An Overview of Francophone Printing's Impediments

So in writing this post (which really is just an attempt to come out on top of what I've imagined as a race between Alex and myself to see who ends up with more blog posts... just kidding), I figured I would give a basic overview of the sections of my paper for general discussion.

Basically, I pinpointed the political, economic, and religious factors that impeded printing in the French world, focusing on the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Thesis in the Making

My British Lit teacher tells me every time I write a paper that the biggest problem is my thesis. (I'm not sure I agree, but that's not the point.) So, getting started is usually the hard part for me.

My paper revolves around printing in French-speaking Europe in the 15th to 18th century. My thesis, as of present, is thus:

The French-speaking world’s less-developed printing system in comparison to that of other Western European powers was a result of several political and economic disadvantages with which it was faced during the rise of the printing press in Western Europe.

Now, I have a slight issue with this. Does describing their printing system as "less-developed" make sense or does it seem inappropriately vague? It makes sense in my head because I know what I'm going to go on to talk about in my paper, but the lack of almost any specificity in my thesis seems a little undesirable in my mind...

Comments?
P.S. I apparently found out how to double-space part of my post. I'm not sure how to change it back to single-spaced, though, so I apologize if anyone else has OCD issues reading this because I kind of did...

It's a process, and I'm a little rusty.

I was "blessed" with the opportunity to write many essays in my AP Literature class last year. I developed a process for writing that was effective, and allowed me to showcase my strengths. Due to the nature of my classes this semester, believe it or not, but this is actually my first assigned college paper. Consequently, I struggled to get moving.

I realized that I knew very little useful information about my topic that I could make an argument about. I spent some good time perusing the books I had collected as sources, and eventually came up with this loose concept for an argument...

"The economic dominance of the bookseller in early British book trade is responsible for the preservation of many important works, copyright laws, and the legitimacy of authorship." 

After consulting Professor Burton, and his helpful thesis website, I revised it into this concrete thesis that an educated reader could argue for or against. 

"Factors influencing the scope and significance of the British book trade were many; yet, no factor was as important as the role of the early British bookseller. The economic dominance of the bookseller was responsible for preserving many important works, lending legitimacy to authorship, and necessitating copyright laws."

I feel as though this thesis provides a solid base that will keep me on track for the remainder of the paper. Any thoughts and/or suggestions?

The Bible: Truth. . . IF Translated Correctly. . .

I explored the exhibit .The Life and Legacy of the King James Bible at the Harold B Lee Library. However, as I experienced the exhibit, the title seemed misleading. In reality, this is not only the legacy of the King James Bible, it is the legacy of the competition of preceding bibles such as the Geneva and Bishops bible. However, the name makes sense as this is the bible that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints endorses and the exhibit is in honor of the 400th anniversary of the translation of the bible. Thus, the exhibit has a nostalgic title.
Reading Jared's post reminded me of the importance of being aware of errors I thought more critically about the quality of the text and content I saw. Going to the exhibit left me with less confidence in the various bible translations as I saw the various differences in the different bible translations.

Impressions from the Skousen Book Presentation

Many of the books that Royal Skousen showed us, and a lot of the books I have seen in class, are extremely artistic in nature. Whether it’s the illumination, rubricating, illustration or intricate book covers, there have always been artistic elements present. It was interesting to me to start to think of publishing itself as an art. When he started telling us his personal preferences in paper, binding, and other publishing techniques, it opened my eyes to things that I have noticed, but never gave much attention to. I decided to analyze the book that I most recently finished reading, Inheritance by Christopher Paolini.

Mouse Trap Effect: This bothers me beyond belief when I’m trying to read a novel. Now that it has been given a name, I know exactly what I’m complaining about. Inheritance does not suffer from this affliction. The binding is sufficiently loose to allow the pages to fall open.

Printing and its Effects on Libraries

Brianne's reflection in her post for the annotated bibliography assignment got me thinking about libraries. Remember way back when we discussed libraries as an institution of knowledge? We discussed the library as a institution of knowledge for a written medium. However, I'm sitting in a library right now, and there aren't too many hand-written manuscripts I can handle. It's mostly printed books. I am therefore going to take a look at libraries in terms of print knowledge.

Libraries (by which I mean the print-based libraries we're used to) are incredibly useful. When in doubt, we go to the library. When looking for information on printing and various topics related to it, we search in a library. When we need to kill a basilisk, we wander to the library, mirror in hand. When hunting Voldemort's horcruxes, we travel in a mobile library. You get the point.

Annotated Bibliography on the History of the Dictionary

This post fills a requirement for my current Civilization class.  We were to find several sources on a topic related to printing during the renaissance.  I chose to specialize on how dictionaries changed during the years 1500-1700 AD.  I did most of my research at the Harold B. Lee Library on campus at BYU.  Below is what I found.

