Books on the history of (the physical act of) writing/printing?
So, I'm beginning to think about teaching my modern political thought course in the fall, and about ways--O idealistic me--to persuade students to take the material seriously and spend some time struggling with it, instead of dipping into and out of it after their whim or curiosity or emotional reaction, as if it were so many piles of blog commentary.
I hit upon the idea of spending some time discussing with students what the very act of writing, then publishing, material in the past was like. Most everyone today composes on the computer, in air-conditioned rooms, on more or less comfortable chairs, with plenty of artificial light. Typesetting and printing, for those manuscripts that find their way into print, is done by people working in similar circumstances, most often without the need--unless the method is deliberately chosen--for physical typesetting and the pressing of letters into paper.
But--to pick the example of the first author the students will be reading next term--Thomas Hobbes would have had to write his manuscript out by hand, with pens that had to be dipped, on expensive paper, in rooms without the benefit of temperature controls, on wooden furniture, under bad light . . . you get the idea. Things obviously would be even more unlike today's writers' lairs the farther back in history you go.
Under those circumstances, it seems like you would take writing--and books and printing--very seriously, because you invest so much in the act, certainly more than the Ann Coulters and Michael Moores of today do in what appears in print under their names.
So, the combination of something really important to say and conditions that require a lot of investment in saying it would mean we could assume that even in very long manuscripts everything on paper is there for a reason. Authors would spend a long time thinking and talking about what they had to say in advance, they would gather their evidence and craft their arguments carefully, and they would make every word tell. Printers, for their part, would not take on jobs lightly.
This in turn demands (the punchline would go) that we read what they wrote differently than we would read the Coulters and Moores of today. Differently, even, than we might read the Strausses, the Arendts, the Rawlses, the Nozicks, the Blooms, and the Habermases of today. Not because the older authors are "better" or "got it right," and not because many later authors are not also worth struggling with, but because the acts and circumstances of writing and publishing in the past produced prose meant to be read in different ways.
Setting my windmills and tilting aside, of course I have only my general sense of social and technological history upon which to draw to make this case. The above may be no better than a caricature of how things really were, and I don't want to do my students the disservice of blustering through some harebrained tale that reads like the five feet of snow our grandparents walked through every day to get to school (even in summer, and uphill both ways!).
Here's where I hoped Typophiliacs might help me out. Are there good books on the history of the physical act and circumstances of writing and publishing relevant to the story I want to tell that I could consult to extend and/or correct it? Anything to suggest I'm on the right track or completely full of it? Thanks for whatever you can recommend.
29.Jan.2005 3.23pm
Last year, I picked up a light trade paperback, John Man's The Gutenberg Revolution: The story of a genius and an invention that changed the world.
Like most Gutenberg scholarship, Man's book seems to to based heavily on speculation, as very little detail is known about the facts of Gutenberg's life. Man makes both speculations of his own, and summarizes the speculations of others he seems to agree with. A good attempt is made throughout the book at trying to get an angle on Gutenberg's business operations; how much money he had, where he got it, depts, court cases and other civil & legal records, etc. One can easily imagine how things could have gone the other way for Gutenberg, changing the course of history (at least a little bit
29.Jan.2005 6.16pm
Maurice, another note to make to your students about Thomas Hobbes is that most of the early editions of Leviathan were published outside of Britain, because the book was banned in Britain within a few years of its publication. Because it was difficult for Hobbes to control the publishing on the continent, a number of pirate editions also appeared (for instance, the bookshop I used to work at had one in the Netherlands in the 1670s). So you have a good example here of the impact of political censorship on the life of a book.
31.Jan.2005 10.57pm
Maurice
I was quite impressed with your argument, without having to resort to outside reference. Don't worry about the five feet of snow. Couldn't have been more than two feet.
That Man book on Gutenberg is horrid. There is no "easy way" to Gutenberg (if that is even the fellow we should be pursuing) and I doubt any easy reference for your students. Take em on a field trip to a printing museum. Seems to be one around every corner these days.
