The Printing Press as an Agent of Change:
Ahern, John
If the nation remains mobilized to among the individual states.(In the latter lution will determine the future of the...
...and this Celtic en- physical punishment of children come on "Irish inter-personal relationships" clave, with its history, customs and pre- from the villagers themselves...
...She is less successful "peaceful" art...
...She gave the same tests guilt and more conflicts through rejection Univ...
...proved wrong, many assumed incor- hardt's familiardivision ofEuropean his- Eisenstein's long account of the intirectly that his very subject--how the tory into a Middle Ages and a Renais- mate connections between print and the means of communications shape the cul- sance, but wisely concedes that these Reformation and Counter-Reformation tures that use them--was false, or not misnomers may still prove useful...
...communal values while being urged by most of Scripture was a late medieval The last and longest part of this the government to pursue modernization forgery...
...Her disproportionately high numbers of ways ofdealing with print, and were each publisher would do well to persuade her lonely bachelor farmers, the heirs who harmed and deformed by the unforesee- to publish a slim version ofthis work for could not escape...
...set, $49.50, 794 pp...
...She is not afraid ofdetail...
...In Elizabeth L. Eisenstein money in copying lengthy manuscripts The Gutenberg Galaxy, you will re- ~tmbrJdge, 2 vol...
...An anthropologist in Ireland Self-esteem and self-acceptance is further injured by a rejection ofthe body SAINTS, SCHOLARS, AND SCHIZO- anomie and mental illness...
...Something utterly new night...
...new rigidity and uniformity into church book she indicates several dozen topics Marriage rates decrease and the populadiscipline...
...After four centuries we are only Italy from 1470 to, say, 1570 would illness...
...How long probably hold a lot of surprises...
...Protestants found that the McLuhan seemed too ready to reduce lostand found...
...academic leaders will have tied eminence these presses depend on the continuing in that area to the notion of the United tribute than SUNY...
...She provides original observa- of authority and texts were radically level-headed examination of the ways in tions about the "discontinuity" ofMan- changed by printing, thus preparing the which print transformed Europe...
...of California, $14.95, 245 pp...
...Print petitive and unconvincing...
...More than it may be because certain persuasive system has received no more handsome on clever management or new markets...
...The resecondary school...
...When Nancy Scheper-Hughes comed in pub, parlor and parish, and the stays with her descriptive material she Hughes gives instances of extraordinarynurturance on the part of both men an husband was hired as a teacher in the emerges as a perceptive, witty observer women in tradition and folklore...
...In her fascinating There is a scramble n o t to be the son who for the heavily censored, lucrative analysis of the Galileo case, Catholic will have to inherit the land and be Catholic markets of Southern Europe...
...Eisenstein cites the example of a and Boccaccio who wrote for large lay paranoid eighteenth century Jesuit, (who 25 May t97(~.: 309 sounds like a figure from a c o n t e by Vol- will it take us to realize what television is tradictory pressures to stay with the old taire as rewritten by Borges) who thought doing to us...
...If the nation remains mobilized to among the individual states.(In the latter lution will determine the future of the some extent around the idea of research, connection, the University of California American university presses...
...Her were obvious to all, the only official vernarrative of modern history since the persistent use of that word, rather than sion...
...Bologna, and which Dante (whom Pethim a little...
...obscurantism and fear of print again oc- doomed to poverty, loneliness and the The church's suppression of dangerous celibate service of old parents...
...Protestant printers abled men of science to create what we fate of those who inherit is depressing...
...the lined the pockets of the very men who village girls, along with the best and printed the hated vernacular bibles...
...The family was wel- vincing...
...is that the Irish repress and shame their children through the use of physical punishment and verbal aggressiveness...
...Eisenstein kinds ofManuscript Culture, which even a Latin translation, whose inadequacies has an intimate familiarity with the great she tendsto dismiss as "monkish...
...She boasts an unsurpassed the more usual "monastic" lends a feeling for the strengths and weakness of pleasant Gibbonesque tang to her prose...
...No mania to Closer attention must be paid to Dante tury...
...For fifteen Republic ofLetters which print had made relations...
...In fact no v ou!d not be derogatory everyone sent dilemmas, becomes a reality need- actual observations are offered of excescooperated with the usual Irish zest for ing no suspension of disbelief...
...These cultural factors interS i d n e y C a l l n h n n ventories...
...to exploit for non-utilitarian, cultural moprophecy of the demise of print was She effectively demolishes Burck- tives...
...She beganvisiting the countypsychiatric hospitalto and sexuality which distorts maternal PHRENICS: nurturance and relationships between the MENTAL ILLNESS IN RURAL IRELAND interview and give projective tests to the sexes...
...Petrarch marks the Everyone since Luther has understood anyone in touch with modern scholarship apogee of a new lay Manuscript Culture that without printing there would have knows that McLuhan extended and that had begun with Dante and soon lan- been no Reformation, but no one before synthesized important insights of a host guished...
...muddled and filled with internal contrahusband and three children under five, The result is fascinating, provocative dictions...
...undergraduate use...
...for the joy of it...
