The history of books concerns itself with the interaction between the development of books and texts and the cultural and social factors that both influence and are influenced by this development. One aspect of book history is the availability of books and the literacy of readers, both of which have been strongly dependent on social and cultural factors such as technology and authority. This essay will focus on the way in which literacy and book availability have been influenced by the form, creation and distribution of books, as well as the authoritative social and cultural factors that both enable and disable readership. According to Rachel Karchmer there is a close relationship between literacy and technology (442), which becomes clear …show more content…
According to Mary Hammond the development of literacy requires certain basic conditions “such as access to education and to reading material, free time, […] and often the permission of whichever authority controls these things” (Hammond 238). The influence of authorities on matters such as book availability and literacy has been great throughout history. An example of this can be religious authorities, as was the case in England in the 14th century, when John Wycliffe translated parts of the bible into vernacular Middle English, an act that was considered heresy by the Catholic Church, who considered Latin to be the language of Christianity, as described in Hammond (238). Through his translations, Wycliffe enabled ordinary people to read and study the bible and so in this sense cultural factors – in this case being a vernacular language – increased the availability of books. On the other hand, another cultural factor – the Church – disabled this development by prohibiting …show more content…
One of the most important 16th century editions of the bible even included a preface in which the ideal of literacy in the English vernacular for the English people ("Thomas Cranmer's Preface To The Great Bible"). According to Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, author of the preface, the goal of allowing of the bible to be read by everyone was that every reader of English “may in this book learn all things what they ought to believe, what they ought to do, and what they should not do, as well concerning almighty God, as also concerning themselves and all other” ("Thomas Cranmer's Preface To The Great Bible"), thus allowing people to interpret their religion as part of what Hammond calls their “devotional practice” (238). These developments of the Bible in the English vernacular show the influence authorities can have over the knowledge of the people. By removing the readers’ autonomy and disabling them to read the Church was able to exert power over them, and removing this power resulted in readers having the opportunity to interpret religion and culture for
Books today are everywhere. We find them in many households, libraries and schools all around the globe. We find many different types of books; from stories to educational textbooks, we regard them today as sources of knowledge and amusement. But it wasn’t the case before 1455. That year, one of the greatest inventions in human history was revealed to the world; Gutenberg’s printing press. This press allowed printing in massive quantity, spreading books all around Europe and the rest of the world at a fast rate. The printing press had many positive consequences on society. At first, it standardized grammar and spelling, and then introduced the mass production of books. It finally inspired future printing technologies around the world.
In argument for the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer, they said that reading the Bible not only was essential to the building of good morals and development of the minds of impressionable school children, it was free to be interpreted anyway because of lack of comment and explanation. They claimed that the Bible was not a religious work, but when viewed from the eyes of a Christian, it did express the message of Christianity.
William Tyndale has been called “the hidden father of the English language.” He was the first person to translate the Bible into the English, and in doing so, he changed the English language forever. Before Tyndale’s translation some English words had three different spelling. Tyndale helped to formalize both the spellings and speech patterns of different words and phrases. Tyndale spoke seven different languages, and he was proficient in both Hebrew and Greek. He was a priest who worked his whole life mastering his intellectual gifts and making use of them. Tyndale was disciplined and efficient. He could have went a long way in the church had he not worked so hard to defy the current authority, but he did all of this to make sure men and women were able to read the Bible in their own language. Tyndale translated all of the New Testament and most of the Old Testament. His translation paved the way for the publishing of the Geneva Bible in 1560, which became the main Bible used throughout Britain into the 17th century. In William Tyndale’s lifetime, access to the Bible was severely limited. The Church only approved the Latin Vulgate Bible, so even when someone did obtain a Bible they were usually unable to read it. Therefore, the Bible became a divider between the Church and the Reformers who advocated for more access to the Bible. Tyndale leaves both Christians and English speakers with a legacy of defying authority in order to spread God’s word. He is the perfect example of sacrificing oneself to live a life fully dedicated to God and His ministry.
...up-to-date information. Technology became so prevalent that it extinguished the desire and need to read and instead told everyone exactly what the government thought they should know and because the people became so accustomed to getting their information through these devices books became useless.
First, he provides an overview of the history and development of the book as well as the development of reading. Carr analyzes and explains the effects of these developments on the individuals. Furthermore, he notes that the Internet recreates and alters a medium’s content by the use of hyperlinks, which ultimately distracts readers, and by separating the content into organized chunks. These characteristics make the content “searchable” which stimulates skimming behavior or superficial reading. As a result, readers retain less information due to the lack of deep, analytical reading. In addition, online texts often incorporate opinions, beliefs, or skewed viewpoints of certain topics, which can have negative effects on readers. Carr also addresses that some opponents believe that hardcopy reading was a result of “impoverished access” (111) and that the desire to use the fast paced web is a result of a quickening pace of life and work over the past few
If people were asked to define the importance of the books they would probably state that books are dead or will be dead soon. In “books a dying are? don’t believe it”, Anne Proulx expressed her views books. She suggests “every other week someone says that books are dead or dying”. By analyzing which will focused on a meaning, a form and the style of the essay well reveal that books are not on the way to extinction.
