ambiguity might exist. Punctuation is often wholly absent, and 
is never full and systematic.” “Full and systematic” would be for 
the eye, whereas punctuation even in the sixteenth and 
seventeenth centuries continued to be for the ear and not the 
eye. (21)

Manuscript culture is conversational if only because the writer 
and his audience are physically related by the form of 
publication as performance.

*     There is no lack of indication that “reading” throughout 
ancient and medieval times meant reading aloud, or even a kind 
of incantation. But nobody has ever gathered adequate data 
on this question. I can at least give a few samples from various 
periods of the sort of evidence that is readily available. Thus in 
his Poetics  (26) Aristotle points out: “That Tragedy may