Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

In the mid-fifteenth century Johannes Gensfliesch zum Gutenberg invented movable type and the printing press in Mainz and the first printed book came off the press around 1455. This innovation in book production is recognized as one of the defining moments in the history of the west. Elizabeth Eisenstein has termed it a ‘communications revolution’ that radically altered the shape of early modern societies. Print profoundly transformed social relations and systems of ideas and facilitated the religious, social, and economic changes that characterize the early modern period. Protestant reformers were quick to realize the potential of print in the propaganda war with the established church and claimed print as their own, a sign of God's grace. John Foxe spoke of ‘the excellent art of printing most happily of late found out … to the singular benefit of Christ's Church’ which would restore ‘the lost light of knowledge to these blind times’ and renew those ‘wholesome and ancient writers whose doings and teachings otherwise had lien in oblivion’ (Eisenstein 1979: 1.304). Early printed books were often distributed through the same channels and markets as other commodities and slowly transformed the exchange of information on which the new market economy depended. Print transformed the way that people thought about knowledge itself. It gave rise to new models of authorship, of literature, ... log in or subscribe to read full text