Overview

Religious and secular communities ritualize some books in one, two, or three dimensions. They ritualize the dimension of semantic interpretation through teaching, preaching, and scholarly commentary. This dimension receives almost all the attention of academic scholars. Communities also ritualize a text’s expressive dimension through public reading, recitation, and song, and also by reproducing its contents in art, theatre and film. This dimension is receiving increasing scholarly attention, especially in religious studies and anthropology. A third textual dimension, the iconic dimension, gets ritualized by manipulating the physical text, decorating it, and displaying it. This dimension has received almost no academic attention, yet features prominently in the most common news stories about books, whether about e-books, academic libraries, rare manuscript discoveries, or scripture desecrations. By calling attention to the iconic dimension of books, James Watts argues that we can better understand how physical books mediate social value and power within and between religious communities, nations, academic disciplines, and societies both ancient and modern. How and Why Books Matter will appeal to a wide range of readers interested in books, reading, literacy, scriptures, e-books, publishing, and the future of the book. It also addresses scholarship in religion, cultural studies, literacy studies, biblical studies, book history, anthropology, literary studies, and intellectual history.

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9781781797679

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This important collection of essays from James W. Watts fills in many gaps left by previous studies of books in general, and religious scriptures in particular . . . The wide range of topics addressed and examples used in this volume demonstrate its usefulness to scholars in multiple fields that deal with [sic] in how and why the phenomena of books and texts, especially those with the status of scripture, exert influence and authority in individual lives and social groups. --Parmenter, Dorina Miller, Anthropos, 115.2020

Author Information

James W. Watts is a professor in the Department of Religion at Syracuse University.

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