Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/09011_Field_TCGG T776.txt

Text File | 1996-04-10 | 984b | 16 lines

     Says Siebert (p. 25): “The Tudor policy of strict control
over the press in the interest of the safety of the state was
maintained throughout the sixteenth century.” It was inevitable
that with printing the sixteenth century should also witness “a
large increase in the powers—executive, legislative, and
judicial—of the Council (or Privy Council) at the expense of both
Parliament and the older courts, but to the distinct advantage
of the crown.” But as the book market enlarged and the habit
of much reading spread widely toward the end of the century,
the consumer revolt against central controls got ever stronger.
L. B. Wright’s splendid account of Middle-Class Culture in
Elizabethan England  provides an image of the complex uses of
print to foster many varieties of self-education and self-help. It
becomes obvious how the first age of readers was not merely
seeking diversion but instruction in methods of applied
knowledge.