(64)

Aretino, like Rabelais and Cervantes, proclaimed the meaning of 
Typography as Gargantuan, Fantastic, Supra-human.

*     The outering or uttering of mind under manuscript 
conditions, was, as we have seen, very restricted. The poet or 
author was far from being able to use the vernacular as a 
public address system. With print the discovery of the 
vernacular as a PA system was immediate. The figure of Pietro 
Aretino (1492­1556) will serve to illuminate this sudden 
development. He also illustrates the sudden reversal of the 
private self-accusation, of the confessional, into public 
denunciation of others. Aretino was known in his time as “the 
scourge of Princes”: