Ancient Literacy

Harris, William V.

doi:10.2307/j.ctvk12q35

Cited by 36 publications

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“…The concept referred to by the ancient Greek word agrammatos (and Latin illitteratus ) is vague, and can be translated as both ‘incapable of reading and writing’ and ‘uncultured’ (Harris, ). Aristotle (see, for example, Harris, ) even goes so far as to use agrammatos to mean animals that are unable to articulate sounds.…”

Section: Conceptions Of Literacy and Being Literatementioning

confidence: 99%

‘Do I have to spell it out?’ Dyslexia, Lexism, and an object of comparison

Collinson¹

2018

British J Special Edu

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In this article I mount an attack on the problematic conceptions of literacy that lie behind the Standards and Testing Agency's 2015 Interim Teacher Assessment Frameworks at the End of Key Stage 2 and the Key Stage 2 English Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling Tests. I employ an object of comparison (a philosophical method), for attitudes towards literacy and dyslexics. I challenge current conceptions of the Othering of, and discrimination against, dyslexics. I argue for the concept of ‘Lexism’ as an alternative explanatory account for the existence of dyslexics.

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Section: Conceptions Of Literacy and Being Literatementioning

confidence: 99%

‘Do I have to spell it out?’ Dyslexia, Lexism, and an object of comparison

Collinson¹

2018

British J Special Edu

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“…While interpretation that does not give access to the whole inscription might be seen as less true to the ancient object, paradoxically it can offer a form of authenticity by reproducing what must have been a common experience in the ancient worldthe inability to read a text. Even in their original contexts, the texts of Latin inscriptions would not have been accessible to all, given limited levels of literacy at the time (Harris 1991). Instead, inscriptions originally derived meaning from their physical materiality as much as from their textual content (Corbier 2006) and there is much to be said for museums acknowledging the different levels of literacy in the ancient world and exploring how inscriptions might make an impression through factors like scale, colour, and imagery.…”

Section: Overcoming Unreadabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Breaking through the language barrier – bringing ‘dead’ languages to life through sensory and narrative engagement

Baker

Cooley

2018

Museum Management and Curatorship

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Ancient inscriptions can be difficult to understand and off-putting to museum audiences, but they are packed with personal stories and vivid information about the people who made them. This article argues that overcoming the language barrier presented by these objects can offer a deep sense of engagement with the ancient world and explores possible ways of achieving this. It looks at examples of effective approaches from a range of European museums with a particular emphasis on bringing out the sensory, social, and narrative dimensions of these objects. It argues that inscriptions can change the way that museum visitors view the ancient world and empower them to interpret the past for themselves in new and creative ways.

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“…As William Harris once noted, 'Roman cities...were full of things to read'. 4 This proliferation of public texts under the Roman Empire has made it the traditional centre of the study of ancient epigraphy, a field which has recently seen a resurgence of critical interest. Scholars have provided a comprehensive yet nuanced account of the writing culture of the Romans-a culture which has been seen to encompass everything from the formal inscriptions in stone or metal commissioned by the political elite to the popular verses scratched on statues by a disgruntled populace.…”

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confidence: 99%

Between Epigraph and Epigram: Pompeian Wall Writing and the Latin Literary Tradition

Milnor

2011

Ramus

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It has become a scholarly commonplace to remark that the ancient Roman city had, at least after the time of Augustus, a wide, varied, and almost omni-present regime of writing in public. This regime included texts of many different types, commercial, political, dedicatory; written with charcoal, paint, stylus or chisel; on stone, wood, plaster and mortar; on private houses, public monuments, temples, shops, baths, fountains and tombs. In part, this is due to what has come to be known as the ‘epigraphic habit’, the characteristically Roman practice of recording acts and events on stone. From the late Republic onwards, both public and private individuals who had even marginal means to hire a stonecutter left behind inscriptions—honorific, commemorative, funerary—which document multiple aspects of social life, from birth to death. Many of these texts have direct ties to civic authority: decrees of the Senate or the Emperor; dedicatory texts on buildings by consuls, tribunes or other magistrates; milestones, boundary markers, altars, statue bases and the like, all of which record the names of the officials responsible for their placement. The production of such publicly-readable texts, however, was not simply the purview of the state: wealthy private individuals also could and did erect monumental inscriptions, which often recorded some act of public beneficence like the construction of a building or the presentation of gladiatorial games. Other writing was less formal: thus, in Pompeii, the famouscaue canem(‘beware of the dog’) mosaic which marked the threshold of the House of the Tragic Poet; the bakery which featured a terracotta plaque with a phallus and the perhaps aspirational legendhic habitat felicitas(‘here dwells good fortune’); or the cookshop of Euxinus whose front sign announcesphoenix felix et tu(‘the phoenix is lucky, and so may you be!’). As William Harris once noted, ‘Roman cities…were full of things to read’.

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Ancient Literacy

Cited by 36 publications

References 0 publications

‘Do I have to spell it out?’ Dyslexia, Lexism, and an object of comparison

‘Do I have to spell it out?’ Dyslexia, Lexism, and an object of comparison

Breaking through the language barrier – bringing ‘dead’ languages to life through sensory and narrative engagement

Between Epigraph and Epigram: Pompeian Wall Writing and the Latin Literary Tradition

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