digital language has found creative ways of abridging our thoughts. Just as we may struggle to adapt our thoughts to a 280-character Tweet, our premodern authors tried to maximize space and make for quick reading. Another interesting aspect of premodern letter writing (also called “epistolary prose”) was its public quality. Though we may write a post today that is predominantly directed toward our immediate social circles, much digital writing remains publicly accessible. So too were premodern letters, frequently disseminated as wider reading and collected in anthologies. Stay tuned for more excerpts of epistolary writing from across the centuries!
Any fans of comics or manga out there? Consider how we read graphic novels and other textual-visual art-forms: our eyes identify and follow a sequence to formulate a plot, colors set mood, various frames create the experience of moving images, and text stands in for dialogue while supplementing the visual details in myriad ways. The graphic novel is certainly a modern fascination, but its narrative strategies and ability to capture an audience’s attention predate the Marvel comic books to which we’ve become so attached.Imagine all the ways of “reading” this stained glass window from Chartres Cathedral. How would you go about finding meaning in the glass? You would likely need to call upon your skills as a comic reader to best tackle such a text. Words and images captured in premodern multimedia—vellum, paper, glass, metal, and stone—required similar skills and creativity.
Tagging the Landscape
The whole world is a canvas for the most intrepid writers and artists. Graffiti has an ancient history and ultimately reflects the human desire to embed text and image onto the world around us. Though we are most accustomed to seeing this textual art reflected in the modern cityscape, premodern authors and artists (many nameless) encoded their messages on surfaces other than parchment and paper, such as metal, pottery, cloth, stone, and wood.An image of a 15th-century graffito surviving in St Edmund’s, Norfolk. Though time has worn much of it away, the English landscape is still peppered with visual and textual echoes of the premodern past. This example resembles the script found in other 15th-century manuscripts, but earlier graffiti art often used the runic alphabet. For example, when 9th-century Vikings made their way to Constantinople, they left their mark on the cityscape by “tagging” the Hagia Sophia. Later examples of medieval graffiti can be found across churches, carved into pews and walls, and would have been visible to our later authors as well!
