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1. In this interview the bibliographer Roger Chartier expressed the view
that the transition to electronic communication is a more fundamental
change than the shift from manuscript to print production with which it is
frequently equated. He commented that the invention of printing was "a
revolution fundamentally in the technique of production and reproduction of
the text, not in the fundamental structure of the written object, and not
in a certain sense, in reading practices." (see reference SHARP News)
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"The only change comparable to what is occurring now is perhaps the invention of the codex, which took place in the second or third century after Christ. ...In both cases you have a transformation of the structure of the support of the text and a transformation of the gesture, technologies, categories required by this structure, given to the text in the reader's mind." Roger Chartier 1
The codex, our familiar form of book with folded leaves and cover bound together, became prevalent in various cultures during a period from the third to the eighth century AD. Sectarians in north and eastern Africa adopted the codex book as a medium for their literature as is exemplified by the fourth century Gnostic books found at Nag Hammadi. The codex tradition was well established when the early Christian church spread to Byzantine centers in the Balkan peninsula and Asia minor at the beginning of the sixth century. The African book model was also adopted by the Arabs who spread codex book arts with the Islamic conquest beginning in the mid-seventh century. Achievements of the Chinese civilization were a world apart from these developments in late antiquity. Though Gnostic sects had contact with India, there are sufficient developments within the Greek, Roman and Egyptian world to account for the independent adoption of the codex book in those regions.
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2. E. G. Turner (see reference) found that a great majority of Christian
papyri known from the first centuries are codices while pagan literature of
that period is almost exclusively in scroll format.
3. C. H. Roberts and T.C. Skeat (see references) suggest that practical
advantages favoring a choice of the codex over the scroll, factors such as
economy, compactness, comprehensiveness, convenience of use or ease of
reference, are inconclusive and may have been irrelevant in the first few
centuries AD.
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Let's consider this beginning of the preference for the codex as a literary format. Indirect evidence leads us to investigate book production among sectarians such as the first followers of Jesus of Galilee.2 This takes us back to the first, second and third centuries AD. Archeological and literary evidence leads us to consider a north and eastern African model of the codex book that these sectarians adopted. The archeological and literary record spans the same period although finds of intact codices begin from the fourth century.
What were the elements of this choice between the scroll and codex?3 Recently a few scientists connected their computers initiating the momentum toward the internet and a new, worldwide reading mode. In retrospect this decision was both imposed and inadvertent, tangled in a web of technological, social and literary characteristics of our own era. The earlier choices in the selection of the codex format must also be hidden in a complex of characteristics of that time.
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