Roberta Berardi (Books)

Roberta Berardi Books

This author delves into the rich heritage of classical literature and philosophy with a keen eye for detail and a profound understanding of its timeless themes. Her work often draws from her academic background in Classics, immersing herself in complex texts and uncovering their enduring relevance for contemporary readers. Through her essays and reviews, she shares her passion for the timeless wisdom found in ancient works, aiming to illuminate their beauty and significance for a modern audience. Her approach is deeply rooted in scholarly inquiry yet presented in an engaging and accessible manner.

On the track of the books

368 pages
13 hours of reading

This book offers the hint for a new reflection on ancient textual transmission and editorial practices in Antiquity. In the first section, it retraces the first steps of the process of ancient writing and editing. The reader will discover how the book is both a material object and a metaphorical personification, material or immaterial. The second section will focus on corpora of Greek texts, their formation, and their paratextual apparatus. Readers will explore various issues dealing with the mechanisms that are at the basis of the assembling of ancient Greek texts, but great attention will also be given to the role of ancient scholarly work. The third section shows how texts have two levels of authorship: the author of the text, and the scribe who copies the text. The scribe is not a medium, but plays a crucial role in changing the text. This section will focus on the protagonists of some interesting cases of textual transmission, but also on the books they manufactured or kept in the libraries, and on the words they engraved on stones. Therefore, the fresh voices of the contributors of this book, offer new perspectives on established research fields dealing with textual criticism.