Advanced Search Request a Book

ORDERS

Readings Orders 0

DEMANDS

Readings Demands 0

How Writing Made Us Human, 3000 Bce To Now
[Hardback - 2023]
walter stephens
In Stock
List Price: $35.95
Our Price: Rs.9745 Rs.8770
Standard Discount: 10%
You Save: Rs.975
Sub-category: Literary Criticism
Publisher: John Hopkins University Press Usa | ISBN: 9781421446646 | Pages: 576
Shipping Weight: .955 | Dimensions: null

Description


A sweeping history of how writing has preserved cultural practices, traditions, and knowledge throughout human history.

In How Writing Made Us Human, 3000 BCE to Now, Walter Stephens condenses the massive history of the written word into an accessible, engaging narrative. The history of writing is not merely a record of technical innovations-from hieroglyphics to computers-but something far richer: a chronicle of emotional engagement with written culture whose long arc intimates why the humanities are crucial to society.

For five millennia, myths and legends provided fascinating explanations for the origins and uses of writing. These stories overflowed with enthusiasm about fabled personalities (both human and divine) and their adventures with capturing speech and preserving memory. Stories recounted how and why an ancient Sumerian king, a contemporary of Gilgamesh, invented the cuneiform writing system-or alternatively, how the earliest Mesopotamians learned everything from a hybrid man-fish. For centuries, Jews and Christians debated whether Moses or God first wrote the Ten Commandments. Throughout history, some myths of writing were literary fictions. Plato s tale of Atlantis supposedly emerged from a vast Egyptian archive of world history. Dante s vision of God as one infinite book inspired Borges s fantasy of the cosmos as a limitless library, while the nineteenth century bequeathed Mary Shelley s apocalyptic tale of a world left with innumerable books but only one surviving reader.

Stephens presents a comprehensive history of the written word and demonstrates how writing has preserved and shaped human life since the Bronze Age. These stories, their creators, and their preservation have inspired wonder and an endless appetite for historical revelation.

About the Author

Walter Stephens is the Charles S. Singleton Professor of Italian Studies at Johns Hopkins University. He served as a co-curator of the 2014 rare book exhibition of the Bibliotheca Fictiva collection and accompanying catalogue, Fakes, Lies, and Forgeries.

Bestsellers in Literary Criticism

View All
A.S. Byatt: The Essential Guide
[Paperback - 2004]
jonathan noakes
In Stock
List Price: £5.99
Our Price: Rs.25 Rs.22
Standard Discount: 10%
You Save: Rs.3
Poetics (Translation)
[Paperback - 1996]
aristotle
Out of Stock
Availability in 2-4 weeks on receipt of order
List Price: £9.99
Our Price: Rs.1695 Rs.1525
Standard Discount: 10%
You Save: Rs.170
Create Dangerously: Penguin Modern Book 17 (Translation)
[Paperback - 2018]
albert camus
Out of Stock
Availability in 2-4 weeks on receipt of order
List Price: £3
Our Price: Rs.645 Rs.580
Standard Discount: 10%
You Save: Rs.65
The Madman's Library: The Greatest Curiosities Of Literature
[Hardback - 2020]
edward brooke-hitching
In Stock
List Price: £25
Our Price: Rs.6845 Rs.4791
Standard Discount: 30%
You Save: Rs.2054
Classical Literary Criticism
[Paperback - 2004]
plato
Out of Stock
Availability in 2-4 weeks on receipt of order
List Price: £10.99
Our Price: Rs.1945 Rs.1750
Standard Discount: 10%
You Save: Rs.195
The Total Library: Non Fiction 1922-1986
[Paperback - 2001]
jorge luis borges
In Stock
List Price: £16.99
Our Price: Rs.3045 Rs.2740
Standard Discount: 10%
You Save: Rs.305
Essays
[Paperback - 2000]
george orwell
Out of Stock
Availability in 2-4 weeks on receipt of order
List Price: £14.99
Our Price: Rs.2695 Rs.2425
Standard Discount: 10%
You Save: Rs.270
The Art Of Fiction
[Paperback - 2011]
david lodge
Out of Stock
Availability in 2-4 weeks on receipt of order
List Price: £10.99
Our Price: Rs.2295 Rs.2065
Standard Discount: 10%
You Save: Rs.230
A Roland Barthes Reader
[Paperback - 2018]
roland barthes
In Stock
List Price: £16.99
Our Price: Rs.3445 Rs.3100
Standard Discount: 10%
You Save: Rs.345
The Pleasure Of The Text
[Paperback - 1975]
roland barthes
Out of Stock
Availability in 4-6 weeks on receipt of order
List Price: $15
Our Price: Rs.1845 Rs.1660
Standard Discount: 10%
You Save: Rs.185
A Poetry Handbook: A Prose Guide To Understanding And Writing Poetry
[Paperback - 1994]
mary oliver
In Stock
List Price: $16.99
Our Price: Rs.2845 Rs.2560
Standard Discount: 10%
You Save: Rs.285
How To Read And Why
[Paperback - 2001]
harold bloom
Out of Stock
Availability in 4-6 weeks on receipt of order
List Price: $19.99
Our Price: Rs.3695 Rs.3325
Standard Discount: 10%
You Save: Rs.370