<http://www.f.waseda.jp/glaw/TEMP/ITES-Novels&Newspapers.ppt>
SILS - Spring 2013
CU206
INTRODUCTION TO
EUROPEAN STUDIES
Week 10: European Print Culture
Novels, Newspapers, and Modernity
Graham Law
<http://www.f.waseda.jp/glaw/TEMP/ITES-Novels&Newspapers.ppt>
Structure of today’s class

Three preliminary questions


The Gutenburg revolution (Marshall McLuhan)
Print and modernity
(Benedict Anderson)
The rise of the novel
(Franco Moretti)
The rise of the newspaper
(Richard Altick)
Novels and newspapers
(Graham Law)

Question & Answer Session



Graham Law
CU206: Week 12: European Print Culture
You can download this Powerpoint file from:
<http://www.f.waseda.jp/glaw/TEMP/ITES-Novels&Newspapers.ppt>
The essay titles for this unit are:
1) What were the consequences of the
“Gutenburg Revolution” in Europe.
OR
2) Was there a “Print Revolution”
in East Asia?
Some preliminary questions



Where and when was PRINTING first
invented?
Where and when was the first NOVEL
published?
Where and when was the first
NEWSPAPER published?
Discuss the three questions
with your neighbours
What Gutenburg didn’t invent

Printing
– natural?

Woodblock printing
– Egypt C6th? (on cloth)

Woodblock letter printing
– China C8th? (on paper)

Movable wooden type
– China C13th?

Movable metal type
– Korea C14th
What did Gutenburg create?

Johann
Gutenburg
(c.1400-68)
Mainz, Germany

movable type printing in Europe
the age of mechanical reproduction?
the beginnings of the modern world?


The Gutenburg revolution

The Gutenburg Galaxy (1962)

There Marshall McLuhan
linked Gutenburg’s creation
of Renaissance “typographic man”
to the rise of -–
–
–
–
–

linked
man” to
the Reformation
modern science & technology
industrial capitalism
mass education & literacy
democracy
cf. E.L. Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of
Change (1979)
Print and modernity




Benedict Anderson Imagined
Communities (1983)
“Reflections on the Origin and
Spread of Nationalism”
“print-capitalism, which made it possible
for rapidly growing numbers of people to
think about themselves, and to relate
themselves to others, in profoundly new
ways” (p. 36)
the novel and the newspaper: “two forms
of imagining which . . . provided the
technical means for ‘re-presenting’ the
kind of imagined community that is the
nation” (pp. 24-5)
The rise of the novel (1)



The mediaeval romance and the novel
Early 17th-century Spain
Cervantes Don Quixote (1605)
Who is represented in the pictures? Who drew them?
The rise of the novel (2)



The tale of the pícaro (rogue) and the novel
Early 18th-century England
Defoe Robinson Crusoe (1719)
Who is represented
in the picture?
The novel and the nation



Franco Moretti
Atlas of the European Novel
(1998)
“Village, court, city, valley, universe
can all be visually represented -- in
paintings, for instance: but the nationstate? Well, the nation-state … found
the novel. And vice-versa: the novel
found the nation-state. And being the
only symbolic form that could
represent it, the novel became an
essential component of our modern
culture.” (p. 17)
The rise of the newspaper (1)


Corantos [foreign news pamphlets]
Early C17th Italy, France, Holland, England, ...
The rise of the newspaper (2)



Large-circulation daily national newspapers
Mid-19th-century France, USA, ...
Tabloid size, sensational style ...
The newspaper and the nation



Richard D. Altick
The English Common Reader
(1957)
“Above all, the democratizing of
reading led to a far-reaching revolution
in English culture. No longer were
books and periodicals written chiefly for
the comfortable few; more and more as
the [19th] century progressed, it was the
ill-educated mass audience with pennies
in its pocket that called the tune to
which writers and editors danced.” (p.
5)
Novels &
Newspapers (1)

Novels in newspapers
– roman feuilleton in France, ...

Novelists as journalists
– Charles Dickens, …

Newspapers in novels
– The media in War of the Worlds, ...

Topicalities in novels
– The “New Woman” in late C19th fiction, ...
– Cf. Altick, The Presence of the Present (1991)
Novels &
Newspapers (2)




Graham Law
Serializing Fiction in the
Victorian Press (2000)
Bagehot on Charles Dickens:
“Mr Dickens’s genius is especially suited to the delineation of city life. London
is like a newspaper. Everything is there, and everything is disconnected. There
is every kind of person in some houses; but there is no more connection
between the houses than between the neighbours in the lists of “births,
marriages, and deaths.” As we change from the broad leader to the squalid
police-report, we pass a corner and we are in a changed world. This is
advantageous to Mr Dicken’s genius. . . . He describes London like a special
correspondent for Posterity.” (National Review, October 1858)
Over to You
Question & Answer
Session
Graham Law
CU206: Week 12: European Print Culture
You can download this Powerpoint file from:
<http://www.f.waseda.jp/glaw/TEMP/ITES-Novels&Newspapers.ppt>
The essay titles for this unit are:
1) What were the consequences of the
“Gutenburg Revolution” in Europe.
OR
2) Was there a “Print Revolution”
in East Asia?