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Divine art, infernal machine : the reception of printing in the West from first impressions to the sense of an ending / Elizabeth L. Eisenstein.
| Author/creator | Eisenstein, Elizabeth L. |
| Format | Book |
| Publication Info | Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, ©2011. |
| Description | xiii, 368 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm. |
| Electronic Location | Inhaltsverzeichnis |
| Electronic Location | Klappentext |
| Subjects |
| Series | Material texts Material texts. ^A486421 |
| Contents | First impressions. Prologue: Some foundation myths ; Initial reactions : pros and cons -- After Luther : civil war in Christendom. Printing as a Protestant weapon ; Pamphlet warfare : "'The media explosion"' of the 1640s -- After Erasmus : propelling the knowledge industry. Celebrating technology/advancement of learning ; Overload : lost in the crowd -- Eighteenth-century attitudes. Prelude and preview ; Literary responses : mystic art/mercenary trade ; Politics in a new key : the Atlantic revolutions -- The zenith of print culture (nineteenth century). The Revolutionary aftermath ; Tories and Radicals in Great Britain ; Steam presses, railway fiction -- The newspaper press : the end of books? -- Toward the sense of an ending (fin de siècle to the present). |
| Abstract | "There is a longstanding confusion of Johann Fust, Gutenberg's one-time business partner, with the notorious Doctor Faustus. The association is not surprising to Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, for from its very early days the printing press was viewed by some as black magic. For the most part, however, it was welcomed as a "divine art" by Western churchmen and statesmen. Sixteenth-century Lutherans hailed it for emancipating Germans from papal rule, and seventeenth-century English radicals viewed it as a weapon against bishops and kings. An early colonial governor of Virginia thanked God for the absence of printing in his colony. A century later, revolutionaries on both sides of the Atlantic paid tribute to Gutenberg for setting in motion an irreversible movement that undermined the rule of priests and kings. Yet scholars continued to praise printing as a peaceful art. They celebrate the advancement of learning while expressing concern about information overload. |
| Abstract | In Divine Art, Infernal Machine, Eisenstein, author of the hugely influential The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, has written a magisterial and highly readable account of five centuries of ambivalent attitudes toward printing and printers. Once again, she makes a compelling case for the ways in which technological developments and cultural shifts are intimately related. Always keeping an eye on the present, she recalls how, in the nineteenth century, the steam press was seen both as a giant engine of progress and as signaling the end of a golden age. Predictions that the newspaper would supersede the book proved to be false, and Eisenstein is equally skeptical of pronouncements of the supersession of print by the digital. |
| Abstract | The use of print has always entailed ambivalence about serving the muses as opposed to profiting from the marketing of commodities. Somewhat newer is the tension between the perceived need to preserve an ever-increasing mass of texts against the very real space and resource constraints of bricks-and-mortar libraries. Whatever the multimedia future may hold, Eisenstein notes, our attitudes toward print will never be monolithic. For now, however, reports of its death are greatly exaggerated."--BOOK JACKET. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| LCCN | 2010018016 |
| ISBN | 9780812242805 (hc. : acid-free paper) |
| ISBN | 0812242807 |
Availability
| Library | Location | Call Number | Status | Item Actions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Joyner | General Stacks | Z124 .E368 2011 | ✔ Available | Place Hold |