Literacy and recitation in the Roman Empire

Abstract

In our modern societies, the paradigm of reading is individual and silent. However, far from being the only one possible, this wasn't even the main form of reading in the Ancient times. The text doesn't exist outside its materiality, and, if the current standard is the printed object, it was, for a long time, a form of transmission connected to practices of orality. In the Roman world, the main form of circulation of the literary text was the recitation, which happened in various ways: public or private recitations, literary contests where the text was judged from an oral performance, and even recitation when the text was been produced. We aim at observing the reading practices of the Roman society through poetic texts and at getting to know the reading protocols of that society at the moment when the maximum expansion of the written culture is achieved, i.e., the first and second centuries AD.