The forthcoming NEH Summer Seminar for College and University Teachers on “Printing and the Book During the Reformation: 1450-1650” will investigate the gradual transformation of the production, dissemination, and reading of British and Western European books during the two centuries that followed the invention of printing with moveable type on hand-operated presses circa 1450. We shall devote specific attention to the impact of the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Reformation (or Counter-Reformation) on the material nature of books and the book trade during a turbulent era of religious, intellectual, literary, and cultural change. Although we plan to devote considerable attention to vernacular traditions in England, we shall also investigate medieval antecedents, books in classical and contemporary languages, and parallel developments in continental Europe. In pursuing this investigation, the seminar plans to address three interlocking areas of study:
- book production technologies during the era of the hand-press
- the History of the Book and the history of reading as academic disciplines
- uses of printing during the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Reformation
Topics relevant to this investigation include the construction of books and materials used in book construction (e.g., shifts from scroll to codex and from parchment to paper); illustration, marketing, and dissemination of books; interpretive habits of readers who engaged in both silent and oral reading; and censorship. We will investigate the hierarchy of printing practices and reading skills associated with learned books in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, on the one hand, and vernacular publication, on the other hand. Study of multiple literacies would give rise to further inquiry into orality, aurality, and visuality. The advent of printing did not halt reading aloud within a communal context, nor did it prevent individuals illiterate even in the vernacular from looking at illustrations as an accompaniment to listening to oral readings.
This four-week program will take place from July 4 – July 30, 2022 at The Ohio State University (OSU) in Columbus, Ohio. The Rare Books and Manuscripts Library (RBML) at OSU is one of North America’s premier venues for the study of Reformation book history. It preserves more than 3,500 books printed before 1650, with exceptional strengths in the British and Western European Reformations and early printing (including one hundred books printed before 1500). Its rich collections will enable us to undertake the comparative examination of two significantly different insular and continental book cultures. We plan to consider multiple “Reformations” with respect not only to Protestant and Catholic book publication, but also to the gradual re-forming of the production, dissemination, and reading of books. We shall therefore also study the spread of scientific and geographic knowledge on the eve of revolutions in exploration and scientific discovery. Books under study include Vesalius’s On the Structure of the Human Body, very early European printed maps of North America, and more. In general, we shall meet in three three-hour-long weekly seminar meetings, including one weekly rare-book exhibition.
Our investigation will begin long before 1517, when Martin Luther framed his Ninety-Five Theses against alleged religious abuses. We will look back to medieval manuscript circulation and the birth of European printing as contexts for understanding how and why makers of books combined preexisting and new technologies leading up to and following Luther’s rebellion against the Church of Rome. Our investigation will extend from the printing of the Gutenberg Bible (c. 1455) to the flood of printing during the Wars of Religion (1520s to 1650s). We propose to consider the advent of printing with moveable type as a process that contributed to the transformation of the intellectual, cultural, social, and religious life of Europe. During its early centuries, the printing trade fostered a complicated intermingling of older devotional ideas, on the one hand, and new religious beliefs and practices, on the other. The clash between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism gave rise to an explosion in the publication of Bibles, religious books (especially sermons), and related literature.
We plan to scrutinize how the technology of the hand press, which remained constant from the time of Johann Gutenberg until the shift to industrial printing at the outset of the nineteenth century, influenced book production, publication, dissemination, and reading. We plan to enter the fruitful debate over whether the advent of printing represented an essential pre-condition for the Protestant Reformation, and the related problem of whether the impact of printing was revolutionary or evolutionary. These questions invite further inquiry into whether the emergence of Bible reading by a broad popular readership made Protestantism a “religion of the book” in contrast to traditional Catholicism, which drew criticism from religious reformers as a “religion of the eye” focused on elaborate rituals and devotion centered upon religious images and relics. Scholars who work within the discipline of the History of the Book are equally interested in exploring the relationship between material features of printed books and manuscripts and their intellectual contents. Drawing upon contemporary thought concerning cultural history and the reception of books by readers, this field of study has attracted teacher-scholars in many disciplines. Our consideration of key terms, methods, and arguments in book history will also assess ways in which scholars have addressed it for hundreds of years. Participants will have an opportunity to weigh the relative merits of older bibliographic approaches that emphasize book production and sales versus recent scholarship that stresses the culturally productive power of books and their use in different social spheres.
Issues under study will include printing and publishing practices, principles and methods of bibliographic investigation, and relationships between printed books as a medium (as Marshall McLuhan might say) and ways in which readers received their contents (the message) in the context of late medieval and early modern religion, history, literature, and art. Study of the material production of books affords a foundation for this program, but we will go beyond manufacture and marketing to consider the impact of books on the diverse mentalities of early modern readers.
Seminar participants will have time to work on individual study projects of their own devising. They will provide a basis for presentations concerning research findings and/or pedagogical applications throughout the seminar. At every opportunity, we shall explore ways of drawing on book history to enrich and enliven classes taught by seminar members. Bringing together academic concerns that conventional disciplinary boundaries often separate, this seminar will address how the study of early books can clarify and illustrate the subject matter of undergraduate courses in literature, history, religious studies, and other fields. Rare book librarians are also very welcome in our program.
Download a printer-friendly version of this page here.