LEADER 05052nam 2200841 a 450 001 9910821881603321 005 20240418024033.0 010 $a1-283-89745-8 010 $a0-8122-0467-0 024 7 $a10.9783/9780812204674 035 $a(CKB)3240000000064710 035 $a(OCoLC)794700591 035 $a(CaPaEBR)ebrary10641594 035 $a(SSID)ssj0000606322 035 $a(PQKBManifestationID)11406087 035 $a(PQKBTitleCode)TC0000606322 035 $a(PQKBWorkID)10581633 035 $a(PQKB)10650809 035 $a(SSID)ssj0000810799 035 $a(PQKBManifestationID)12363662 035 $a(PQKBTitleCode)TC0000810799 035 $a(PQKBWorkID)10846405 035 $a(PQKB)11291549 035 $a(MdBmJHUP)muse8275 035 $a(DE-B1597)449349 035 $a(OCoLC)1013954230 035 $a(OCoLC)979740936 035 $a(DE-B1597)9780812204674 035 $a(Au-PeEL)EBL3441759 035 $a(CaPaEBR)ebr10641594 035 $a(CaONFJC)MIL420995 035 $a(MiAaPQ)EBC3441759 035 $a(EXLCZ)993240000000064710 100 $a20100507d2011 uy 0 101 0 $aeng 135 $aurcn||||||||| 181 $ctxt 182 $cc 183 $acr 200 10$aDivine art, infernal machine $ethe reception of printing in the West from first impressions to the sense of an ending /$fElizabeth L. Eisenstein 205 $a1st ed. 210 $aPhiladelphia $cUniversity of Pennsylvania Press$dc2011 215 $a1 online resource (383 p.) 225 0 $aMaterial Texts 225 0$aMaterial texts 300 $aBibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph 311 $a0-8122-4280-7 311 $a0-8122-2216-4 320 $aIncludes bibliographical references and index. 327 $aFirst impressions -- After Luther : civil war in Christendom -- After Erasmus : propelling the knowledge industry -- Eighteenth-century attitudes -- The zenith of print culture (nineteenth century) -- The newspaper press : the end of books? -- Toward the sense of an ending (fin de sie?cle to the present). 330 $aThere is a longstanding confusion of Johann Fust, Gutenberg's one-time business partner, with the notorious Doctor Faustus. The association is not surprising to Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, for from its very early days the printing press was viewed by some as black magic. For the most part, however, it was welcomed as a "divine art" by Western churchmen and statesmen. Sixteenth-century Lutherans hailed it for emancipating Germans from papal rule, and seventeenth-century English radicals viewed it as a weapon against bishops and kings. While an early colonial governor of Virginia thanked God for the absence of printing in his colony, a century later, revolutionaries on both sides of the Atlantic paid tribute to Gutenberg for setting in motion an irreversible movement that undermined the rule of priests and kings. Yet scholars continued to praise printing as a peaceful art. They celebrated the advancement of learning while expressing concern about information overload.In Divine Art, Infernal Machine, Eisenstein, author of the hugely influential The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, has written a magisterial and highly readable account of five centuries of ambivalent attitudes toward printing and printers. Once again, she makes a compelling case for the ways in which technological developments and cultural shifts are intimately related. Always keeping an eye on the present, she recalls how, in the nineteenth century, the steam press was seen both as a giant engine of progress and as signaling the end of a golden age. Predictions that the newspaper would supersede the book proved to be false, and Eisenstein is equally skeptical of pronouncements of the supersession of print by the digital.The use of print has always entailed ambivalence about serving the muses as opposed to profiting from the marketing of commodities. Somewhat newer is the tension between the perceived need to preserve an ever-increasing mass of texts against the very real space and resource constraints of bricks-and-mortar libraries. Whatever the multimedia future may hold, Eisenstein notes, our attitudes toward print will never be monolithic. For now, however, reports of its death are greatly exaggerated. 410 0$aMaterial texts. 606 $aPrinting$zEurope$xHistory 606 $aPrinting$xSocial aspects$zEurope$xHistory 606 $aBooks$zEurope$xHistory 607 $aEurope$xIntellectual life 610 $aCultural Studies. 610 $aEuropean History. 610 $aHistory. 610 $aLiterature. 610 $aWorld History. 615 0$aPrinting$xHistory. 615 0$aPrinting$xSocial aspects$xHistory. 615 0$aBooks$xHistory. 676 $a686.2094 700 $aEisenstein$b Elizabeth L$0136772 801 0$bMiAaPQ 801 1$bMiAaPQ 801 2$bMiAaPQ 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910821881603321 996 $aDivine art, infernal machine$94056720 997 $aUNINA