Orality without writing: public discourse in the ancient City-state. From orality to writing: the manuscript tradition from the Roman and Byzantine Empire to the Middle Ages. From writing to printing: the invention of movable type. The «book revolutions» (the birth of the public, the commodification and the commercialization of culture, etc.). Book censorship between the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation. The problem of the freedom of press. Conceptions and forms of public opinion in the eighteenth and the nineteenth century.