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.

The Early British Book Trade (bibliography)

          Of the topics listed by Professor Burton, the workings of the book trade fascinated me. I had already blogged a little bit about how I thought that writing and publishing must have seriously influenced the economic processes of the day. My research ended up focusing on the effects of these things in early Britain. It was interesting to me to see how the sources I found all seemed to end up pointing toward the same general line of research. This was illuminated particularly when I found a book that listed one or two of my previous sources in its own bibliography. Another helpful insight I gained was the value of this kind of research. As a new kid on the researching scene, my previous experience has been limited to google searches. This project opened my eyes to the different tools at my disposal for research. So without further ado, here is my annotated bibliography.

History of Printed Illustration and Woodcuts: Brianne Burraston, Annotated Bibliography

I started my bibliography with a general search in the library related to printing, unsure of what I first wanted to research. My search on printing lead me to section ZE on the fifth floor of the library where I found a plethora of material on the printing press. I opened a book and flipped through the pages to find a subject that interested me. However, due to the obscurity and specificity of the subject, I had difficulty creating a bibliography. Thus, I decided to go back to the shelves and browse and came across illustrations and woodcuts. This caught my attention and inspired this bibliography.




1. Chappel, Warren, A Short History of the Printed Word, The New York Times 1970 (Found through browsing the shelves at the HBLL)

• This author discusses the origins and techniques of printing from medieval times through the twentieth century. Focusing on his chapters regarding wood cuts, he discusses the history of wood cuts and the impact wood cut illustrations had for artists and social status, and the economic benefits of wood cuts. He provides background on how wood cuts were made in the sixteenth century and also discusses how illustrated books changed the emphasis to the art rather than the text. 

2. Goldschmidt, Earnst Ph. The Printed Book of the Renaissance, Cambridge University Press, 1950 (Found through browsing the shelves at the HBLL)

• This book goes through the history of print illustration beginning with the medieval era, where non-print illustration originated. It traces the history of illustration prints and how they increased their efficiency with the woodcuts. He discusses how woodcut printing was practical knowledge acquired through technical experience and how this intentionally limited the use of wood cuts until artists and printers began to sell them to other cities and countries and it became a large economic business.

3. Lewis, John, Anatomy of Printing, Watson-Guptil Publications, 1970  (found through online HBLL search)

• In Chapter 4: "The reformation and the printing press: artists take an interest in the printed illustration," Lewis discusses some of the unexpected benefits of the printed illustration. For example, the printing press accelerated ideas not only through words, but through illustrations. He discusses the social benefit of illustrations that allowed the illiterate to understand ideas through pictures. He also addresses the economic benefit to printers of using the same illustration for multiple works. 

4. Morrison, Stanley and Jackson, Holbrook. A Brief Survey of Printing History and Practice, New York, 1923 (found through browsing the shelves at the HBLL)

•  This source offers a brief history of woodcutting and illustrations in the sixteenth century Europe. He discusses the use of the printer's trade-mark as an illustration used to distinguish works and continues to discuss the evolution of the technology regarding printing and illustrations through the mid-twentieth century.

   5.  Gascoigne, Bamber. How to Identify Prints : A Complete Guide to Manual and Mechanical Processes from Woodcut to Ink Jet (found with through online Google Scholar search, then searched and found on HBLL webpage, and then read in person in the HBLL)

• This book gives a thorough history of the printed illustration while covering the technical vocabulary. It details the print illustration techniques used throughout the years. The illustrations in the book itself aid the reader in understanding a more technical understanding of the history and process of the printed illustration. Wood cuts were at their peak use in the sixteenth century, declined, and then began to be used again in the eighteenth century when a more efficient technique was developed.

6.  Cole, Richard G. "The Use of Reformation Woodcuts by Sixteenth-Century Printers as a Mediator Between The Elite and Popular Culture", Journal of Popular Culture, Bell and Howell Information and Learning Company, 2000 (Found online through google search and HBLL search, then read in person)

• This article offers sociological insight into how woodcutting and illustration affected social roles in society. It discusses various insights into how the printer of the sixteenth century served as a mediator between the elite and popular culture through using both " early modern" and early folklore images in their prints.

7.Eichenberg, Fritz, The art of the print: masterpieces, history, techniques, Harry. N. Abrams, Incorprorated, 1976 (found through bibliography of How to Identify Prints then read in person)

• This book details the world history of print and illustration from early Chinese prints to modern day. He discusses the simplicity of the wood cutting technique and how its popularity spread. He then details the specific technique of early wood cut artists complete with illustrations of their works.

You did WHAT to the Bible?!?!?!

