The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 12.1110  Monday, 14 May 2001

[1]     From:   Sean Lawrence <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Friday, 11 May 2001 08:07:49 -0700
        Subj:   Re: SHK 12.1103 Re: Parallel Texts

[2]     From:   Andrew W. White <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Friday, 11 May 2001 16:35:42 -0400
        Subj:   Re: Parallel Texts

[3]     From:   Rainbow Saari <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Monday, 14 May 2001 09:08:41 +1200
        Subj:   re SHK 12.1039 Parallel Texts

[4]     From:   Rainbow Saari <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Monday, 14 May 2001 09:08:41 +1200
        Subj:   re SHK 12.1039 Parallel Texts


[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Sean Lawrence <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Friday, 11 May 2001 08:07:49 -0700
Subject: 12.1103 Re: Parallel Texts
Comment:        Re: SHK 12.1103 Re: Parallel Texts

Stephanie Hughes suggests that

>Not only poets, but philosophers and mathematicians put their works into
>verse so they would be REMEMBERED by people who could not read (but who
>COULD listen while someone else read or recited).

Given that they were all writing in verse, perhaps we should just
abandon the distinction.

More importantly, I'm wondering whether things were composed in verse
for the benefits of illiterates, or simply because books were expensive
and difficult to produce.  Haskins records that a large number of
12th-century manuscripts end with a prayer of thanksgiving that the
months-long task of copying it out was finally over.  In this context,
one might want to memorize not because one can't read, but because one
won't always or even often have a book handy to consult.  A similar
principle, as I understand it, was used by Jesuit missionaries, who
memorized large amounts of theology texts before going off on their
missions.

Cheers,
Se     

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