...Women texts facilitated their circulation, and cupy center stage.At times the book is long-winded, re- will not marry into theharsh farm life...
...I would not want to Scheper-Hughes successfully portrays And yet, at the beginning, popes and be without her massive documentation, the cultural double binds of the society bishops and reformers all welcomed but her ideas are too important to be left and the strategies used to come to terms Gutenberg's invention as a "divine" and in this forbidding format...
...In the course of the seek success in the cities or in America...
...Schepertopics of the death of the countryside...
...Conrad Arensberg...
...Erasmus belongs to the new Eisenstein had ever worked out the interof traditional academics...
...Religious beliefs encourage more Nancy Scheper-Hughes young patients...
...We see sive punishment...
...While arguing for an Irish amlived fora year in a small seacoast village and fun to read, but only partially con- bivalence toward children, Scheperin western Ireland...
...A distrust of Scripture, utterly 15th century...
...Until the advent of Scripture and the papacy in the church...
...From the material she has tried act with the socioeconomic pressures to to construct an ambitious analysis ofthe produce high rates of mental illness...
...risked being dismissed as crackpots...
...The basic thrust of her argument beginning to understand print...
...The farms printing led to the creation ofthe Index of tire second volume, shows how print en- are so small and the land so poorthat the Forbidden Books...
...consulted that list when choosing titles call modern science...
...Openly obscurantist knowledge that his brand of determinism badly we need to reexamine the various Catholics begged the questionby making could not explain everything...
...After the village was of an equally engaging group ofpeople...
...uscript Culture, even though it is not the way for the great debates on the roles of Elizabeth Eisenstein has written that subject of her book...
...able consequences of their decisions...
...to her husband's students as well as as- of contraception and acceptance of total signing them essay topics and value in- institutions...
...The pubs and Catholics and Protestants...
...Gradually Nancy Scheper- how much things have changed since the psychiatrist writing in the newspaper are Hughes decided to focus on the related classic study of the Irish countryman by cited as the main sources...
...they turned up, leading to division and McLuhan appeared unwilling to ac- Eisenstein's book makes clear how loss of faith...
...foreign to Catholic tradition, became partof Catholic culture in the sixteenth centhe ways in which historians have ex-plained the great changes...
...Since McLuhan, rarch and Erasmus do not belong to the monplaces Catholics and Protestants enpeople who study similar subjects have same age, no matter what you call it, or tertain about those unlovely episodes...
...One foresees, with the pressure...
...We feel the con- Hughes shows little familiarity with the Commonweah : 3 IO...
...When his gleeful contradiction, is enviable...
...old novels and an Irish goqd talk...
...book...
...The two themselves--an index of how much she the psychiatric hospital are filled with groups evolved separate, contrasting had to exclude from consideration...
...I N 1975 Nancy Scheper-Hughes, a high rates of schizophrenia, alcoholism The evidence for this argument is young anthropologist accompanied by and stress diseases in western Ireland...
...He hid his scholarship under Her eye for the telling oddity, the crucial rarch imitated and loathed) was the first the prophet's mantle...
...In restrospect, it is easy to see that had begun, but a century earlier in the McLuhan's inability to love the printed find laws or principles ofuniversal valid- advanced forms of literacy evolved in word he wrote about and used blinded ity drives her...
...A truly childrearing, sexual asceticism and relidifficulty of using new technology detailed study of printing and society in gious commitment contribute to mental wisely...
...She shows how people's ideas years we have been waiting for a deep possible...
...But whatever gim-micks are used, the question of research appeal of research as an idea in the States as a great power or even to rivalry is pre-eminently thequestion whosereso- American mind...
...Books: THE REVOLUTION OF PRINT T HIS IS THE BOOK that some people THE PUNTING PRESS AS AN AGENT OF urban audiences, persuading hardnosed think Marshall McLuhan wrote fif- CHANGE Italian bourgeois to invest time and teen years ago, but they are wrong...
...Print divided the church into which deserve entire books to tion declines even more...
...Eisenstein's analysis and gladly so, a spate ofbooks following when trying to show that patterns of Irish prompts humble, grim reflections on the on the paths she has indicated...
...ported protests and complaints about assured that the anthropological research The writing is good...
...Like some Marxist historians, so preserving, the texts it had recovered...
...Yet how you define it...
...Pet- will upset many of the pious comworth examination...
...The aggressiveProtestant use of monumental study, constituting the en- and economic productivity...
...print, manuscripts were forever being The tale is sad...
...Ever since Burckhardt member, oracular utterances in heavy we have accepted too easily Petrarch's type studded prose that read like a bril- J o h n A / t e r n insinuation that something utterly new liant academic talking wildly late at began with him...
...The immen-sity of the project explains and justifiesbrightestsons, flee the isolated region to also encouraged the introduction of a these minor faults...
...Men in the sixteenth cen- more they studied Holy Writ, in an imcomplex historical phenomena to illust- tury consolidated the Classical Revival passibned search for an authentic text, rations of his theories of communica- of thefourteenth century by printing, and the more problems and inconsistencies tions...
Vol. 106 • May 1979 • No. 10
