When Did People Learn To Read?
All civilizations have had forms of writing and reading. People first used pictures as words. The Babylonians and ancient Egyptians passed beyond this stage and used hieroglyphics, which contained symbols along with pictures. In 1200 B.C., the Phoenicians, with their alphabet, were the first people to read sounds from letter sym
What does a text look like and what does popular literature look like in general? How does the appearance of a particular text or groups of texts relate to its contents? How are illustrations used? This module is an introduction to the types of literature that medieval and early modern people actually read. We will look at primary sources, thinks about what (if any), theories of reading are useful, and we will develop some skills in analysing the handwriting and printed fonts used in the medieval and early modern periods, using worked examples in the module handbook. The module takes examples from four categories of literature: “Moral & Political”, “Practical”, “Spiritual”, and “Romance”. The literatures survive as manuscripts, pamphlets, scraps and fragments, “small merry books”, single sheet illustrated flyers. They are politically committed, intense, humorous, scandalous, moving. The module is structured so that each theme is addressed in relation to literatures from the whole chron
