Book Text Medium

Book Text Medium: Cross Sectional Reading for a Digital Age utilizes codex history close reading and language philosophy to assess the transformative arc between medieval books and today''s e-books. It examines what happens to the reading experience in the twenty-first century when the original concept of a book is still held in the mind of a reader if no longer in the reader''s hand. Leading critic Garrett Stewart explores the play of mediation more generally as the concept of book moves from a manufactured object to simply the language it puts into circulation. Framed by digital poetics phonorobotics and the rising popularity of audiobooks this study sheds new light on both the history of reading and the negation of legible print in conceptual book art.