Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/08914_Field_TCGG T679.txt

Text File | 1996-04-10 | 919b | 16 lines

cent, are in Latin. But just as the printed book had routed the
manuscript between 1500 and 1510, so the vernacular was
soon to supersede Latin. For it was inevitable that a larger
market existed for the printed book within the bounds of a
national speech than the international, clerical elite of Latin
readers could ever muster. Book production was a heavy capital
venture and needed the utmost markets to survive. Febvre and
Martin write (p. 479): “Thus the sixteenth century, era of the
renewal of ancient culture, was the time when Latin began to
lose ground. From 1530 certainly this trend is clear. The
reading public . . . becomes therefore more and more a lay
public—often of women and the middle class among whom
many were not familiar with Latin.”

     The problem of “what the public wants” is central to
printing from the first. But just as book format long retained