The essays in this volume investigate ways that textual practices in the classical and medieval periods generated collective and individual expressions of identity. Engaging in dialogue with Brian Stock's seminal contributions to the history of literacy, especially Augustine the Reader, The Implications of Literacy, and Myth and Science in the Twelfth Century, the essays initiate new conversations about models of interpretation, habits of reading, textual communities, and forms of self-writing.

Sarah Powrie is Associate Professor of English at St. Thomas More College, University of Saskatchewan, Canada. Interested in questions of literary reception, she has published articles on Boethius, Chaucer, Spenser, and Donne.

Gur Zak is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Romance Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Head of the Institute of Literatures. He is the author of Petrarch's Humanism and the Care of the Self (2010) and Boccaccio and the Consolation of Literature (2022). His current project deals with the implications of compassion in Italian Renaissance literature.