Article comparing Renaissance-era reading practices, both individual and collective, to today’s online reading practices:

“Renaissance reading habits and those fostered by the hypertext environment (which has become synonymous with the Internet), are similar with regard to four broad issues: 1. non-linearity; 2. a protean sense of text and its functions; 3. affinity with oral models of communication, and 4. a changing concept of authorship.”

“Interactive reading in the Renaissance was part of the characteristic model of learned reading based on the intellectual technique on collecting ‘commonplaces.’ A reader read texts in order to ‘extract quotations and examples from them, then note down the more striking passages for easy retrieval or indexing,’ or for later use either in writing or in speaking. The ‘reference’ style of reading is symbolized in the reading wheel, ‘a vertical wheel turned with the help of a system of gears permitting the readers to keep a dozen or so books, placed on individual shelves, open before them at one time.’ â€? (from article)

Starter Links: Tatjana Chorney, “Interactive Reading, Early Modern Texts and Hypertext: A Lesson from the Past,” Academic Commons, 12 Dec. 2005