On double reading (or silent vs. aural-vocal) I forgot to
mention John 7:53-8:11, the pericope of the woman taken in
adultery (the canonicity of which has proved
debatable--the incident is known to early tradition, but
not to the earliest mss.). Jesus on occasion speaks in
parables that are also riddles, but this seems to be the
one case in which he resorts to writing--writing what may
be a riddle:
Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground
[AV adds: "as though he heard them not"--his questioners'
and their enquiry]. And as they continued to ask him
[about how to judge & dispose of the sinful woman under
Mosaic criminal law], he stood up and said to them, "let
him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a
stone at her." And once more he bent down and wrote with
his finger on the ground. But when they heard it [akouo],
[AV adds: "being convicted by their own conscience"], they
went away, ... (RSV Jn. 8:6-9)
Neither dumb nor illiterate, the scribes and Pharisees
here nonetheless seem at first neither to readily
comprehend what Jesus has written, nor to really hear what
he has said or is saying. After he re-writes his message,
they then appear to get their hearing back, as if they now
heard his handwriting, or as if they heard what he said
only after they had read it, or--more to the point in view
of the present discussion--read it aloud, or given it
audition.
On Fri, 13 Apr 2012 08:11:59 -0400
Hannibal Hamlin <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Wonderful and useful responses from everyone. Thank you.
>Clearly, silent
> reading was known and practiced long before the 18th c.,
>though, as some of
> you point out, many of these anecdotes indicate the
>exceptionality of the
> practice. Probably one can't go much further in
>determining the general
> practice, given the anecdotal nature of the evidence. I
>wonder about the
> arguments based on the nature of early mss. It's
>difficult to say
> conclusively how certain textual phenomena were
>perceived by those who were
> used only to them, rather than to our own conventions
>(caps, spaces, etc.).
> I think of arguments about Roman versus Black Letter
>type, for instance.
> There used to be an assumption that the Roman type
>Geneva Bibles were an
> advanced in terms of accessibility, since that font was
>so much easier to
> read. But this is only our own bias. It seems, in fact,
>that in
> sixteenth-century England it was actually the Black
>Letter that was
> familiar and more accessible.
>
> As for Julia's suggestions, I'm not sure about the
>argument re. devotional
> reading. In the Book of Common Prayer, any prayers,
>responses, and such to
> be read by the congregation would have been read aloud,
>and boldly (or at
> least not muttered). There were prayers and other
>liturgical bits read by
> the priest, and anyone with a copy of the BCP could
>follow along, and
> perhaps mutter to him- or herself, but did they? I'm
>guessing not, based on
> practice today. Back then, too, many (most?) in the
>congregation would not
> have had a copy to follow, since churches did not
>provide service books for
> congregants to the extent they do today. For many, the
>liturgy must have
> been a purely oral/aural experience.
>
> I love Jim's suggestion of double-reading. Food for
>thought.
>
> Perhaps the better question than, "when did silent
>reading begin?", is when
> did reading aloud stop? Never, of course. I have a
>friend, a senior
> scholar, who regularly reads novels of an evening
>together with his wife,
> aloud. I remember a friend from earlier years telling me
>of his family
> reading Dickens together, a practice that must have been
>a hangover from
> the nineteenth century. But these are once again
>anecdotes of exceptional
> behaviour. Modern reading rooms are, as you say, silent
>(except for the
> clacking of laptop keyboards, the contemporary version
>of Jim's
> typewriters). Does anyone read aloud from a computer
>screen?
>
> Thanks again.
>
> Hannibal
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 6:17 AM, Julia Staykova
><[log in to unmask]>wrote:
>
>> In *The House of Fame*, the eagle describes Chaucer as a
>>silent reader:
>>
>> Thou goost home to thy house anoon,
>> And, also dombe as any stoon,
>> Thou sittest at another booke (II: 655-7)
>>
>> The caricature spirit of the larger passage implies that
>>'sitting dumb as
>> a stone' at a book was unusual. When Augustine describes
>>in the Confessions
>> VI, 3 that Ambrose was reading without moving his lips,
>>he views it as
>> highly peculiar. He conjectures that Amrbose was trying
>>to avoid intrusions
>> from students, always hovering around his room, asking
>>him to interpret
>> what he was reading. He was the imperial rhetorician of
>>Milan at the time
>> (384 AD), and himself a practiced reader.
>>
>> Another anecdote from Plutarch is about Alexander, who
>>read a letter from
>> his mother silently, to the bewilderment of his
>>soldiers. However, this,
>> like Caesar reading a letter from Cato's sister, are in
>>the context of
>> exception. Perhaps those few who could read silently did
>>it to avoid being
>> overheard?
>>
>> In the Middle Ages, for as long as the practice of
>>*scriptura continua *lasted,
>> silent reading must have been unusual: imagine reading
>>aloud when all the
>> words are collapsed into one... In early modernity, the
>>statistical
>> majority of reading must have been devotional. Intoning
>>the words from the
>> page, or at least muttering to oneself, makes better
>>sense than reading
>> psalms and prayers in complete silence as a gesture of
>>devotion.
>>
>> Julia
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Hannibal Hamlin
> Associate Professor of English
> Editor, *Reformation*
> Co-curator, *Manifold Greatness: The Creation and
>Afterlife of the King
> James Bible*
> http://www.manifoldgreatness.org/
> The Ohio State University
> 164 West 17th Ave., 421 Denney Hall
> Columbus, OH 43210-1340
> [log in to unmask]
> [log in to unmask]
[log in to unmask]
James Nohrnberg
Dept. of English, Bryan Hall 219
Univ. of Virginia
P.O Box 400121
Charlottesville, VA 22904-4121
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