Référence : MANGUEL, Alberto, A History of Reading, Penguin Random House, 1996, 372 p.

Synthèse : Ouvrage s’aventurant parfois vers les neurosciences, focalisé sur l’Histoire de la lecture et traitant du sujet de manière assez libre sur le plan chronologique. Un succès grand public, mais qui ne traite du contexte numérique que de manière liminaire. Éventuellement utile pour une étude historique de l’expérientialité de la lecture.

Mots-clés : Expérientialité, History of Reading, Linguistic, Literature, Archeology, Neuroscience

Langue : Anglais

Format : Papier

Description existante : « In this marvelous book, acclaimed around the world, Alberto Manguel takes us on a fascinating exploration of what it means to be a reader of books. A History of Reading is a brilliant reminder of why we cherish the act of reading—despite distractions throughout the ages, from the Inquisition to the lures of cyberspace. He shows us what happens when we read; who we become; and how reading teaches us how to live. He reminds us that we live in books as well as among them—how we find our own stories in books, and traces of our lives. He shows us how our reading habits have developed over the centuries, and how, ever since humans first transcribed their thoughts and deeds on clay and papyrus, the act of reading is itself a part of being human. Alberto Manguel is a lover of reading, and he brings a lover’s delight and enthusiasm to his history of reading. His stories take us across a breathtaking range of time and experiences. From the invention of the reader to Pliny the Younger’s first lip-synch in history; from the moment when Alexander the Great’s conquering army watched, amazed, as their captain read a letter from his mother—but silently—to himself!—to reading clubs in medieval France; from the Great Camel Library of the Grand Vizir of Persia, who trained his camels to walk in alphabetical order, to the ancient delights of bedroom reading and the modern horrors of book burning in Nazi Germany; from cuneiform and codexes to the invention of printing and to Penguins; from the creation of eyeglasses to the hypnotics of hypertext—the story of reading is laid open here for our pleasure. », trouvé sur https://www.amazon.ca/History-Reading-Alberto-Manguel/dp/0676970222, consulté le 14 juin 2017.

Compte rendu existant : SMITH, PD, « Not surprisingly, then, A History of Reading scorns chronology. Like a reader, it skips chapters, browses, selects, rereads, refuses to follow conventional order. He does get to the beginning of it all – we visit with the first unknown reader (who also, of course, would have been the first writer) in Babylon around about the fourth millennium BC. Writing, it’s reasonably conjectured, was invented as a commercial tool, as a way, say, of recording who owned which cow. Manguel’s cast of subsequent characters is, by needs, vast: the pages are full of readers, from the Virgin Mary to George Steiner, from Aristotle to Dorothy Parker. Furthermore, we’re introduced to neurolinguistics (the relationship between the brain and language), to the advent of silent reading, to the evolution of reading as metaphor, to book designers, book thieves, book burners, collectors of books and their “voluptuous greed,” and the first men to wear reading glasses. All praise to Manguel for his daring, his devotion, his learning, his reading. In its organization, tone, and content, in its research, its profusion, its synthesis, A History of Reading is a marvel.», trouvé sur http://www.quillandquire.com/review/a-history-of-reading/, consulté le 14 juin 2017.