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The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe

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The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe

By: Elizabeth L. Eisenstein
Narrated by: Jonathan Cox
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About this listen

In 1979, Elizabeth Eisenstein provided the first full-scale treatment of the 15th-century printing revolution in the West in her monumental two-volume work, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change. This abridged edition, after summarizing the initial changes introduced by the establishment of printing shops, goes on to discuss how printing challenged traditional institutions and affected three major cultural movements: the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the rise of modern science. Also included is a later essay which aims to demonstrate that the cumulative processes created by printing are likely to persist despite the recent development of new communications technologies.

©1983, 2005 Cambridge University Press (P)2021 Upfront Books Europe History History & Culture Technology & Society Technology Modern Europe

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Eisenstein's book keeps being referenced by those discussing the changes in communications, particularly more skeptical McLuhan-ites. That's how I got here, and it was very worthwhile to read with the internet and AI in mind.

But this narrator keeps getting in the way. Not only does he struggle with strange historical proper nouns, but words like "idiosyncracies" (which Eisenstein may use to much) are mangled and make a discordant note every few minutes. Eisenstein often makes long complex sentences, especially with comparisons, which the narrator misconstrues and so mis-emphasises. A phrase like "from Roger Bacon to Francis Bacon" shouldn't be emphasised on the final "bacon"! The reader has to reconsider, and reemphasis to get the sense. Finally, the reader emphasises each sentence like its the urgent nail-in-the-coffin end of an argument. Exhausting.

Let's have a new audiobook, this time of the unabridged title.

Narrator in the way of a fascinating book

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The book itself is a classic of this field of scholarship, but the performance, though professional enough, is not of the best. Admittedly it is probably not easy to read a work of 20th century academia so as to engage the reader — still, the narrator’s atonality is disheartening. It is not that his tone is flat or unenthusiastic, but that he reads every single sentence in the same identical way. There are also a few embarrassing mispronunciations — Italian names such as “piccolomini” (spoken as if with a soft “c”), and “sui generis” pronounced as if it were French (!). These are infrequent and are unlikely to impact the listener’s pleasure; the repetitiveness of the reader’s speech-patterns, however, is sure to.

Not a great performance

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