Transforming textuality: Porphyry, Eusebius, and Late Ancient tables of contents
Late antiquity witnessed a revolution in textuality. Numerous new technologies transformed the practices through which readers accessed written knowledge. Editors reconfigured existing works in order to facilitate new modes of access and new possibilities of knowledge. Despite recent investigations...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Journal article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
University of California Press
2021
|
| _version_ | 1797093026720382976 |
|---|---|
| author | Coogan, JT |
| author_facet | Coogan, JT |
| author_sort | Coogan, JT |
| collection | OXFORD |
| description | Late antiquity witnessed a revolution in textuality. Numerous new technologies transformed the practices through which readers accessed written knowledge. Editors reconfigured existing works in order to facilitate new modes of access and new possibilities of knowledge. Despite recent investigations of late ancient knowing, however, tables of contents have been neglected. Addressing this lacuna, I analyze two examples from the early fourth century: Porphyry of Tyre’s outline of the Enneads in his Life of Plotinus and Eusebius of Caesarea’s Gospel canons. Using tables of contents, Porphyry and Eusebius reconfigured inherited corpora; their creative interventions generate and constrain possibilities of reading—sometimes in ways which run against the grain of the assembled material. I thus argue that Porphyry and Eusebius employed tables of contents to structure textual knowledge—and readers access to it—embracing the dual possibilities of order and creativity in order to offer new texts to their readers. This dual function—of affording structure and inviting creative use—was significant in the construction of composite works which characterized much late ancient intellectual production. The examples of Porphyry and Eusebius thereby illuminate broader late ancient practices of collecting and cataloguing textual knowledge. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-07T03:54:26Z |
| format | Journal article |
| id | oxford-uuid:c262640d-1240-4fdc-8dc8-528ee28e5499 |
| institution | University of Oxford |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-07T03:54:26Z |
| publishDate | 2021 |
| publisher | University of California Press |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | oxford-uuid:c262640d-1240-4fdc-8dc8-528ee28e54992022-03-27T06:08:32ZTransforming textuality: Porphyry, Eusebius, and Late Ancient tables of contentsJournal articlehttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_dcae04bcuuid:c262640d-1240-4fdc-8dc8-528ee28e5499EnglishSymplectic ElementsUniversity of California Press2021Coogan, JTLate antiquity witnessed a revolution in textuality. Numerous new technologies transformed the practices through which readers accessed written knowledge. Editors reconfigured existing works in order to facilitate new modes of access and new possibilities of knowledge. Despite recent investigations of late ancient knowing, however, tables of contents have been neglected. Addressing this lacuna, I analyze two examples from the early fourth century: Porphyry of Tyre’s outline of the Enneads in his Life of Plotinus and Eusebius of Caesarea’s Gospel canons. Using tables of contents, Porphyry and Eusebius reconfigured inherited corpora; their creative interventions generate and constrain possibilities of reading—sometimes in ways which run against the grain of the assembled material. I thus argue that Porphyry and Eusebius employed tables of contents to structure textual knowledge—and readers access to it—embracing the dual possibilities of order and creativity in order to offer new texts to their readers. This dual function—of affording structure and inviting creative use—was significant in the construction of composite works which characterized much late ancient intellectual production. The examples of Porphyry and Eusebius thereby illuminate broader late ancient practices of collecting and cataloguing textual knowledge. |
| spellingShingle | Coogan, JT Transforming textuality: Porphyry, Eusebius, and Late Ancient tables of contents |
| title | Transforming textuality: Porphyry, Eusebius, and Late Ancient tables of contents |
| title_full | Transforming textuality: Porphyry, Eusebius, and Late Ancient tables of contents |
| title_fullStr | Transforming textuality: Porphyry, Eusebius, and Late Ancient tables of contents |
| title_full_unstemmed | Transforming textuality: Porphyry, Eusebius, and Late Ancient tables of contents |
| title_short | Transforming textuality: Porphyry, Eusebius, and Late Ancient tables of contents |
| title_sort | transforming textuality porphyry eusebius and late ancient tables of contents |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT cooganjt transformingtextualityporphyryeusebiusandlateancienttablesofcontents |