Abstract

This essay came about as the result of my suspicion that, in our societies of written traditions, the way we write and the thoughts we generate are intimately linked to the way we read. The practice of reading, in its many forms, is more than just a simple technique that allows us to familiarize ourselves with what other people think and thought: just as there exists a close relationship between the content and the form of a given text, the practice of reading has an effect on the reception of what has been written. But even before any text was written, reading had had a critical effect on the form in which it would exist, informed by so many previous experiences of reading.