Avatars of the Word: from Papyrus to Cyberspace

  

by James J. O'Donnell

This page offers supplementary materials to illustrate and continue the discussion initiated by Avatars of the Word, published in June 1998 by Harvard University Press: Table of Contents. A Spanish translation was published in 2000. The full text is now available in the ACLS History E-Book project for subscribing participants.

In March 1999, I appeared at a Cambridge Forum and delivered a talk "From Papyrus to Cyberspace", followed by commentary and discussion (one-hour program, available here in RealAudio).

• Jerome idealized: the late antique polemicist and translator rehistoricized as Renaissance cardinal.
• Plato's Phaedrus, in Jowett's 19th century translation.
• The totemic power of Alexandria as image of the perfect library:
  The Alexandria Digital Library at UC-Santa Barbara
• Late Antique resources:
  Augustine
  Cassiodorus
  Cosmas Indicopleustes -- the only real flat-earther in history?
  "Worlds of Late Antiquity", syllabus to a wide-ranging undergraduate course.
  "Internet Medieval Sourcebook"
• Johannes Trithemius on secret forms of writing
• Marshall McLuhan:
  Who Was Marshall McLuhan?
• The "Cathach", O'Donnell family good luck charm, with or without a book inside.
• A.E. Housman, "A Shropshire Lad"
• Kipling's Stalky & Co
• Matthias Corvinus: an illuminated manuscript from his library
• Mark Hopkins on a bench: I allude to this old saw in the book, and afterwards wrote more expansively on the theme in an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
• "New Views of Medieval Europe": pictures from a 1962 National Geographic article discussed in the book.

Reviews of Avatars of the Word:

Alberto Manguel in TLS for 9/11/98.

Michael Keller in Science for 3/12/99

Peter Meyers in Wired 7.04 (April 1999)

David Staley in Journal of the Association for History and Computing (April 1999).

Elias Crim in intellectualcapital.com, 21 October 1999 -- refreshingly cranky and unconvinced.

"Readers Diary" part I and, from a week later, part II -- from the A Common Reader book catalogue.

From Cal State - Dominguez Hills -- a teacher's very engaged response, with links to several further reviews.

Advertisement for Avatars of the Word from Chronicle of Higher Education

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Three Renaissance worthies

Holbein's More

Durer's Jerome

Holbein's Erasmus