L'Imprimerie en le Monde Francophone

In English: The Printing Press in the French World

For our annotated bibliography assignment, I went in with an idea of wanting to do something related to how printing varied from place to place. To begin my search for sources, I skimmed the "notes" for the two sections of Reinventing Knowledge that overlap with the same time span as our print unit: the University and the Republic of Letters. I got nine possible texts from this. Of these nine, six were English texts about Europe, one was on the Islam world (a very interesting sounding work called Technology and Religious Change: Islam and the Impact of Print), and one was on China (yes, I know, that's only eight... I'm going to get there). These last two got me thinking about how I'd like to possibly include a global scale of printing instead of focusing exclusively on Europe. Unfortunately, there was no version of the cool-sounding Islam text to be found. While I did find the Chinese text online through the library's website, I ended up deciding to drop it because of a lack of non-Western books on the subject and because, honestly, it didn't sound nearly as cool as the Islam one (the subtitle was "A Historical Essay" ... come on, that sounds boring even to me).

The last text I thought seemed applicable from the end notes for Reinventing Knowledge was entitled "L'Histoire de la République des Lettres en France" ("The History of the Republic of Letters in France," but you probably could have guessed that...) Now, I wasn't planning on focusing on France an French Europe specifically yet, but keep this in the back of your mind.

Using the library's website, I searched for more books on my still not-entirely-developed topic. I expanded from three sources to ten, one of which was in French again. Two were about China, but I decided to drop both of these after looking at the text of one online and seeing that it wasn't really what I was hoping for. I therefore decided to focus within Europe.

One of my books had its full text online, so I was off to a fairly good start before I actually started. I started on the fifth floor, where many of the sources I looked up were located. Unfortunately, I was only able to find two of the seven books I had been hoping to find up there:

E. Gordon Duff, Westminster and London Printers 1476 - 1535, Cambridge University Press, 2009 This text, actually a transcription of a set of lectures given by a Cambridge professor, discussed how England's print history was much clearer than that of continental Europe, specifically Germany, France, and the Netherlands. This was largely due to the close involvement of the English government in the printing industry, which we have discussed at length in class. The text also discussed how England created laws regarding printing much earlier than other countries. It also discussed how although London and Westminster were the main locations of printing in England, Oxford- probably the most advanced university in Europe at the time (and today)- was critical in the success of England's printing industry.

A. Claudin, The First Paris Press: An Account of the Books Printed for G. Fichet and J. Heynlin in the Sorbonne 1470-1472, Chiswick Press, 1898
Let me start by saying that this book is OLD. Its pages were extremely weathered, and it had those f-s-things all over. Seriously, a lot of the things we saw in the Special Collections today looked more recent than this book...
This book discussed the introduction of printing in France, and it seemed to uphold the claim made by Duff that it is much less clear than the introduction of print into England. The book discussed how printing in France was generally different from printing in the rest of Western Europe. Of important note is the fact that the most prestigious academic institution in France, the Sorbonne, was under the control of the Pope to a good extent, which limited the relationship it had with printing.

I picked up another book that was in the same area as these that seemed to be just a good, general source. I had actually come across it on an online reference but decided not to search for it because it seemed a little general and unspecific. When I was disappointed by my two-out-of-seven result and this popped up, however, I went with it:

S. Palmer, A General History of Printing, Lennox Hill, 1972 (originally 1733)
Ok, this book should have been called What Every European City You Didn't Know Existed Printed. Literally, it discussed what was printed in the following cities (by order discussed in the book; I began adding what country unfamiliar cities were in but stopped once I figured no one would be still reading the list):
Mentz, Harlem, Strasburg, the monastery at Subiaco, Augsburg, Rome, Tours, Reutlingen (Germany), Venice, Paris, Cologne, Milan, Bologna, Treviso, Naples, Florence, Ferrara, Nuremberg, Verona, Parma, Mantua, Deventer (Netherlands), Padua, Louvain (Belgium), Ulm (Germany), Utrecht, Turin (Northern Italy), Genoa, Brescia, Alost (Belgium), Basil, Placentia, Pinerolo (Northern Italy), Esling (Germany), Vincentia, Lubeck, Valentia, Rostoch, Brudges, Delft, Spire, Lyons, Geneva, Brussels, Coscence (Italy), Pavia, Goude, Zwol, Caen, Ceulen, Genzano, Lignitz, Hasselet, Reggio, Mount Royal, Wartzburgh, Pisa, Aquila, Erford, Langres, Gaunt, Memining, Soncino, Leipsick,Vienna, Urbino, Antwerp, Heidelberg, Cremona, Abbeville, Toledo, Modena, Biosleduc, Eychstadt, Tubingen, Rouen, Gaenta, Toulouse, Siena, Hagenaw, Lisbon, Seville, Dole, Ingolstadt, Luneburg, Magdeburg, Thessalonica, Fryburg, Angoulesme, Liria, Madrid, Barcelona, Grenada, Montserrat, Mirandula, Pampeluna, Avignon, Leyden, Provinz, Bergamo, Bemberg, Oxford, Westminster, London, York, Cambridge, Worcester, Ipswich, and (FINALLY) Pembroke.
Talk about comprehensive! I didn't read about every city, of course, because the length varied from a paragraph for some to pages for others. Still, it gave me an idea of where printed what even if it was one that would be impossible to include on my blog.

