This volume is illustrated with manuscripts, printed objects, and art works. It tells a 5000-year history of writing and books, giving readers an account of why books matter and how they impact our lives. Includes bibliographical references (pages 407-525) and indexes.
Contents:
Death of the book. Is there a future for the book? -- The library as computer -- The message of Ashurbanipal from antiquity -- Living in the Tower of Babel -- Books and violence. The book-fires of 1933 -- The making and unmaking of libraries -- Incombustible heresy in the age of Luther -- The bondage of the book -- Sacred text. The mystery of Arabic script -- The unnameable Hebrew God -- How the alphabet came to Greece from Africa -- The characters of Chinese -- The cult of the book. Words and images -- Kissing the book -- Books under the razor -- Shakespeare and bibliofetishism -- The body and the book. The book incarnate -- The hand in the history of the book -- Written on the flesh -- Book burial -- Ghost in the book. The book after the French Revolution -- The smartphone inside our heads -- Heresy and modernity -- Glyph.
Summary:
Bibliophobia is a personal meditation on the 5,000-year history of writing and of books, from the perspective of the smartphone. Its starting point is the contemporary idea of 'the death of the book', embodied not only in the replacement of the physical book by digital media, but in the accompanying twenty-first-century experience of paranoia and of literary apocalypse. It traces a twin fear of omniscience and oblivion right back to the origins of writing in ancient Sumeria and Egypt, and then forwards to the age of Google. It covers examples of bibliophobia from the first Chinese emperor to Nazi Germany, alongside a parallel story of bibliomania and bibliolatry within world religions and literatures. Using examples from six continents, it discusses topics such as the origins and decipherment of different kinds of human script; the development of textual media such as scrolls, codices, printed books, and artificial intelligence; the collection and destruction of libraries; the use of books as holy objects, talismans, and shrines; and the history of slavery, heresy, blasphemy, censorship, and persecution. Originating as the Clarendon Lectures in the Faculty of English at the University of Oxford, the methods of Bibliophobia range across book history; comparative religion; philosophy from Plato to Hegel and Freud; and a wide range of global literature from ancient to contemporary. Richly illustrated with manuscripts, printed objects, and art works, at its heart is the power that books always (and continue to) have in the emotional, spiritual, bodily, and imaginative life of readers.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.