In addition to reading Chapter 4 of Henri-Jean Martin's The History and Power of Writing (handout), spend about half an hour reading and responding to the first chapter of Richard De Bury's Philobiblon. Scroll down on the links to the right and click on "Richard De Bury's Philobiblon." The first chapter is only six pages long (9-15). For class, write a paragraph of 50-100 words responding to the question(s): What has changed in the intervening 700 plus years? Could the same things be said about books today? What do you think? Please don't spend too long composing and orchestrating your paragraph; it should be fairly immediate and spontaneous.
Bring your paragraph to class or post it below in the comments box. I'm sorry for getting this to you late. If you need to turn it in late, then so be it, no penalty. (Steven, You're exempted from this exercise since you've read the complete Philobiblon and written a short essay on it.) Everyone is encouraged, but not required, to read more of the Philobiblon than just the first short chapter. Also take a look at the prefatory material if you have time.
Send questions to csmith@corcoran.org.
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Hi Class...I'm posting my response here in my absence...look forward to seeing everyone soon!
ReplyDeleteResponse:
Upon first reading Chapter 1 of Richard de Bury's Philobiblon, the extensive Biblical references, simile and metaphor and general hyperbolic praise felt so extremely over the top, especially in comparison to the current status of the book. That said, I don't necessarily disagree with de Bury's assertions and generalizations that "the glory of the world would be lost in oblivion" if not for books. But it does give me pause--do we owe our history/collective memory to actual books, or is it really the texts within the books? I think it's probably a bit of both: the books are responsible for preserving the information within them, and the information is what recounts the “glory” of our world. So while I personally believe we do owe a great deal to our books, I don't think you could still say we would be lost in oblivion without them. Because news, current events, personal and public information of all kind is now regularly published online, it seems (assuming that you can continue to find anything ever posted to the internet they way you can now) that our history is now recorded in this manner and we thus don't have to rely so heavily upon books anymore as recorders/holders of this same information. Additionally, as a society, I think we collectively value books much less because they are more cheaply made, more cheaply purchased, and are being rendered more and more unnecessary because of the internet, ebooks, iphones, etc. You could argue that this shift means that the books we do have and publish are therefore even more valuable because they are more rare. But I think the number of people who worship books the way that Richard de Bury does would now be few and far between. And if you published something today similar to what he wrote in Chapter 1 about books, most people would probably tell you that you are worshiping an aged and dying "technology".