Rise of the Author

One thing that has been mentioned by Dr. Burton a couple of times in class is that the print culture led to the "rise of the author." I am going to both take issue with and defend this assessment.

There were, of course, authors before the middle ages. Well-known authors of antiquity included Plato, Aristotle, Virgil, Homer, etc., but I'm pretty sure that this isn't what Dr. Burton means when he says "rise of the author." What Dr. Burton seems to be saying is that following the abundance of authorship in antiquity, there was virtually no authorship in the middle ages because they relied on classical texts so much but once the renaissance began after the development of the printing press, authorship resurfaced.

I'll start with my defense of this assertion.
The Renaissance did see the rise of several of the most famous authors in world literature, such as Shakespeare and Machiavelli, after the development of the printing press. However, I think Dr. Burton's statement applies even more to scientific or theological texts. The thousand year period from about 400 - 1400 saw very few theological texts because everyone interested in theology based everything on Augustine. The same was true for science/philosophy, where everything was based on Aristotle.
Since the 4th century, which saw the creation of the Vulgate Bible and the birth of Saint Augustine, there had been very few European-Christian theological writings until Erasmus, who wrote after the printing press. In this thousand-year gap, there is very little "canonical" European-Christian writing with only Thomas Aquinas defying the gap. After Erasmus, however, Luther began writing, and then the writing of theological texts in western Europe exploded with the protestant reformation. It took a bit longer for the sciences, beginning with Brahe and Galileo and then eventually moving onto Newton, Descartes, and those who followed.
So we see that the invention of the printing press did cause a surge in authorship. And, of course, it allowed for new names to be attached to works or fields more easily (IF the work was of high enough quality and was accepted enough) because they could be spread wider.

However, I think we tend to overlook those who were writing in the middle ages, especially in literature. There were tons of medieval writers before the printing press was invented! In my French class this semester, the first unit focused primarily on medieval French poetry, so we discussed people like Marie de France, Charles d'Orléans, and Christine de Pizan who were all known writers in their day. These people were definitely all medieval, pre-printing authors who were publicly known. More important in the history of world literature than any of these was Dante, a pre-Renaissance author most famous for The Divine Comedy (sound familiar?), a narration of Dante's voyage through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. Dante's text bears not only literary significance but great theological significance as well. Chaucer was another very important author just prior to the printing press. Also, as mentioned before, Erasmus was a very important theological writer before the printing press.

So overall, what do I think about the idea of the "rise of the author"? I think that as far as science and philosophy go, it's a fairly accurate statement. But for literature? No way! Today, medieval literature may not be nearly as popular as renaissance literature, but medieval literature definitely has distinct authors that were recognized in their own day and are still studied today. Theological texts lie somewhere in between the two, and while it was closer to literature for a while, the Protestant Reformation definitely moved it closer to the scientific and philosophical texts.