Welcome to the course blog for English 427: Literature of the Later Eighteenth Century.
Didst thou ever see a white bear? cried my father, turning his head round to Trim, who stood at the back of his chair:——No, an' please your honor, replied the corporal.——But thou could'st discourse about one, Trim, said my father, in case of need?——How is it possible, brother, quoth my uncle Toby, if the corporal never saw one?——'Tis the fact I want, said my father—and the possibility of it, is as follows. (Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy V:xlii.)
Sunday, March 6, 2011
For Credit: Print Culture
This week's topic is "Print Culture."
What does that mean?
How has the term been used in other English courses you've taken?
Offer some opening thoughts--or respond to a classmate's ideas--here.
Deadline: Monday (3/7), start of class.
5 comments:
217
said...
I recently learned about print culture in English 255 as a way of creating a community amongst readers. I understand it as a culture has been created when people read same texts, thus they have been exposed to the same ideas and share something in common. It does not always have to matter what background you come from- the fact you've read the same material can be unifying. Also, it creates an "imagined community" because all the readers do not know each other. I could be reading Shandy in Champaign, and there's another class studying the same text in Wyoming! Benedict Anderson is a scholar I learned of who developed the argument of print culture as an imagined but limited community. There are imagined connections between people that will never meet face to face and printed material is central to achieving this. Anderson says nations can be invented this way. There's limits because no matter how large a nation may be, there is no nation/community that images themselves as the same to the rest of mankind/other nations. For example, printed material in favor of the American Revolution helped distinguish America as a separate nation from Britain. I could imagine a smaller example though: i.e. avid readers of Gothic literature can form their own community. I wonder if later 18th century text attempted to unite people? If so, under what circumstances? I.e. Was it political?
Print Culture basically speaks to a period as early as the medieval time, where individual and collective thoughts were organized in a way that transformed the oral method of storytelling, spreading news, brainstorming into a visual aid. The invention of the first printing press made this push toward the period of modernity possible. In fact, Johannes Gutenberg became famous, because of his contributions of creating the movable type printing device. Thus, allowing, maybe his invention is even responsible for spreading Christianity to other countries; since, he his major work consisted of producing the first mass production of the bible. However, I still pose the question have we as C21 spectacles taken advantage of the phenomenon, by almost completely disregarding the value of print, especially in the form of books, as we play with our electronic gadgets of various sorts. Or did we simply expand on it?
217, I like what you said about an imagined community and the unifying aspect of print culture. In doing all the research for this unit, our group has found that the culture of print culture does have a lot to do with the audience reading the literature. In some ways, class distinctions get blurred because everyone has access to the same material. It gave the opportunity for everyone to be part of the same experience regardless of location, class, or politics. For me, print culture has to do with the culture that surrounds the printed texts. That may sound very simple, but I am referring to the discussion, the knowlege, and relationships that stem between people in response to reading and having access to printed documents.
I have never heard of print culture, as a specific term, before this class. But, it gives a definition and a context for a lot of ideas I was already aware of about people and their exposure to printed documents. It is fascinating to think about the numerious ways mass publication of printed sources influenced the thoughts and actions of people and society.
I know that I've come across the term "print culture" before, but I'd never really given it much thought until this semester in my English 461 class "Gender Formation and Fairytales." In this class, we talk about how originally fairytales were an oral tradition that were passed on from generation to generation, and then men like Charles Perrault and the Grimm brothers wrote them down, and then these tales were eventually turned into printed media. Now I look at "print culture" in terms of how it has shaped the original tale or story that it is depicting; in my other English class we talked about how perhaps stories were much more fluid and changed from person to person in oral tellings, but now in print they became this stiff and structured thing.
I don't think of print culture as being an entirely negative thing, for printed material is able to reach a wider audience, but I think its interesting to think about how stories and such have shifted over time, as currently we are moving away from print culture towards a more electronic age, and it will be interesting to see how our notions of printed material will change in the future. I definitely do not think that print culture has as large an effect on our society as it did in the 18th century; things like the Kindle and Blogs and even online news resources are currently making the printed word nearly obsolete.
