Term 2, Week 2: Communication and Print

Background Information  One of the most significant changes in the early modern period was the emergence of printing. Gutenberg Printing press (first European printing press). Europe was behind Asia in this development. It impacted health, education, media and public opinions concerning news and the spread of ideas.  How was it produced? Previously they had illuminated Manuscripts, which were handwritten, illustrated and bound. The process could take over a year. Books were therefore valuable and prised possessions. Printing workshops worked by setting one page at a time, which could take a day to produce. And then printing many copies, which took a couple of hours. This speeded up the process considerably. Due to this the value of books went down inversely proportional to the amount produced.  What was produced? Pamphlets and Broadsheets could be produced with ease. Illuminated print still existed as printing companies could hire an illustrator to illustrate the printed copies of a book. Printed books with decorated first letters were commonly mass produced using woodcuts. Books could also be illustrated with printed woodcuts. You can tell the value of books but examining the quality of the paper (thickness, colour, material), Darkness of the ink (the darker the more valuable), The size of the text (the bigger the text the more valuable as small text took up less room and therefore cost less).  Overall printing had many benefits in the early modern period. It shared political, economic, social and cultural ideas. It improved schooling and knowledge. It helped spread religious ideas and impacted people on all social levels.

SEMINAR READING: ‘An unacknowledged revolution revisited’ Elizabeth L. Eisenstein.  Previous publication- the printing press as an agent of change with a chapter entitled the unacknowledged revolution. Aimed to explore how the shift from script to print affected diverse institutions, traditions, occupations and modes of thought and expression. She was concerned with the long revolution entailing cumulative effects, as well as a short one, entailing a rapid increase in output. Common objection to her work was that it exaggerated the revolutionary aspects and downplayed the evolutionary ones.  A lot of consequences of the printing press aren’t actually consequences. For example printing itself did not improve the preservation of texts, only people using the printing presses could do that. Article focuses on whether printing is inconsequential or not= useful historiographical context.  Impersonal printing: quantitative change (increased output) is impersonal. However printing should still be considered a valuable historical source as it is often related to a specific time and place. Also arguable that printed copies removed unique qualities of texts- this is not the case as text still differed based on the publisher/printer and therefore has historical significance. It also allowed for the spread of ideas and group reading (i.e. scholars and students could read and discuss the same text).  Conclusion: Printing can be viewed to have important consequences or not depending on how you choose to look at it. You can view the impact it had on schools; the church and reformations to show it had very clear consequences. However simultaneously it can be viewed as a evolutionary process with little consequences, rather just developments that have led us to the modern age of reading off a screen.