John Cassian and the Reading of Egyptian Monastic Culture

This book examines John Cassian's understanding of the act of reading within his own conceptual framework and in light of contemporary discussions of reading and the self. Through a reading of John Cassian's ascetic writings, which purportedly record the instruction he had received from Egyptian monks, Cassian's method of meditative and interactive reading is discussed and elucidated, focusing on the way that it encouraged the identification of the self of the reader with the self of the text.