Overview

If talking and hearing are ‘natural’ modes of human communication, how then, did the artificial art of writing come to substitute so satisfyingly for them, and with such deft and commanding authority? Talk to Text: Ancient Origins of Western Prose and the Transition from Oral to Written Culture examines the history of the writing skills that we now practice so casually. These skills were never a human entitlement. Our literary ancestors worked for them, starting from crude scratches on bone, stone, and pottery shards. Over centuries of corrective nitpicking, the Greeks, the classical and papal Romans, the sixth- to eighth-century Irish and Anglo-Saxons, and the Franco-Germanic peoples of the Carolingian renaissance all helped to make writing a flexible and powerful means of communication. Out of speech for the voice and the ear, they invented this secondary route for the transfer of thought—and that route was through the eye. The impact of this spectacular shift and the eventual, even thrilling, development of writing as an art form are the twin topics of this book.

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9781433161513

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Though writing is the craft of artificially representing speech, it now competes with speech for clarity and precision. In Talk to Text Gwen Groves Robinson traces the contentious and often misguided trajectory of writing from the earliest visual symbols to the most complex and nuanced contemporary sentences. With grace and humor, she analyzes the contributions of our most influential authorial ancestors, so that all those who write can appreciate this precious literary inheritance-and how, in our technological age, we are throwing it away. -William T. La Moy, former editor of Printing History and curator of rare books and manuscripts, Syracuse University and the Peabody Essex Museum High-spirited and deliciously erudite, Talk to Text is a fascinating journey through what Gwen Groves Robinson calls the 'turmoiled development of prose.' She makes clear that the art of writing prose didn't just appear full blown; it had to be invented, and 'the history of prose's sluggish take-off is full of drama and conflict-and all too often sheer nuttiness.' Robinson's sly wit, clever phrasing, and vivid examples, from Greek and Latin literature and beyond, restore grammar to its long-lost etymological cousin, glamor. -Christopher Benfey, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of English, Mount Holyoke College Gwen Groves Robinson's Talk to Text is a substantial and fascinating book. It traces the transition from orality to literacy in Ancient Near Eastern and Greek cultures, and then more explicitly the ways in which the characteristics and strengths of spoken language were preserved in texts, making literature something deeper and more beautiful than mere literacy. With thorough scholarship, dealing with authors famous and not so, it traces this and related themes in ancient Greek through Latin culture, deep into the Western Middle Ages. There is much of historical interest, much of contemporary relevance. -James H. Stam, Scholar-in-Residence, Philosophy, American University

Gwen Groves Robinson's Talk to Text is a substantial and fascinating book. It traces the transition from orality to literacy in Ancient Near Eastern and Greek cultures, and then more explicitly the ways in which the characteristics and strengths of spoken language were preserved in texts, making literature something deeper and more beautiful than mere literacy. With thorough scholarship, dealing with authors famous and not so, it traces this and related themes in ancient Greek through Latin culture, deep into the Western Middle Ages. There is much of historical interest, much of contemporary relevance. -James H. Stam, Scholar-in-Residence, Philosophy, American University High-spirited and deliciously erudite, Talk to Text is a fascinating journey through what Gwen Groves Robinson calls the 'turmoiled development of prose.' She makes clear that the art of writing prose didn't just appear full blown; it had to be invented, and 'the history of prose's sluggish take-off is full of drama and conflict-and all too often sheer nuttiness.' Robinson's sly wit, clever phrasing, and vivid examples, from Greek and Latin literature and beyond, restore grammar to its long-lost etymological cousin, glamor. -Christopher Benfey, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of English, Mount Holyoke College Though writing is the craft of artificially representing speech, it now competes with speech for clarity and precision. In Talk to Text Gwen Groves Robinson traces the contentious and often misguided trajectory of writing from the earliest visual symbols to the most complex and nuanced contemporary sentences. With grace and humor, she analyzes the contributions of our most influential authorial ancestors, so that all those who write can appreciate this precious literary inheritance-and how, in our technological age, we are throwing it away. -William T. La Moy, former editor of Printing History and curator of rare books and manuscripts, Syracuse University and the Peabody Essex Museum

High-spirited and deliciously erudite, Talk to Text is a fascinating journey through what Gwen Groves Robinson calls the 'turmoiled development of prose.' She makes clear that the art of writing prose didn't just appear full blown; it had to be invented, and 'the history of prose's sluggish take-off is full of drama and conflict-and all too often sheer nuttiness.' Robinson's sly wit, clever phrasing, and vivid examples, from Greek and Latin literature and beyond, restore grammar to its long-lost etymological cousin, glamor. -Christopher Benfey, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of English, Mount Holyoke College Though writing is the craft of artificially representing speech, it now competes with speech for clarity and precision. In Talk to Text Gwen Groves Robinson traces the contentious and often misguided trajectory of writing from the earliest visual symbols to the most complex and nuanced contemporary sentences. With grace and humor, she analyzes the contributions of our most influential authorial ancestors, so that all those who write can appreciate this precious literary inheritance-and how, in our technological age, we are throwing it away. -William T. La Moy, former editor of Printing History and curator of rare books and manuscripts, Syracuse University and the Peabody Essex Museum Gwen Groves Robinson's Talk to Text is a substantial and fascinating book. It traces the transition from orality to literacy in Ancient Near Eastern and Greek cultures, and then more explicitly the ways in which the characteristics and strengths of spoken language were preserved in texts, making literature something deeper and more beautiful than mere literacy. With thorough scholarship, dealing with authors famous and not so, it traces this and related themes in ancient Greek through Latin culture, deep into the Western Middle Ages. There is much of historical interest, much of contemporary relevance. -James H. Stam, Scholar-in-Residence, Philosophy, American University

Author Information

Gwen Groves Robinson is a wide-ranging, world-traveling scholar of language, with a BA in Greek from Bryn Mawr and an MA in English from Houston University. A former academic journal editor, she has authored a book on Tokyo, four novels, and ten articles on punctuation.

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