The Emergence Print Culture

Unit: Cultural Identities in Texts, 212 - Implications of Modernity
Reading Notes, week 5 (I think... tute free weeks muck up my count) (250 word limit)

This article argues that the emergence of print culture aided in changes to modern Western culture. Such a change could be considered in the eventual rising of literacy rates, although Eisenstein also argues that the advent of print did not cause an instant increase in literacy. Later, printed books are seen as a feature that helped divide genders and age groups, as books catering for the differing tastes of these groups become more prominent. This also led to changes in schooling, with an introduction of a peer group learning system, based on the reading abilities of each age group. The introduction of printing technology and therefore widespread knowledge helped to make changes to the holding of power in society – the church was no longer the sole keeper of knowledge and thus began to lose its grip on the power that it held. Moving out of a time where books were constructed by scribes, there is an increase on the skills required to make books – editors, publishers, printers, so on. The use of cross-skills increases as those whose professions lie in such places as engraving, medicine, astronomy and so forth, lend their knowledge to the printing industry to produce books that cover these areas. The emergence of printing also means that a cultural language needs to be chosen, defining which version of a language becomes the “official” printed version, and which must become dialects.

Reading

Eisenstein, Elizabeth L. “Defining the Initial Shift; Some Features of Print Culture” The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early – Modern Europe. Cambridge University Press, 1979. 43-159

It is quite strange to be studying the emergence of print culture in one class, then moving on to the implications of current printing method in another, and then going straight to the class that is talking about the future of print... all in one day. Very confusing, because half the time I can't keep track of which class is teaching which part, or what I've read where. Alas.