HISTORY OF COMMUNICATION AND MOVEMENT OF IDEAS IN THE MODERN AGE
written and oral
The course aims at providing students with a general overview of the different form of printed communication in the early modern period, thereby stimulating critical investigation of the means, contents and socio-cultural implications of the circulation of ideas in Europe during the ancien régime. Close examination of a few sources relating to the printing industryat the time of the old regime is intended for motivating students to improve their analytical skills and capacity of historical understanding.
1.The invention of the movable type printing; 2.The revolutions of the book, the “Gutenberg galaxy” and the making of the new typographic culture; 3.The commerce of news among the economic, military, and diplomatic élites; 4.The scientific revolution and the republic of letters; 5.Daniello Bartoli and the Istoria of the Jesuit missions; 6.Gazzettes, literary journals, and newsletters; 7.The Encyclopédie: the cultural project, the diffusion, the “Business of Enlightenment”; 8.Geographical explorations and the voyage literature; 9.Readers and readings in the old regime; 10.Orality and manuscript communication; 11.Universities and academies; 12.The places of sociability in Enlightenment Europe.
one of the following books:
E. L. Eisenstein, Le rivoluzioni del libro. L’invenzione della stampa e la nascita dell’età moderna, Il Mulino, Bologna, 1995;
R. Darnton, L’età dell’informazione. Una guida non convenzionale al Settecento, Adelphi, Milano, 2007;
G. Sanna, Il Craftsman. Giornalismo e cultura politica nell’Inghilterra del Settecento, Franco Angeli, Milano, 2006.
lectures