Three books and one online book down, I continued looking for books in the library. I came across no less than three books that seemed to be exactly what I was searching for (or at least pretty darn close). The only problem was that they were all three written in French (and thus about French-speaking countries). I therefore faced the decision of reading (most likely struggling) through three (rather large, especially the last one on Belgium) books in French or searching for more books elsewhere. Let me tell you, it was a hard choice, but I had had enough of walking up and down the aisles of books in the library. I took the heavy books and made a rather heavy stack that I carried to a table where I could spread my books, computer, and papers out. Already having one book specifically about France, my research essentially became focused on (but not exclusive to) French-speaking Europe and how it differed from and was similar to the rest of Europe.


P. Pansier, L'Histoire du Livre et de l'Imprimerie à Avignon du XIVme Siècle au XVIme Siècle, Nieuwkoop B. De Graffe (what a name for a publisher!), 1966 (originally 1922)
English: The History of the Book and the Printing Press at Avignon from the Fourteenth Century to the Sixteenth Century
Following the Great Schism in the Catholic Church, there were two papacies: one in Rome and one in Avignon. Avignon thus became the center of religious printing in France. Unlike the Roman Papacy, however, the Avignon Papacy wasn't over excited about this idea of having an Index of Prohibited Books. Because of this, Avignon was a more attractive option for some printers than Rome was. Despite being much smaller, Avignon thus rivaled Rome as the center for Catholic printing in Europe. Avignon was even more important to France because while the Sorbonne was under the control of the Roman Papacy, the Avignon Papacy retained its freedom to choose for itself what to print, becoming (with the Sorbonne) the most important printing body in France.


Edmond Maignien, L'Imprimerie à Grenoble du XVe au XVIIIe Siècle, Nieuwkoop B. De Graffe, 1969 (originally 1884)
English: The Printing Press in Grenoble from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century
Astonishingly (sarcasm), Grenoble was not a huge center of printing. This book began by saying how it was so much smaller than Paris or Lyon in its printing. Unsurprisingly again, the majority of the printing done at Grenoble was theological (remember that the Sorbonne was the school in Europe for theology before the Reformation). Though not great in number, though, Grenoble did print some things that were printed very few places. Grenoble published histories and tragedies (kind of like those of Shakespeare, and possibly his own, but more likely ones by French authors), French and Latin poetry (such as Rabelais, du Bellay, Ronsard, etc.), and debates of various forms.

Henri Liebrecht and Auguste Vincent, L'Histoire du Livre et de L'Imprimerie en Belgique, Le Museé du Livre, 1923
English: The History of the Book and the Printing Press in Belgium from the Museum of Books
This was the really large book in the stack that was obnoxious to carry... It discussed the history of printing in Belgium, which was essentially that the French and Dutch brought it into the region. More broadly, it discussed how medieval traditions carried over into printmaking. It also discussed how Belgium was where many of the artistic aspects of the printing press came into being. Now, I don't mean the illustrations in books: I mean colored prints that were pieces of art (this is kind of like colored lithography; this kind of art surfaced during the Renaissance and then was kind of "forgotten" until the nineteenth century when Impressionism kicked off). Stylistically, these prints resembled the Renaissance art of the Low Countries. (It's hard to find images of prints online because when you search "prints," it inevitably uses "patterns" as a synonym, but a Northern Renaissance painting is shown to give an idea of the style).

Dena Goodman, The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment, Cornell University Press, 1994
This was the online book I found (http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=acls&cc=acls&idno=heb03988.0001.001&node=heb03988.0001.001%3A9&seq=26&size=100&view=image). The book is focused on the Enlightenment in France, but its historical and cultural background give great insight into the France at the time of the rise of print. In the book, Goodman discusses the effects of print in France on its science and culture. It also analyzed how the print medium allowed these areas to advance significantly more than the written text of the medieval era.

Voila! So while I started with the intention of contrasting printing in different countries/cultures (I did like the idea of comparing London/England, Paris/France, Venice/Italy, Spain, Germany, Islam, and China, but that just didn't happen once I started finding sources.) Thankfully, the reading I did in French didn't go NEARLY as badly as it could have (I wasn't reading Montaigne, thankfully...)
This project was, I'll be honest, much less interesting than the Rosetta Project, largely because it was more "go-find-books-in-the-library" than something hands-on, but I still enjoyed it as far as assignments tend to go. It also didn't get me as roused as the King James Bible exhibit did (for my little rousing rant, you can click here, but be warned- I tend to rant at times), but its probably for the best that every assignment doesn't... It was more interesting (and more challenging) to do some of my research in French, but I think that was also my favorite part: seeing how using multiple languages changed my view on the assignment and what angle I wanted to pursue it from! Especially as I am considering double-majoring in Comparative Literature, this project really seemed to open my eyes to that field even though that really wasn't the point at all! (Though I still feel like I didn't "miss the point," I guess that's the point of self-directed learning!)