The course focuses on the history and development of reading and of libraries from the Ancient civilizations till nowadays with emphasis on the Renaissance, the Baroque period, the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. The relationship between the book, the readers and the libraries is studied taking into consideration the invention of printing, the widening of the reading audience, the categories of readers, the changes in the publishing activity, the architecture of libraries in the framework of the social, economic, cultural, political and religious conditions of each era.

Aim of the course: The students will consider and have the knowledge of the evolution and development of reading and of libraries so as to understand, through the history, the currents trends and diachronic issues.

Week #1: Reading and Libraries in Ancient Greece and in the Roman Empire.

Week #2: Reading and libraries during the Middle Ages.

Week #3: Reading and libraries in Byzantium.

Week #4: Renaissance: Typography and Reading. Towards silent reading.

Week #5: Reading and libraries during the Renaissance and the Baroque era.

Week #6: Reformation and Reading. Prohibited reading.

Week #7: Reading and the Scientific Revolution. Reading and education. The creation of public libraries. 

Week #8: Reading and libraries during the Enlightenment.

Week #9: “The Reading Revolution”. The widening of the reading audience during the Industrial Revolution. Women as readers. The flourishing of the novel. Books and reading.

Week #10: Libraries and reading societies during the Industrial Revolution.

Week #11: The reading audience, the public libraries and changes in the publishing activity.

Week #12: The development of reading and of libraries in the 19nth century.

Week #13: Revision. Discussion.

• Cavallo, Guglielmo & Chartier, Roger ed. (1999). Storia della lettura nel mondo occidentale. Roma – Bari: Edizioni Laterza. Cavallo, Guglielmo & Chartier, Roger ed. (2003), A History of Reading in the West, University of Massachusetts Press.
• Chartier, Roger (1994), The Order of Books. Readers, Authors andLibraries in Europe between the Fourteenth and Eighteenth Centuries, μετ. Lydia G. Cochrane, Cambridge: Polity Press.
• Gingburg, Carlo (1992), The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller, Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Lerner, Fred (1998), The Story of Libraries from the Invention of Writing to the Computer Age, New York – London: Continuum.
• Μπίρκετς, Σβεν (1994), The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age, New York: Faber & Faber. Reprinted in 2006: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
• Paredi, Angelo (1981), Storia dell’ Ambrosiana, Milano: Neri Pozza Editore.
• Στάικος, Κ. Σπ. (1996), Βιβλιοθήκη. Από την αρχαιότητα ως την Αναγέννηση και Σημαντικές Ουμανιστικές και Μοναστηριακές Βιβλιοθήκες, Αθήνα.
• Staikos, K. Sp (2012), The History of the Library in Western Civilization, Volume V. From Petrarch to Michelangelo: The Revival of the Study of the Classics and the First Humanistic Libraries Printing in the Service of the World of Books and Monumental Libraries, Brill / Hes & De Graaf

Lectures with ppt presentations, projects presented by the students, lectures by invited speakers (sometimes), eclass.

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Written exam, optional essay