Books & Cultures in Early Modern Europe
Daniel Traister profile
Michael Ryan profile
R 4:30-7:10
Cancelled
Printing from movable type, a technology that reached Europe in the middle of the fifteenth century, is now praised (or blamed) for everything from the birth of the author through the development of modern science, the codification of canons, and the Protestant Reformation -- and even, now and again, for the French Revolution. The impact of print on what had been a manuscript-based culture seems, however, likely to have been more subtle and nuanced than such apocalyptic accounts represent. For several millenia before print, manuscripts had served as both containers and conveyors of information, knowledge, literature, and, of course, bureaucratic records. Even the "familiar" physical book, in the form of the codex, had appeared in the West by at least the first century BC, long before Gutenberg. Its formats evolved slowly and gelled over a long period of time. What difference, then, did printing technologies make? What are the relationships between technology and culture in the early modern period?
updated 2006-10-20