Going to the King James Bible exhibit, I imagined that the professors wanted, in addition to our gaining a greater appreciation of print culture, for us to become more appreciative of the great men who translated the Bible. This is not exactly how my experience went, though...

King James Response: Alex

I’m glad our group decided to visit the King James exhibit early on in this unit. The things I explored at the exhibit played right into some of the things I have been thinking about and researching as part of our Rosetta Stone project and in class the last couple times.

I was unsure about the Library’s policy concerning pictures, recordings, and what have you in the exhibit so I thought it best to err on the side of caution. These pictures are just images obtained online.

The Latin Vulgate

King James Bible

First, issues of translation crop up immediately. The whole story of the King James Bible is based on translation. Each translation of the bible occurred as part of an attempt to get the most correct version. However, those in charge of each current bible strongly resisted efforts for new translations. They worried that their authority would diminish with new versions of the bible, and that legitimacy would decrease as a result in the variations in text.

I spent most of my time in the exhibit fascinated by the competing bibles, and the lengths people would go to see the bibles printed, or banned. I also started wondering at the cause of the various versions and translations. I had always given more credence to the fact that the “evil designs of men” were responsible for many of the plain and precious parts of the bible being taken out. However, as I came to experience in our group project, I believe that many of the translation issues could easily have stem simply from the process itself. It’s extremely complicated!

I also really enjoyed a line of conversation that came up in class last time. Somebody mentioned that when a religious text is changed, it raises serious questions about its legitimacy. Then somebody else brought up the fact that in our LDS scriptural cannon, the Joseph Smith Translation is incorporated mainly in the footnotes of our King James Bible, and is not overly advertised. I believe that Christians not of Mormon faith would feel like they had even less in common with us if we began publishing the “Joseph Smith Bible”. The LDS church is sensitive to this, and while not ashamed of the fact that we have a more correct version of the Bible, we celebrate the efforts of the King James Bible.

I thoroughly enjoyed the exhibit. I recommend allotting at least 25 minutes to go through and read everything, enjoy the artwork, and play around with the interactive display. I'm planning on going back to review one of the stations more thoroughly, and then I'll ad on to this post when I've done that. 

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.

Marriage: Man, Woman, and a piece of paper

 An elaborate penned (not printed) marriage certificate from Germans in Pennsylvania mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries. 

I know this post is short, but I just got engaged last night. :D  Thus, I have been distracted, but managed to do some research. . . 

Marriage certificate from 1875

Because I just became officially engaged last night (yay!  :D), I have marriage on the mind and thus want to learn about the history of printing marriage certificates and licenses. Marriage used to just be a private contract between 2 families (ie arranged marriages). However, around the 16th century, the government began regulating marriage though marriage licenses.

Woodblock Printing

For about a month now, my posts have been focused on the Sumerians in ancient Mesopotamia. The Sumerians are celebrated as having developed the first writing system. So, thankfully, this has given me a wealth of information to work with in our Written Knowledge unit.

            As we are transitioning to talking about printing, I felt a little bit uncomfortable as I suddenly lacked direction in my research. However, I decided to try and find out anything I could about printing in its earliest stages. I stumbled upon the process called “Woodblock Printing”. This method emerged in China in about the year 200 and was used widely in East Asia as a method for printing on textiles, and later, paper.

            A woodblock can best be described as a type of primitive stamp. The white parts, or what you don’t want to be printed, are cut away. This leaves a design at a higher level, which is subsequently inked and then pressed onto a cloth, or whatever material is chosen. However, sometimes instead of stamping, they would use a rubbing method. In this case, the block is placed face up on a table or similar surface. The cloth, or paper in later times, is then placed on top of the block and “the back of the block is rubbed with a "hard pad, a flat piece of wood, a burnisher, or a leather frotton” (source). The process was arduous. Each block had to be hand cut, and there was no “press” available for use at the time.

A more artistic wood block

The Half-Blood Prints

Someone who is very knowledgeable, especially a college professor, is likely to be portrayed with a book about a favorite subject. Those who know a lot about several different topics is said to be "well-versed" (which I am assuming comes from a time before books, when bards would sing verses) or "well-read." Those who have an even more advanced knowledge that is mysterious or even mystical are also typically portrayed with a book, a book of spells.

If we see a depiction of Merlin, who lived before printed text existed, he would likely still have a book- and a rather large book at that. In addition to being highly expensive because of its size, such a book is worth even more because of the knowledge it contains. Clergymen, one of the most powerful class in the middle ages, always had another rather large book with them: the Bible, which although not a book of spells does have some similarities to one because of the super-human elements in both. Books have long been associated with both knowledge and power. But how does this concept change when books go from being hand-written to being printed?

To answer this question, I am going to do something incredibly post-medieval and post-Renaissance. I'm going to talk about our newest celebrity...