Litracy in the Pre-modern World:Parallels and Divergences between the Mediterranean World and East Asia
The history of literacy in the Mediterranean, 1000 BC to 1900 AD, can be very briefly summarized as follows.The use of writing was initially limited to scribal specialists in a relatively small area of the Mediterranean litoral, but in the wake of (a) improvements in writing systems c.800 BCE and (b) colonization and imperialism, the use of writing gradually spread to wider social groups and to the entire region.But with a predominantly agrarian economy and little in the way of public education, this region never achieved mass literacy, and when the economy shrank after 400 CE literacy shrank too.Literacy picked up again in some areas from the twelfth century onwards, and more rapidly after 1700 in tandem with economic growth.This paper seeks to discover whether the factors that determined levels and types of literacy in pre-modern China were similar to the economic, technological, social, and ideological factors that operated in the Mediterranean world.
William V.HARRIS
Columbia University
国内会议
天津
英文
60-65
2012-06-16(万方平台首次上网日期,不代表论文的发表时间)