Manuscripts after Print c.1450-1550 (MaP): Producing and Reading Books during Technological Change

我们阅读的方式是不断变化的。我们正处于“数字革命”之中，这场革命挑战了读者获得书籍的方式，以及书籍的生产、销售和阅读方式。然而，印刷书籍和手写继续蓬勃发展，去年英国印刷书籍的销售额达到2012年以来的最高水平，而电子书销售额下降（出版商协会新闻稿，2017年），并呼吁手写的持续教育和社会价值（教授多米尼克·怀斯，伦敦大学学院，卫报，2018年3月）。这个早期职业领导研究员项目利用当前图书技术历史上的关键时刻来问：当新的图书技术发明时，旧书的生产和读者会发生什么？世纪印刷术在欧洲的引入对手稿的感知、手写书籍贸易产生了显著影响，并改变了阅读习惯。经历了这一技术变革的德国本笃会修道院院长约翰内斯·特里提米乌斯（Johannes Trithemius）对印刷术的引入感到遗憾，他有一句名言：“因为印刷术而停止写作热情的人不是真正的圣经爱好者”（De Laude Scriptorium，1492-4）。特里提米乌斯担心的是手写书的衰落--这些手稿在印刷后可能会被视为过时的技术。但事实并非从手稿到印刷品的线性过渡，而是更混乱的东西。印刷后的手抄本开始表现出印刷技术的特点，出现了印刷-手抄混合型图书。迄今为止，对这一重要问题的有限批判性参与驳斥了早期的观点，即“印刷文化”的兴起意味着“抄写文化”的衰落;然而，“抄写文化”和“印刷文化”这两个术语仍然以二元对立的方式使用。这些术语将图书技术的细微发展简化为有序的、按时间顺序排列的类别，这意味着手稿和印刷品之间复杂的相互作用消失了。在分析欧洲印刷后的第一个百年（约1450 -1550年）时，该项目挑战了书籍生产的替代模式，即手稿被印刷所取代，并超越了最近的说法，即手稿和印刷只是共存，以展示手稿生产如何在印刷后适应和改变，以及手写如何因此而复兴和繁荣。它探讨了手写的持久意义，并分析了图书生产的非线性发展，继续进入数字时代。在这样做的过程中，该项目有很好的潜力接触到学术界以外的图书生产者和读者。在图书历史的这个关键时刻，也就是数字图书的发展时期，研究读者如何访问文本、图书如何营销、购买和销售以及旧书技术为什么仍然重要至关重要。特别是，研究数字图书对印刷和手写的影响至关重要。该项目的研究结果将表明技术变革对阅读实践的影响，并有可能为未来图书技术的发展提供信息。通过与艺术家、创意从业者和更广泛的阅读公众的接触，该项目的开放获取数字输出，特别是将手写与数字书籍相结合的动手阅读应用程序，是研究我们现在阅读方式以及我们未来可能希望阅读的方式的创新方式。

The way we read is in flux. We are in the midst of the 'digital revolution' which challenges the way in which books are available to their readers and how they are produced, sold, and read. Yet printed books and handwriting continue to flourish, with printed books in the UK last year increasing in sales to their highest level since 2012 while eBook sales dropped (The Publishers Association Press Release, 2017) and pleas made for handwriting's continuing educational and social value (Professor Dominic Wise, UCL, Guardian, March 2018). This Early Career Leadership Fellow project takes advantage of the current, crucial moment in the history of book technology to ask: what happens to the production and the readership of old books when new book technology is invented? The introduction of print in Europe in the fifteenth century had a marked effect on the perception of manuscripts, the handwritten book trade, and changed reading practices. Johannes Trithemius, a German Benedictine abbot who lived through this technological change, lamented the introduction of print, famously stating, 'He who ceases from zeal of writing because of printing is no true lover of the scriptures' (De Laude Scriptorium, 1492-4). What Trithemius feared was the fall of the handwritten book - the manuscripts that, after print, could have seemed old technology. But the reality was not a linear transition from manuscript to print but something far messier. Manuscripts produced after print start to exhibit features of print technology and hybrid print-manuscript books are produced. The limited critical engagement with this important question so far has rejected the earlier notion that the rise of 'print culture' meant the decline of 'scribal culture'; yet the terms 'scribal culture' and 'print culture' are still used in binary opposition. These terms reduce the nuanced development of book technology into ordered, chronological categories, meaning that the complex interactions between manuscript and print are lost. In analysing the first hundred years after print in Europe, c.1450-1550, this project challenges the supersession model of book production, that manuscripts were supplanted by print, and goes beyond the more recent claims that manuscript and print simply coexisted, to demonstrate how manuscript production adapted and changed after print and how handwriting revived and flourished as a result. It examines the lasting significance of handwriting and so analyses the non-linear development of book production that continues into the digital age. In doing so, the project has excellent potential to reach book producers and readers beyond academia. At this critical moment in the history of the book, the growth of the digital book, it is vital to examine how readers access texts, how books are marketed, bought and sold, and why old book technology is of continuing importance. In particular, it is crucial to examine the impact of digital books on print and on handwriting.The findings of this project will both indicate the impact of technological change on reading practice and have the potential to inform the way in which book technology might develop in the future. Engaging with artists, creative practitioners, and the wider reading public, the open access digital outputs of this project, especially the Hands-on Reading app which combines handwriting with digital books, are innovative ways of examining how we read now and the way in which we may wish to read in the future.