Summary

The Print Revolution and its Impact.

• Printing press, a new reading public emerged. Reduced the cost of books, now a reading public came into being.
• Knowledge was transferred orally. Before the age of print books were not only expensive but they could not be produced in sufficient numbers.
• But the transition was not so simple. Books could be read only by the literate and the rates of literary in most European crematories were very low, Oral culture thus entered print and printed material was orally transmitted. And the hearing public and reading public became intermingled.

RELIGIOUS DEBATES AND THE FEAR OF PRINT:

• Print created the possibility of wide circulation of ideas.
• Through the printed message, they could persuade people to think differently and introduced a new world of debate and discussion. This had significance in different sphere of life.
• Many were apprehensive of the effects that the easier access to the printed world and the wider circulation of books, could have on people’s minds.
• If that happened the authority of ‘valuable’ literature would be destroyed, expressed by religious authorities and monarchs, as well as many writers and artists, achievement of religion areas of Martin Luther.
• A new intellectual atmosphere and helped spread the new ideas that led to the reformation.

PRINT CULTURE AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION :

• Print popularized the ideas of the enlightenment thinkers. Collectively, their writings provided a critical commentary or tradition, superstition and despotism.
• Print created a new culture of dialogue and debate. All values, forms and institutions were re-evaluated and discussed by a public that had become aware of the power of reason.
• 1780’s there was an outpouring of literature that mocked the royalty and criticised their morality. In the process, it raised questions about the existing social order.
• The print helps the spread of ideas. People did not read just one kind of literature. If they read the ideas of Voltaire and Rousseau, They were also exposed to monarchic and church propaganda.
• Print did not directly shape their minds, but it did open up the possibility of thinking differently.

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY (WOMEN):

• As primary education became compulsory from the late nineteenth century. A large numbers of new readers were especially women.
• Women became important as readers as well as writers. Penny magazines were especially meant for women, as were manuals teaching proper behaviour and housekeeping.
• In the nineteenth century, lending libraries in England, lower middle class people. Sometimes self educated working class people wrote for themselves. Women were seen as important readers. Some of the best known novelists were women : Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, George Eliot. Their writings became important in defining a new type of woman.