How and Why Books Matter: Essays on the Social Function of Iconic Texts (Comparative Research on Iconic and Performative Texts)($29.95Value)

Description

Religious and secular communities ritualize some books in one, two, or three dimensions. They ritualize the dimension of semantic interpretation through teaching, preaching, and scholarly commentary. This dimension receives almost all the attention of academic scholars. Communities also ritualize a text's performative dimension through public reading, recitation, and song, and also by reproducing its contents in art, theatre and film. This dimension is receiving increasing scholarly attention, especially in religious studies and anthropology. A third textual dimension, the iconic dimension, gets ritualized by manipulating the physical text, decorating it, and displaying it. This dimension has received almost no academic attention, yet features prominently in the most common news stories about books, whether about e-books, academic libraries, rare manuscript discoveries, or scripture desecrations. By calling attention to the iconic dimension of books, James Watts argues that we can better understand how physical books mediate social value and power within and between religious communities, nations, academic disciplines, and societies both ancient and modern. How and Why Books Matter will appeal to a wide range of readers interested in books, reading, literacy, scriptures, e-books, publishing, and the future of the book. It also addresses scholarship in religion, cultural studies, literacy studies, biblical studies, book history, anthropology, literary studies, and intellectual history. "This important collection of essays from James W. Watts fills in manygaps left by previous studies of books in general, and religiousscriptures in particular . . . The wide range of topics addressed andexamples used in this volume demonstrate its usefulness to scholars inmultiple fields that deal with [sic] in how and why the phenomena ofbooks and texts, especially those with the status of scripture, exertinfluence and authority in individual lives and social groups."--Parmenter, Dorina Miller, Anthropos , 115.2020 James W. Watts is Professor of Religion at Syracuse University. He is the author of Understanding the Pentateuch as a Scripture (Wiley Blackwell, 2017) and the editor of Iconic Books and Texts (Equinox, 2013) and Sensing Sacred Texts (Equinox, 2018).