THE PRINTING PRESS AND READING

"Using a book, not reading it, makes us wise."

-Geffrey Whitney (1586)

Two men demonstrating new ways of using a book:

One actively reading, engaged with the text (look, his hand is on it!) 

and the other standing, ready to act on the gained knowledge.

      As we've discussed in class, medieval reading was communal, out-loud, dogmatic.... very different from the silent reading we're used to today. The printing press had a big impact on reading, according to A History of Reading by Steven Roger Fischer. "With Gutenberg's inaugural tug on the screw press, reading's material, matter, language and practice began to change." Yes, the printing press changed a lot of things in European society, but I want to focus on the impact the printing press had on reading.

Change One: A New Attitude Toward Reading

    Before the printing press, when books were so limited to the public, the hierarchy "author> commentator> bishop> teacher> pupil" prevailed... The common man was merely a passive listener, and he had no choice as to which text he would "read" or how he would interpret it-- That was all decided from the top down. With the second half of the 15th century, though, people actually became responsible for what they read. As depicted in the picture above, people now read actively and with the intent to act.

Change Two: More Choices

      Printing prompted a lengthening list of titles to come on the scene. People were choosing exactly what they wanted to read based on personal criteria. Audiences of readers were growing, as were the number of authors willing to put their writings into circulation! New books were popular, but classical literature gained popularity as well. The works of Greek philosophers were widely distributed in their original Greek, and widely discussed. 

Change Three: Silence

     People no longer had to sit in a chapel and be read to. Reading lost its passivity in nature along with its communality. In silence and seclusion, people began to not only read for themselves but also to assess and interpret their chosen reading matter. They were interpreting things on their own, and their analysis was based on their own thought processes (Although I'm sure a lot of their interpretation was rooted in the Christian education they all had in common) So, maybe their individual analysis wasn't unique, but the important thing was that it was independent! 

Change Four: Omnipresence of the Written Word

      Before the printing press, written words were still quite rare. "Written letters yet evoked awe and Veneration," (Fischer, 206). If you had a manuscript, it may not only have been the only copy, but it was probably too expensive for anyone but a bishop or aristocrat to own. Nowadays, we see printed words every where: clock, newspaper, note on the fridge, food labels, bulletin boards, programs, street signs, T.V. titles, Ads, books, magazines... This change was brought about by the printing press!

Change Five: Books as Public Domain 

     Because the mass-production of books made them non-unique and replaceable, the book was no longer a symbol of wealth. It was intellectual property. Now hundreds of copies made hundreds of readers and an intellectual community emerged. (Fashioning and feeding the Renaissance...) Scholars were no longer responsible for revealing knowledge, they were adding to it.

Change Six: Breaking the Monopoly on Learning

      Because the common man could now not only read the Bible to himself, he could read other non-religious things. Without the parish priest, people were thinking and questioning for themselves! Victor Hugo prophetically predicted the effect of printing on the church (its destruction) in his 1831 novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame:

"...human thought, in changing its outward form, was also about to change its outward mode of expression; that the dominant idea of each generation would, in future, be embodied in a new material, a new fashion; that the book of stone, so solid and so enduring, was to give way to the book of paper, more solid and more enduring still."

By discarding dogma, European readers could now advance society on their own!

      These are likely not the only changes in reading that the Printing Press caused, but even in the  short list of changes I highlighted it is clear that printing completely change what it meant to "read." The printing press facilitated the shift from a society of orality to a society of writing. Henry-Jean Martin, a French historian, said that this shift "...led, in the final analysis, to something quite new--the unleashing of mechanisms that prompted a new view of self and a spirit of abstraction... It encouraged a logic of the act as well as a logic of the word, and also an ability to reach reasoned decisions and a higher measure of self-control." 2 These could easily be the greatest triumphs of the Printed Page.