Origin of flying books in fantasy? - Figuring out an impossible to google question

[Rod Sterling]

Hopefully this is the correct place to put this, do not flog me in the square.

Simply put, I tried to figure out the answer to this when I realized that flying books are a common enough theme that it had to have started somewhere. Problem is, it's impossible to Google search anything with the word 'book' without getting results about, well...books.
So in the name of curiosity and collective knowledge, I'm wondering if there's some way to pinpoint the answer to this. After all, if enough people know media containing said trope then it has to eventually get to the start of it.

For frame of reference, one of my first encounters with this trope was in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, with the books in the library. (Also weirdly hard to find images of this enemy even after being specific about Castlevania)

 

[libRT]

Theres probably thousands because if animated all they can do is flip pages and flap like wings. Though I do remember there being flying books in Secret of Mana on the SNES

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

You'd probably find it in mythology/folklore well before they were put it in animation.

 

[$5.3 Million Dollars]

I think The Pagemaster (1994) put them in the modern culture among young nerds, but the first chronological reference I know of would be this: https://newchristianbiblestudy.org/bible/story/the-flying-scroll/king-james-version

 

[Kosher Dill]

On "stuff flying at you in a library", generally:

 

[Rod Sterling]

I think The Pagemaster (1994) put them in the modern culture among young nerds, but the first chronological reference I know of would be this: https://newchristianbiblestudy.org/bible/story/the-flying-scroll/king-james-version

So far this is probably the oldest one I'll see for a bit on here, I wonder though if it can go back even further? In the early days of written word who knows if human imagination conjoured up iterations then.

In the meantime it's pretty cool seeing how many variations there are on this, kiwi's keep posting. Maybe I'll spoiler a list in the original post of every piece of media with the trope brought up in this thread.

 

[Idiotron]

It's pretty simple:
You take a book, open it and you can pretend that it's a bird by slightly moving it.
It genuinely looks like a bird from certain angles.
It's easy to imagine that, if magic existed, some books would also be birds.
Imagination 101.

 

[$5.3 Million Dollars]

I wonder though if it can go back even further?

Might help to narrow down the places that started out with writing systems and more permanent means to hold it to find the oldest. I'm unsure if my knowledge is outdated but if I remember right that would've been around at least 3000 BC and the civilizations to independently create it were the Mesopotamians, the Egyptians, the Chinese, and the Mesoamericans. I can't vouch for the myths elsewhere, but I can't recall any of the Mixtec ones featuring flying manuscripts.

 

[Sho'nuff]

The earliest example I can think of, and only because I just recently read about them are the Tao Jade Books. They are described as being the origins of reality, IE existing before reality as we know it exists. So I imagined them as a set of otherworldly floating tomes. These are 1500 years old, but like I said, I interpreted them this way.

I think any examples are going to be rather recent, probably within the last 500 years. I'd have to imagine Arthurian legend has spurred the potential for magical floating objects, such as books. The main issue is the way we imagine magic now, is completely different to how magic was perceived going back through the ages. IE Romans had tons of curse and counter curse tablets (we've found tons of them) to curse people, people anti-cursing themselves, if I had to put this practice in modern terms, it would be like going to a lawyer to have contracts done (curses were written by official curse makers usually for paying customers).

As for modern but older examples, I believe Fantasia (1940) has flying books. I'm sure there are probably quite a few Disney examples, Beauty and the Beast (1946) likely has them.

 

[RollerGator]

The idea probably came from a classroom where the students were throwing books at each other.

 

[Kosher Dill]

On the general idea that "spooky things" float in midair, how about the coffin of Mahomet?

There's a story going back to the 12th century about how the conniving Prophet of Islam arranged for his body to be enclosed in a metal coffin and rigged up a system of magnets so it would "magically" float to awe the superstitious rubes.

 

[Jet Fuel Johnny]

Looney Toons had them IIRC.

I keep thinking the witch had them.

And they were before 1990's.

 

[JJLiautaud]

Might help to narrow down the places that started out with writing systems and more permanent means to hold it to find the oldest. I'm unsure if my knowledge is outdated but if I remember right that would've been around at least 3000 BC and the civilizations to independently create it were the Mesopotamians, the Egyptians, the Chinese, and the Mesoamericans. I can't vouch for the myths elsewhere, but I can't recall any of the Mixtec ones featuring flying manuscripts.

Earliest "book" flying can be no earlier than the invention of the codex so the 1st century AD in the Mediterranean

 

[HodgePodgeRogerDodger]

The minute a child gets their hand on a book they start playing with them. Odds are some writer saw their kid playing with a book like it was a bird or butterfly because they were done using it as a hat.
I don’t think it has a definite origin, just something like how kids make fun of bald men.

 

[Rezza]

On the general idea that "spooky things" float in midair, how about the coffin of Mahomet?

There's a story going back to the 12th century about how the conniving Prophet of Islam arranged for his body to be enclosed in a metal coffin and rigged up a system of magnets so it would "magically" float to awe the superstitious rubes.

Islam doesn't use coffin for burial

 

[Overly Serious]

I can think of two examples off the top of my head. I don't know if they pre-date this "Pagemaster" somebody mentioned but if they don't they're very close.

The first are the books in Evil Dead III: Army of Darkness when Ash is trying to find the Necronomicon out of the three books. One of them flies around and, iirc, bites him.

The second are the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett. The books in the library of Unseen University are alive and have various degrees of sentience and a number of the wilder volumes are chained to the shelves. In The Light Fantastic the librarian actually leads them out of the library to hide them and they fly alongside him. Not all of the books are chained to shelves. The books on sex magic are kept under water with ice around them and students are advised that they are very dangerous to go near. The librarian once fell into the water but got out with only some ambiguous feelings about bananas.

If I can think of any older examples, I'll post them.

 

[Kosher Dill]

Islam doesn't use coffin for burial

And magnets also don't work that way, for that matter

 

[discombobulate]

I think The Pagemaster (1994) put them in the modern culture among young nerds, but the first chronological reference I know of would be this: https://newchristianbiblestudy.org/bible/story/the-flying-scroll/king-james-version

"The Flying Scroll" gave me an idea. I checked the Wycliffe version of the story here and it inconsistently refers to it as a book or a scroll. I don't know when Zechariah specifically was translated but it's 1395 or before, which is probably the first instance of a flying book in English. My guess would be that another vulgar translation in another language would be even earlier, particularly Irish or a French language.

 

[Registration]

I don't think an exact answer for that exists, it is almost like wanting to find out who was the first obese human being in history

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Personifying books seems like a very natural thing to do, and unless you want to give the books legs, the most sensible way to picture them moving around is flapping their two halves like wings. It's a creature dozens of people could come up with independently.