Gutenberg’s printing press
Darnton explains that reading became widespread for men from all walks of life; for the commoner, reading became a social activity from workshops to taverns. For the educated man, reading conversely became a private experience, with small reading clubs, cabinets litteraires or Lesegsellshaften , providing a foundation for bourgeois culture in the 18th century. By 1800, one out of every 500 Germans belonged to a Lesegesellshaft . 7 England saw a vernacular revolution, with 89% of non-imported printed scripture being of the common word. 8 William Tyndale’s 1520’s translation of the Saint John Gospel begins fittingly aptly: ‘In the beginning was the word . ’ Over the 16 th century, England became an increasingly literate nation of scholars. The secularization that had been occurring across north- western Europe reflected a cultural, emotion-driven change. Secular literature and theatre, that would have massive influence on language that persists today, spurred by dramatists like Marlowe, Jonson and Shakespeare, could finally flourish under the new, enriched English, emulating the ‘elegant modernity’ of French and Italian tongues. This indisputably vernacular yet Latinized English had the potential for a virtually unlimited number of purposes. It could be used for authoritative religious instruction under Fisher and More, or it could be used to create modern literature like Spencer’s Faerie Queene and Milton’s Paradise Lost . Across western Europe, similar concentrated revolutions occurred, which led, among other things, to the creation of the modern novel. A story didn’t have to simply convey spectacle or evoke religious piety in the reader; they could now present moral discourse and philosophical discussions, and in doing so translate the writer’s words into personal interpretation. Spain saw a literary revolution; prose novels like Guzman de Alfarache in 1599, Don Quixote in 1605 and Historia de la Vida del Buscon in 1626 were intended for a sophisticated public, tasked with unlocking the meaning of the text placed in front of them. The latter of these novels gained a translation in France in 1633, where it was published in cheap paperback editions, making it a staple of popular literature. Other novels, like the anonymously published Life of Lazarillo De Tormes , were initially controversial in Catholic Spain owing to their vehemently anti-clerical content, with the titular protagonist suffering a life of indenture and slavery at the hands of cruel priests and deceptive chaplains. Much of the humour and irony in Lazarillo seems familiar to post-modern readers of pastiche; and Pilar del Carmen Tirado dissects this biting satire. The name of the protagonist directly alludes to the biblical Lazarus. Similarly, just as the biblical beggar reaches heaven in reward for his suffering, Lazarillo, who begins a pauper, finds himself in an earthly ‘ paradise ’ , parodically consisting of his spiritual death; an archetypical Biblical vagrant who ironically suffers at the hands of corrupt religious figures. Satire was a focal point in these new novels; Lazarillo’s Biblical parody, and Don Quixote’s humorous deconstruction of chivalric literature and culture served both to entertain, as m edieval courtly poetry had done before, and assess, much like Luther’s harsh appraisal of the old religious institution which had brought Europe out of the era of authority, and into a gradually modern era, where any concept, literal or abstract, could be questioned. This was the foundation of a new era of a fresh, literate mode of thinking. Although the invention of the movable printing press laid the foundation for the movement towards universal literacy within a given population, it still took several generations to produce a consistent prose style free of the effects of oral residue, allowing the marked decline of oral-based classical and religious literature during the 17 th and 18 th centuries. By the 19 th century, 70 to 80 percent of the books in German, English and American libraries came from the category of light fiction, 10 percent from history, biography and travel, and less
7 Burke (2001), 168. 8 Pettegree and Hall op cit ., 798.
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