The garden of letters : reading Plato's Phaedrus on reading

Even for those who take the questions of text and textuality as significant, the idea of reading is invariably overlooked in favor of considerations of writing. The intention of this paper is to attempt to fight this tendency and so pose the question of reading a new. To that end, this paper addresses those scenes and discussions in Plato's Phaedrus that either concern a text actually present and being read or concern the character of reading itself. There are three aims guiding this paper: first, to raise the question of reading as a serious matter that cannot be fully accommodated in discussions of writing; second, to highlight dimensions of the Phaedrus that are typically neglected; and third, to point to the conclusion that there is a wide significance to the question of reading, one that points to the way in which words shape who we are.