états très différents de celui où nous vivons.’ (p. I)

     It was learning from Chaytor how literary conventions are 
affected by the oral, written, or the printed forms, that 
suggested to me the need for The Gutenberg Galaxy . Medieval 
language and literature were somewhat in the state of the 
present movie or the TV show in that, in Chaytor’s words, it

     produced little formal criticism in our sense of the term. If 
     an author wished to know whether his work was good or 
     bad, he tried it on an audience; if it was approved, he was 
     soon followed by imitators. But authors were not 
     constrained by models or systems . . . the audience 
     wanted a story with plenty of action and movement, the 
     story, as a rule, showed no great command of character 
     drawing; this was left to the reciter for portrayal by