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Understanding McLuhan
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08537_Field_TCGG T302.txt
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1996-03-19
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870b
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15 lines
Why this attempt to secure privacy in establishments where
the inmates as a rule spent most of their time among their
fellows? For the same reason that the reading-room of the
British Museum is not divided into sound-proof
compartments. The habit of silent reading has made such
an arrangement unnecessary; but fill the reading-room with
medieval readers and the buzz of whispering and muttering
would be intolerable.
These facts deserve greater attention from the editors of
medieval texts. When the eye of a modern copyist leaves the
manuscript before him in order to write, he carries in his
mind a visual reminiscence of what he has seen. What the
medieval scribe carried was an auditory memory, and
probably in many cases, a memory of one word at a
time. (22)