Essay 2

Print History and Culture

            With the coming of print the world changed.  The advent of print was an incredibly important development to shaping our world.  As the few important aspects of the history of print I illustrate here will show print had major influences on the surrounding society both positive and negative.  The ways in which people interacted with books would never be the same.  There was a difference in culture surrounding manuscripts.  The spread of knowledge altered.  The way people read differed.  Print changed everything.  The ways in which people read majorly differed.  This particular difference was mostly in three parts, first in what was being read, second in who was reading and third in how many people were reading.  There are, of course, many other changes which print brought about which will not be mentioned here as if I were to talk about the entire history of print a book could easily be written about the topic, and has been.  Instead I intend to focus on some of the major changes from the advent of print.

There was a major difference in what was being read.  Technical literature began to be reproduced more frequently.  More works were being published and it mattered more whether they would make money off the books.  What mattered even more though, was personal credit, “it is worth remembering that in an age of currency debasement, money itself was by no means necessarily trustworthy---“ (Johns 114).  The importance of personal credit became a central to the lifestyles of printers and booksellers, in that, “They were strongly influenced by the need to strive for and maintain credit in their local environs, and the best way to do that was by establishing a good character.” (Johns 187).  Thus, the way people acted changed as a direct relation to print.  This was a change to culture, in the way people acted, because printers and booksellers needed to have a certain perceived persona in order to sell books.  That is only one example of how culture changed to accommodate the coming of print.

With the coming of print culture as a whole altered.  What people knew about different topics, the kinds of jobs available, etc. all changed with the advent of print technology.  Prior to print, ”learning was governed by a reliance on spoken word – producing a hybrid half-oral, half-literate culture” (Eisenstein 11) meaning there was more dependence on others for learning.  Learning then depended on those who were able to read and could afford expensive manuscripts, reading to those who could not, and those who were allowed to learn learning.  This was all limited to a small portion of the population.  Prior to the advent of print, “Outside certain special transitory centers , moreover, the texture of scribal culture was so thin that heavy reliance was placed on oral transmission even by literate elites.” (Eisenstein 11).  This also speaks to the change in how people read.  Reading went from an oral group event, to more of an individualized task.

            The ways in which people interacted with their reading also changed.  More information was widely dispersed, allowing knowledge to take a leap forward.  An understanding of different topics began to increase as editions of text were printed, as did the reader’s knowledge of the books origins.  Eisenstein properly describes the phenomena of knowing more about a manuscript with each proceeding edition, knowing more, “about how a given manuscript was composed and copied” (Eisenstein 9).  However, at the same time Eisenstein mentions that the same thing that makes it easier to understand the origins of a manuscript with each additional edition, “makes it more difficult to envisage how a given manuscript appeared to a scribal scholar who had only one hand-copied version to consult and no certain guidance as to its place or date of composition, its title or author.” (Eisenstein 9-10).  The advent of printing allowed general knowledge which today we take for granted, such as knowing the tile or author of a book, to be more widely spread. 

Print was also utilized in the academic world as a tool to spread knowledge.  An example of how print allowed a more widespread and complete collection of knowledge was that of Tycho Brahe.  Brahe managed to compile, with the help of many years and assistants, a “systematic corpus or recorded heavenly bodies, using not only Tycho’s own careful observations but those sent to him by astronomers across central Europe.” (Johns 11).  Once compiled Brahe proceeded to print this work, on his own printing press, under his own watchful eye, using his own paper, to ensure no mistake came to his important work.  After the printing was completed he distributed the copies so that others could add their own observations and return them to his island of Hven, “In doing so, he pioneered a practice central to the development of modern science.” (Johns 13).  Brahe served as a prime example of what print could do for knowledge.  Print allowed him to spread his knowledge and that of others in one comprised work which allowed many an understanding of astronomy they may never have previously had the opportunity to enjoy.  One individual could only have observed so much but print allowed shared and spread knowledge to exist more freely.

            There were, as with anything, downsides to the coming of print as well.  One of the major downsides early in print history was that it was new.  Tycho Brahe is as prime of an example of the downside of the undeveloped technology of print as the upside of expanded knowledge in relation to print culture.  Even though Brahe possessed his own printing house and paper mill, which he created with the purpose of having acceptable materials available to him, much of his work was never printed in his time.  When his own printing press could not handle his prize work Brahe searched for one that could and even after being taken to the Holy Roman Emperor, and visiting the city that was the center of the empire, Prague, “no printer able to undertake his prized star catalogue could be found.” (Johns 18).  Brahe also had an incident with another of the downsides of print in that at one point he accused a man of plagiarism.

            Another downside to early printing was that of piracy.  An early custom in print culture was to give free copies of a book to its printers.  However this custom led to a, “wide circulation of unauthorized copies, and the manufacturing of piracies based on them.” (Johns 94).  As piracy spread people began to become more demanding of the standards of printing houses.  If there had been a universal adherence to copy there would be no need for more demanding standards as there would, hypothetically, be no piracy and thus no doubt of the legitimacy of printed works.  As it stood there was doubt, and the doubt of those concerned with printing practices took the form of an apparition of a culture of plagiarism and counterfeits (Johns 187).  This concern led to readers judging the apparent authenticity of a book by what they knew of its surroundings; the people, places, and practices which produced it.  This in turn caused printers and booksellers to put in place “elaborate mechanisms to deal with all the problems of piracy, and they prized these mechanisms for their role in securing their own credit.” (Johns 188).  Essentially, the concern of the readers led to the printers and booksellers attempts to deal with the problems of piracy because of issues of credit which was discussed earlier.  However, even with the occurrence of piracy printed works were more reliable than their predecessors in that, “all texts in manuscript were liable to get corrupted after being copied over the course of time.” (Eisenstein 10).  In short, before print small changes by copyists built up over time to corrupt works in a way comparable to the modern day telephone game.  Both before and after the advent of print there were questions of legitimacy surrounding texts, before due to changes through copying and after due to issues of piracy.

          All the changes print brought about applied to rhetoric as well.  An increased literacy and spread of knowledge would have increased the number of people able to learn about rhetoric.  The ability to by a text rather than copy it oneself would have completely changed the way a person interacted with any form of rhetoric as it would have with any other form of writing, they may have been more likely to question.  Though, as mentioned, print brought increased piracy it decreased discrepancies between volumes which would have allowed any who wanted to learn about rhetoric less concerned about potential discrepancies in what they were reading as compared to a different version.  These are just a few examples I have thought of which relates the importance of print to the spread of rhetoric.  Without print rhetoric, along with a lot of other knowledge, would not have had the opportunity to spread in the way it has or to the expanse it has.

            Print as a whole was a major phenomenon.  It changed culture, history, knowledge and the search thereof, and the way people interacted with their texts.  With the coming of print, the world changed.  Without the advent of print our world would not be what it is today.  We would still have unreliable, expensive copies of books produced either by copyists or ourselves.  We would not sit in class learning through lectures and textbooks but would instead spend our time copying the few books in our collections or working for lack of literacy or funds to be capable of reading.  We would not know as much about our world, our place in it, or any other topics, but rather would have an incredibly limited knowledge base.  Print made us who we are today.

Works Cited

Eisenstein, Elizabeth L. The Printing Press as an Agent of Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.

Johns, Adrian. The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998.