Inventing the Alphabet - The Origins of Letters from Antiquity to the Present (Hardcover)

The first comprehensive intellectual history of alphabet studies. Inventing the Alphabet provides the first account of two-and-a-half millennia of scholarship on the alphabet. Drawing on decades of research, Johanna Drucker dives into sometimes obscure and esoteric references, dispelling myths and identifying a pantheon of little-known scholars who contributed to our modern understandings of the alphabet, one of the most important inventions in human history. Beginning with Biblical tales and accounts from antiquity, Drucker traces the transmission of ancient Greek thinking about the alphabet's origin and debates about how Moses learned to read. The book moves through the centuries, finishing with contemporary concepts of the letters in alpha-numeric code used for global communication systems. Along the way, we learn about magical and angelic alphabets, antique inscriptions on coins and artifacts, and the comparative tables of scripts that continue through the development of modern fields of archaeology and paleography. This is the first book to chronicle the story of the intellectual history through which the alphabet has been "invented" as an object of scholarship.

General

Imprint:	University of Chicago Press
Country of origin:	United States
Release date:	July 2022
Authors:	Johanna Drucker
Dimensions:	254 x 178 x 27mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Hardcover
Pages:	384
ISBN-13:	978-0-226-81581-7
Categories:	Books > Language & Literature > Language & linguistics > Palaeography Books > Humanities > History > Theory & methods > Historiography Books > Humanities > History > History of specific subjects > Social & cultural history Books > History > History of specific subjects > Social & cultural history Books > History > Theory & methods > Historiography Promotions
LSN:	0-226-81581-1
Barcode:	9780226815817

Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate? Let us know about it.

Does this product have an incorrect or missing image? Send us a new image.

Is this product missing categories? Add more categories.

Review This Product

No reviews yet - be the first to create one!