The invention of the oral : print commerce and fugitive voices in eighteenth-century Britain / Paula McDowell.

9780226457017 (ebook) :

Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2018.

1 online resource : illustrations (black and white)

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Just as today's embrace of the digital has sparked interest in the history of print culture, so in 18th century Britain the dramatic proliferation of print gave rise to urgent efforts to historicise different media forms and to understand their unique powers. And so it was, Paula McDowell argues, that our modern concepts of oral culture and print culture began to crystallise, and authors and intellectuals drew on older theological notion of oral tradition to forge the modern secular notion of oral tradition that we know today. Drawing on an impressive array of sources including travel narratives, elocution manuals, theological writings, ballad collections, and legal records, McDowell re-creates a world in which everyone from fishwives to philosophers, clergymen to street hucksters, competed for space and audiences in taverns, marketplaces, and the street.

Chicago scholarship online.

Print version :

Books / Online

English

February 05, 2018

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Specialized.