Historicity of reading

Abstract

The following pages resume the topic of reading as a practice through an observation of what the reader does in the present day. The resulting description will enable to compare some of the assessments concerning the contemporary reader, whose habits originated with the use of the printed book, and those of the protolector, attributed in a predominantly oral culture, such as the archaic Greek (600 - 480 B.C.), when alphabetical writing began to spread more extensively.    
      It is argued that the different judgments are primarily due to pragmatic reasons, the most important of which are the variability of the writing surface, originally non-normalised as the printed page later becomes. Then the type of script which was employed, generally a scriptio continua, requiring the reader to oralise the message for its comprehension. Finally, the heteronomous function of writing as with the “silent objects” that speak thank to the voice of the reader. Hence some important consequences on the way of reading, also because the protolector often used to read for an audience of illiterate listeners.           
Regards to the activity of reading, its changes, the skills it involves and finally its attributions of value, the literary text is chosen as an exemplary term of comparison because of its distinctive features, recognised by looking at what happens to the reader.