Bradbury attacks loss of literature in the society of Fahrenheit 451 to warn our current society about how literature is disappearing and the effects on the people are negative. While Montag is at Faber’s house, Faber explains why books are so important by saying, “Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores” (79). Faber is trying to display the importance of books and how without them people lack quality information. In Electronics and the Decline of Books by Eli Noam it is predicted that “books will become secondary tools in academia, usurped by electronic media” and the only reason books will be purchased will be for leisure, but even that will diminish due to electronic readers. Books are significant because they are able to be passed down through generation. While online things are not concrete, you can not physically hold the words. Reading boost creativity and imagination and that could be lost by shifting to qui...
Hello my name is Michael Clements, I attend Sout Gwinnett High School. In our English class we were assigned to read the book Farenhite 451. The book was verry unique unlike any other i have ever read. The author of Farenhite 451 told of much science fiction that became true over the present years. I think he is a verry good observer. In this paper the critics view, analysis of literacy device, and the revelance to society today. These topics will be mentioned and shared throught the paper.
“While it is true that more books are sold today than ever, recent statistics show that only about 15% of books bought today are read. Evidently, they are of more use as furniture—coffee-table books—than as a source of information or aesthetic buzz. The statistics continue; of those that are read, less than 20% are read all the way through. The unfinished book symbolizes the state of attention spans today”. Eric McLuhan opens up his 2010 argument against technology with this quote. He seems to believe that literacy is only fully achieved through limited technology and hard copies of books. He fails to realize there is more to literacy that picking up a book defined as a ‘classic’ and reading it cover to cover. Literacy covers all spans of artistic
Before reading this book, I was struggling with the amount of reading that college was presenting. White does not waste time and gets to the fact that reading is an act of worship early on. He makes a connection with junk food and reading on page 43. If we feed our body junk all the time, we will become obese and ill. Similarly if all we read is junk, our minds will become ill and not reflect a mind for God (White, 43). When he says this he means that we should be engaging our brains with material that will make us think and grow intellectually. White states that in the middle ages, “learning in and of itself, was sacred, for it was pursuing the very knowledge of God, and life in light of that knowledge” (White, 53). Today learning has become something far from what it was intended to be back in the middle ages. Today we have removed the aspect of God from public schools and we focus on getting the grade instead of the knowledge. White suggests that, “the starting point of our education (or our commitment to learning) is biblical literacy” (White, 57). This fits into the Christian worldview, but not into very many other worldviews. Unfortunately many are biblically illiterate in today’s culture and White mentions several different types of Bible readers in chapter four. He mentions the “service readers,” “devotional
With the advent of the printing press and the protestant reformation in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Word of God became available to the common believer. Now, in the twenty first century, people all over the world, can read for themselves the scriptures in their own languages. Consider the Bible studies going on in any given country on any given evening, where people are encouraged to interact with the sacred scriptures. As encouraging as this may be, it may present a problem. Could discussions of what a scripture ‘means to me’ cloud out what the scripture originally meant? Is it even possible to know the author’s intent? Even if we could understand a first century text as its author intended, can we also grasp what it’s supposed to mean to us?
However, iIn spite of the current pre-eminence of e-books, it may be argued that they are not likely to replace print books anytime soon or possibly at all. Both formats have their advantages and drawbacks, which makes for one of them difficult to replace the other. Moreover, they serve differents needs and purposes. E-books are famous for their portability. Hundreds of e-books can be stored on a single device. Thus e-books don’t take shelving space and are convenient to take on travel, while even a few paper books are bulky and quite heavy to carry around. Numerous e-books are in open access, while paper books are not routinely available free of charge. E-books may be acquired and accessed immediately online, a feature I enjoy especially and treasure most: many a time I was able to buy and read an e-book at home within minutes of learning of its existence. Needless to say, e-books are considerably easier to cite and quote than print books, since the copy-paste feature spares us the trouble of retyping the quoted text. Another important advantage of digital books is their specialized software, which makes reading much easier: search and reference tools, changeable font size and day/night mode, dictionaries. Last but not least, e-books conserv...
After this period, people began to be curious about the whole book. When Reformation in the church began, the people of many countries, like the United Kingdom, wanted to know about the Bible much, and people wanted to read the book in their own languages so...
Some years ago, with the arrival of digital technology, the process of reading has been changed to make it easier for everybody; therefore digital books are replacing the actual physical books. In spite of the fact that paper books and digital books are very similar in some ways, such as tittle pages, copyright page, covers, chapters or tables of contents; they present a visual and a sensory difference. In fact, they have a similar action that gives benefits but drawbacks at the same time. Paper books are tangible, accomplishment, easy to share; they have a unique aroma, and a sensitive side. But people should take in consideration that digital books are the better choice, because they are portable, convenient, cheap in price, and easy to manipulate, not to mention that anybody is able to have an bunch of them in only one file, either their phones or
The main form of literature, the book, has had a great impact upon the formation of our society today. Before the 1940’s TV had not come into being yet and there was not much else to do other than read books. Thus books formed my grandparents and to some extent my parents and, although I grew up in the generation of TV, books as literature have indirectly formed me as well.