1.Feb.2005 1.26am
'Printing, gunpowder, and the mariner's needle ...these three have changed the whole face and state of things throughout the world' Francis Bacon 1620
1.Feb.2005 6.53am
I can recommend "The History of Reading" by Alberto Manguel.
>This in turn demands (the punchline would go) that we read what they wrote differently.
According to Manguel, the Greek philosophers would certainly have been read differently in their own time: they would have been read out loud, because silent reading was unkown. There's lots more of this kind of observation in the book.
1.Feb.2005 9.20am
I read somewhere recently that the idea of silent reading may not have surfaced until well into the medieval period, if not later.
But the note on the Greek philosophers also brought to mind something else. There is a story that during the performance of a Greek play there was an earthquake and the roof collapsed killing and crushing beyond recognition most of the audience. One of the actors was able to identify the remains simply by the seating arrangement as he had memorized it during the play. The art of memorization was highly tuned as there was no other way to record ephemeral information. Too bad I can't remember where I read that.
1.Feb.2005 10.52am
Check out "Handwriting in America: A Cultural History" by Tamara Plakins Thornton. It gives a pretty detailed history of handwriting pedagogy and historical/ cultural significance of handwriting in the United States...perhaps its a bit off-topic, but may give you some insight about how handwriting was perceived historically.
This is a fascinating topic, good luck!
1.Feb.2005 2.25pm
Wow--these are all great suggestions. Ivan Illich and Barry Sanders have also written about the development of different kinds of memory and self-regard with different kinds of communication (speech/language, writing, printing), and the transition between reading aloud and reading to oneself, where the latter encourages the reader to develop an internal space of critical reflection.
How about the physical acts of writing and the context of intellectual production in Europe (or including areas outside Europe, for that
1.Feb.2005 3.11pm
Two important aspects of the ability to physically reproduce text are:
1. The Reformation was promoted by the ability to get printed Bibles to everyone. Protestantism promoted the rise of European individualism, and so printing was a key factor.
2. As my late Uncle Ben Lieberman liked to point out, freedom of the press is first of all the freedom to own and use a press. Nowadays with desk top publishing it is hard to imagine this, but only twenty years ago this was an important factor in the fall of the Soviet Union. George Soros disseminated photocopy machines - a kind of press - in Eastern Europe, which may well have hastened the fall of the Communist empire.
2.Feb.2005 8.29am
(oops, broken post)
. . . matter)? Is that a book waiting to be written?
I already tell students about the points William and John raise--they're good ones. Often I wonder if students think that everyone in the Middle Ages and after just went to Borders to buy the latest political tracts, and that anyone who finished writing a book on politics or religion could just send it off to publishers without fearing for their physical lives.
Maybe because the printed word (despite high levels of book sales) is less valued as such today in popular culture (West and East, North and South alike, I fear), it simply doesn't occur to students that reading and writing used to be (and in some parts of the world still are) a life-or-death matter.
2.Feb.2005 9.51am
I'm currently reading Andrew Marr's "My Trade".
Marr is a BBC journalist who came up throught the ranks as a newspaper reporter. It gives a good history of newspapers and political reporting (his specialty) from a broad cultural perspective.
>the context of intellectual production in Europe
Few publications have had such a radical, modernizing political influence on their society as the Edinburgh Review and Cobbett's Weekly Political Register, both founded in the 1800s. Perhaps also the Times under Thomas Barnes (1820s and 30s).
The synthesis and analysis of modern political thought may be better done with books, but it was incubated on the front line of journalism. Karl Marx supported himself as a hack, as Marr proudly terms it.
3.Feb.2005 6.05am
There is a book by Terry Jones, don't be put off by the Monty Python connection, (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0413759105/qid=1107438010/sr=2-2/ref=sr_2_11_2/202-5409682-6082234) on Chaucer, which discusses the act of reading in the Middle Ages