1. Concepts and contexts; 2. Production in the graphosphere, I: primary writing; 3. Production in the graphosphere, II: secondary writing; 4. Scripts and languages of the graphosphere; 5. Places and times of the graphosphere; 6. Aspects of the ecology of the graphosphere; 7. Aspects of authority and status in the graphosphere; 8. (In)conclusion.
Explores a new approach to the history of writing, and a guide to writing in the history of Russia.
Simon Franklin is Professor of Slavonic Studies at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of Writing, Society and Culture in Early Rus, c.950-1300 (Cambridge, 2002), and has edited, with Emma Widdis, National Identity in Russian Culture (Cambridge, 2004); and, with Katherine Bowers, Information and Empire: Mechanisms of Communication in Russia, 1600–1854 (2017).
'Recommended for libraries supporting Slavic, East European, and
Central Eurasian graduate studies. Includes a most extensive
bibliography.' B. K. Beynen, Choice
'… insightful … Franklin takes the reader into a world where
writing and reading signalled something very different from what
they do today.' Marshall Poe, The Times Literary Supplement
'Franklin has written an important book, one that inspires readers
to reevaluate past assumptions about the history of material texts,
categories of writing and the institutions that determine their
value. His is a work whose implications extend beyond the
chronological and geographical indicators of its title and that has
the potential to establish a new branch of literary and cultural
studies beyond the boundaries of our field.' University of Southern
California Book Prize in Literary and Cultural Studies
Committee
'Franklin introduces the term [graphosphere] as a 'near neologism,'
and with it, inaugurates an entire field. Now that he has done so,
readers have cause to celebrate. This is a rare book that opens
eyes and reveals new vistas for thought, imagination, and
scholarship. It is as electrifying in its novelty as it is dazzling
in its erudition … The cumulative force of the book allows us to
see the concept of the graphosphere emerge out of a haze and
solidify as a real and important way to look at the world, to think
about culture and history, to unearth new information and gain new
perspectives by cutting across familiar categories in unexpected
ways.' Valerie A. Kivelson, Canadian-American Slavic Studies
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