As some of the others so far, I never really remember hearing the term "print culture" directly discussed in any of my classes. After reading some of these responses though, I realize it is a concept that has been discussed in many of my previous English courses. The first class that pops to my mind was my English 300 (Shakespeare). For this class we went to the Rare Books Library and actually saw original texts from that time period. During those times, owning print was not common place. It was very expensive and time consuming to created printed materials. You could not just mass produce them as we can now. There were also fewer choices for entertainment (no tv, radio, internet, video games). I think this term simply refers to the culture associated with printed materials, how people react to the text. With these new ways to read, especially things like the Nook or kindle, actual printed material are become outdated. This can be seen as good, from an environmental perspective, yet it is making the print culture drastically altered.
5 comments:
I recently learned about print culture in English 255 as a way of creating a community amongst readers. I understand it as a culture has been created when people read same texts, thus they have been exposed to the same ideas and share something in common. It does not always have to matter what background you come from- the fact you've read the same material can be unifying. Also, it creates an "imagined community" because all the readers do not know each other. I could be reading Shandy in Champaign, and there's another class studying the same text in Wyoming! Benedict Anderson is a scholar I learned of who developed the argument of print culture as an imagined but limited community. There are imagined connections between people that will never meet face to face and printed material is central to achieving this. Anderson says nations can be invented this way. There's limits because no matter how large a nation may be, there is no nation/community that images themselves as the same to the rest of mankind/other nations. For example, printed material in favor of the American Revolution helped distinguish America as a separate nation from Britain. I could imagine a smaller example though: i.e. avid readers of Gothic literature can form their own community. I wonder if later 18th century text attempted to unite people? If so, under what circumstances? I.e. Was it political?
Print Culture basically speaks to a period as early as the medieval time, where individual and collective thoughts were organized in a way that transformed the oral method of storytelling, spreading news, brainstorming into a visual aid. The invention of the first printing press made this push toward the period of modernity possible. In fact, Johannes Gutenberg became famous, because of his contributions of creating the movable type printing device. Thus, allowing, maybe his invention is even responsible for spreading Christianity to other countries; since, he his major work consisted of producing the first mass production of the bible. However, I still pose the question have we as C21 spectacles taken advantage of the phenomenon, by almost completely disregarding the value of print, especially in the form of books, as we play with our electronic gadgets of various sorts. Or did we simply expand on it?
217, I like what you said about an imagined community and the unifying aspect of print culture. In doing all the research for this unit, our group has found that the culture of print culture does have a lot to do with the audience reading the literature. In some ways, class distinctions get blurred because everyone has access to the same material. It gave the opportunity for everyone to be part of the same experience regardless of location, class, or politics. For me, print culture has to do with the culture that surrounds the printed texts. That may sound very simple, but I am referring to the discussion, the knowlege, and relationships that stem between people in response to reading and having access to printed documents.
I have never heard of print culture, as a specific term, before this class. But, it gives a definition and a context for a lot of ideas I was already aware of about people and their exposure to printed documents. It is fascinating to think about the numerious ways mass publication of printed sources influenced the thoughts and actions of people and society.
I know that I've come across the term "print culture" before, but I'd never really given it much thought until this semester in my English 461 class "Gender Formation and Fairytales." In this class, we talk about how originally fairytales were an oral tradition that were passed on from generation to generation, and then men like Charles Perrault and the Grimm brothers wrote them down, and then these tales were eventually turned into printed media. Now I look at "print culture" in terms of how it has shaped the original tale or story that it is depicting; in my other English class we talked about how perhaps stories were much more fluid and changed from person to person in oral tellings, but now in print they became this stiff and structured thing.
I don't think of print culture as being an entirely negative thing, for printed material is able to reach a wider audience, but I think its interesting to think about how stories and such have shifted over time, as currently we are moving away from print culture towards a more electronic age, and it will be interesting to see how our notions of printed material will change in the future. I definitely do not think that print culture has as large an effect on our society as it did in the 18th century; things like the Kindle and Blogs and even online news resources are currently making the printed word nearly obsolete.
As some of the others so far, I never really remember hearing the term "print culture" directly discussed in any of my classes. After reading some of these responses though, I realize it is a concept that has been discussed in many of my previous English courses.
The first class that pops to my mind was my English 300 (Shakespeare). For this class we went to the Rare Books Library and actually saw original texts from that time period. During those times, owning print was not common place. It was very expensive and time consuming to created printed materials. You could not just mass produce them as we can now. There were also fewer choices for entertainment (no tv, radio, internet, video games).
I think this term simply refers to the culture associated with printed materials, how people react to the text. With these new ways to read, especially things like the Nook or kindle, actual printed material are become outdated. This can be seen as good, from an environmental perspective, yet it is making the print culture drastically altered.
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