서양고대와 중세의 태블릿형 기록 매체: 연구 동향을 중심으로

Abstract

This study aims to explore changes and implications of such changes in the academic trends in research on clay and wax tablets. In the field of the history of books and its adjacent fields, tablets have attracted considerable attention since the late 1980s, especially in contemporary times, due to the following two reasons: first, the excavation of the medieval wax tablet at the end of the 20th century, coinciding with flourishing research on the history of reading and writing. Whereas, previously, studies on wax tablets had been a topic of interest among archaeologists and historians of Antiquity, this topic began to attract the attention of historians of medieval and early modern history and literature more recently. The second impetus is the development of contemporary tablet-type devices. After the advent of the first generation of iPhone and Kindle devices in 2007, followed by the advent of the iPad in 2010, we can attest a clear tendency to include Mesopotamian clay tablets as a type of ‘book’ in compendia of the history of books. Today, ‘tablets’ of old times are being reevaluated from new perspectives and are taking their place in the field of historical research and writing. (Yonsei University / leehm@yonsei.ac.kr)