Looking Back From The Invention Of Printing

Michael Clanchy's From Memory to Written Record, first published in 1979, has shaped the study of medieval literacy. Apart from continuing to work on 'pragmatic literacy', he has also turned his attention to other forms of making, keeping, and using written texts. This book collates six articles since published, showing new directions in the field of medieval literacy and communication. The first two chapters--'Looking Back from the Invention of Printing' and 'Parchment and Paper: Manuscript Culture, 1100-1500 AD'--provide an overview of further work on medieval manuscript culture. The next four--'Images of Ladies with Prayer Books: What Do They Signify?'; 'An Icon of Literacy: The Depiction at Tuse of Jesus Going to School'; 'The ABC Primer: Was it in Latin or English?'; 'Did Mothers Teach Their Children to Read?'--highlight a new interest in gender that has reviewed earlier ideas on literacy. Featuring 49 colour illustrations, the book also includes an Introduction, Bibliography, and Index.

This book is an introduction to the life and work of Johannes Gutenberg, the man who invented the printing press. Gutenberg has been called the "Man of the Millennium" by Time-Life Magazine and others. In the mid-15th century he developed the first practical system for making movable type. His invention allowed books to be mass produced for the first time in history. This book contains a wealth of information about Gutenberg and his invention. It has many fascinating photographs and illustrations, including a simplified schematic that shows how Gutenberg made his movable metal type. Today we take books for granted. But before Gutenberg's printing press, books were a luxury only the wealthy could afford. Gutenberg's invention changed our world forever. The ability to reproduce books efficiently and economically launched humanity into a new age of information, education and enlightenment for the masses. This is the story of a remarkable man and his magnificent machine.

A Cultural History of Education in the Medieval Age presents essays that examine the following key themes of the period: church, religion and morality; knowledge, media and communications; children and childhood; family, community and sociability; learners and learning; teachers and teaching; literacies; and life histories. The medieval world was a rich blend of cultures and religions within which individuals were shaped and schooled. Men and women learned, taught, worked, fought, and prayed in social contexts that witnessed an expansion of literacy and learning. The chapters in this volume illustrate the extent to which medieval education formed the foundation of the modern educational enterprise. An essential resource for researchers, scholars, and students in history, literature, culture, and education.

Upon its invention in the mid-1400s, the printing press instantly became a revolutionary device. It introduced literacy to the masses and led Europe out of the Middle Ages. This book explores the press' exciting history, the social and political conditions in place at the time Johannes Gutenberg invented it, and the changes the invention wrought afterward. It traces the evolution of moveable type and information dissemination up to modern electronic communications technology, examining the positive and negative effects of these developments, both in the past and on democracy and humankind today. This book will give readers a new appreciation for the written word, whether it is printed on paper or displayed on a screen.

This book breaks new grounds in the scholarship of archival science, providing information of nearly 200 authors. This is the first book that describes in one publication the intellectual contributions of all major archival authors in bibliographic context.

Takes in a wonderful diversity of things."-Nature. Now available in paperback, this final volume in the trilogy Language/Writing/Reading traces the complete story of reading from the time when symbols first acquired meaning through to the electronic texts of the digital age.

A full-scale historical treatment of the advent of printing and its importance as an agent of change, first published in 1980.

Anxieties about the fate of reading in the digital age reveal how deeply our views of the moral and intellectual benefits of reading are tied to print. These views take root in a conception of reading as an immersive activity, exemplified by the experience of "losing oneself in a book." Against the backdrop of digital distraction and fragmentation, such immersion leads readers to become more focused, collected, and empathetic. How did we come to see the printed book as especially suited to deliver this experience? Print-based reading practices have historically included a wide range of modes, not least the disjointed scanning we associate today with electronic text. In the context of religious practice, literacy's benefits were presumed to lie in such random-access retrieval, facilitated by indexical tools like the numbering of Biblical chapters and verses. It was this didactic, hunt-and-peck reading that bound readers to communities. Exploring key evolutions in print in 17th- and 18th-century France, from typeface, print runs, and format to punctuation and the editorial adaptation of manuscript and oral forms in print, this book argues that typographic developments upholding the transparency of the printed medium were decisive for the ascendancy of immersive reading as a dominant paradigm that shaped modern perspectives on reading and literacy.