Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/08704_Field_TCGG T469.txt

Text File | 1996-04-10 | 932b | 16 lines

     books of popular piety, to render, above all, the reading of
     these works more easily accessible to a very large public,
     such was one of the principal tasks of print in its
     beginnings.

     The largest public by far was for the medieval romances
of chivalry, almanacs (shepherds’ calendars) and, above all,
illustrated books of hours. Of the penetrating force of printing
in the shaping of market and capital organization, Febvre and
Martin have much to say. For the moment, it is relevant to
bring out here their stress on the early effort of the printers to
attain “homogenéité de la page” in spite of poor equilibrium of
types, and “in spite of defective fonts and in spite of precarious
lineality.” It is precisely these new effects which were still
insecure that would strike the age as having the utmost charge
of meaning and novelty of achievement. Homogeneity and