The worlds of readers and writers on the one hand and listeners and speakers on the other differ in many ways. What happens when the stories, beliefs, or histories of North American Native people, many traditionally communicated orally, are transferred to paper or other media? Why do tellers, teachers, editors, filmmakers, and translators undertake this work? What do the words mean for different audiences? How can they be most effectively and responsibly presented and interpreted? This collection of essays confronts these and other issues that arise in attempting to record oral cultures...

Medieval Italy presented a rich array of discrete textual cultures, many of them specific to particular regions, professions, or groups of writers and readers. The essays in this collection consider how distinct habits of writing took root among specific communities in Italy between the early Middle Ages and the eve of the Renaissance.

In examining how ideological concerns helped give shape to strategies of writing and how forms of communication influenced cultural developments, these case studies assess a wide range of texts, including legal treatises, saintly biographies,...