HIST 1093 Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Rubrication, Calfskin, E-Book
Document Summary
A brief history of the book in europe; guidelines for looking at books as historical sources. Can tell us about trade, readers, and state power. Codex has been most popular in europe since it replaced the scroll. Digital books present major challenge to primacy of codex. Animal skin was the dominant form of printing codices in medieval europe. Paper making in italy in the late 1200s. Gutenberg switched over so he wouldn"t have to kill so many sheep as expensive as parchment. Large demand at all social levels for devotional works. Didn"t interrupt the primacy of the codex. News pages and songs became more popular. First print books created to resemble handwritten manuscripts. Book buyers tended to customize their own books. Didn"t intend for things to be circulated. As books became more widely available govts felt more need to crack down on books that weren"t desirable - especially if they challenged church doctrine.
