Hey all!
I am trying to find the interesting/important discussions that historians have had about the nature of popular culture/book culture in Early Modern Europe (I am thinking post-printing press). I want to know what historians disagree, and have disagreed, about. I am being intentionally vague here because I don't really know a lot about the subject (hence the post). Ideally I would love your understanding of a particular question in this general subject and a simple sinopsis of the important arguments that various historians have made on the same question.
Context: I am a computer science/information technology student who is interested in the concept of Digital Humanities/Digital History. I know there are several databases that catalogue books and works published in this area and I want to attempt an analysis of my own (whether original or mimicking work done before). Your responses will serve to direct me to the sources and historians that you (who know the topic) think are important. Suggestions or answers adjacent to the question are welcome, I think I just need a little guidance into this vast collection of knowledge.
Thanks!
I suppose you are looking for "historiographical essay/ article" on the "Printing Revolution" or the transformation of the relationship between the media and society in Early Modern Europe (after Gutenberg). "Historiographical Essay" is a genre of an academic article/essay in history that summarizes the major trend(s) of research on a topic in history, as well as lists an important classics and new literature on the topic.
Concerning the historiography of the printing and the society in Early Modern Europe, Elisabeth Eisenstein's "Printing Revolution" thesis, expressed in: The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early-Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997 (1st ed. 1979), is the classic of the topic, and almost every scholars engaging with this topic should not neglect its impart (that is to say: to google "historiography/ reading list+ Eisenstein+ Printing+ early Modern" will lead you to some historiographical essays).
Though a bit old, I'd recommend the following series of essays (or exactly speaking, discussions among the scholars including Eisenstein) in American Historical Review 107-1 (2002) essay by Grafton as a kind of departure point of the topic.
This collection of essays, Nina Lamal, Jamie Cumby & Helmer J. Helmers (eds.), Print and Power in Early Modern Europe (1500–1800), Leiden: Brill, 2021 is probably the latest publication on the topic, but it is expensive (as is often with the case of Brill or other academic/ humanities publishing). As for the single-authored book, Andrew Pettegree, the Book in the Renaissance, New Haven: Yale UP, 2011, should be referred to at first.