"At first the codex, still of papyrus, was merely a novelty, an object of curiosity. Traditional works were of course expected to be on scrolls" (A History of Reading/Steven Roger Fischer)
"[Parchment] was second choice, evidently considered inferior to papyrus";
"Christian scribes did not consider the roll a proper form of book"
(Scribes, Script, and Books/Leila Avrin)
"Others continued to consider the papyrus scroll the more distinguished form of a book" (Introduction to the New Testament: History, culture, and religion of the Hellenistic age/Helmut Koester)
"Aristocrats opposed printing as a mechanical vulgarization and feared it would lower the value of their... libraries" (The Reformation/Will Durant)
"Fastidious book collectors would not admit printed books to their shelves because they regarded them as cheap and inferior imitations, so the early printers aimed at producing by mechanical means a book that resembled a manuscript as closely as possible" (The changing context of information: an introductory analysis/K. J. McGarry)
The romanticisation of form over content is not new.
All this has happened before. All this will happen again.
When you can't live without bananas
Sunday, April 29, 2012
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