The Study Of Writing Media And Social Development In Europe Before The 18～(th) Century

From the entirely new angel of information communication and cultural developmenthistory, this doctoral dissertation illustrates the basic clue about how the European writingmedia comes into being and evolves, clarifies the dialectical relationship between theEuropean writing media and its social development before the 18th century, and explains thehistorical inevitability and inherent regularity why modern newspapers and periodicalsinitially occur in Europe but not elsewhere. The dissertation demonstrates itself from thedimensions of time, space and profession, which is guided by dialectical and historicalmaterialism. Besides the preface and the conclusion, the text is divided into seven chapters. The firstchapter investigates the invention of letters and the evolvement of European letters; Thesecond chapter and the third chapter concentrate individually on the papyrus and parchment,which are regarded as the two main writing media during the ancient and medieval Europe;The forth and fifth chapters examine respectively the invention of papermaking and printing,whose westward spreading gives birth to the printing books and booklets. The sixth andseventh chapters investigate how modern newspapers and periodicals take shape. The sixthsurveys the pre-history of modern daily represented by the hand-writing newspapers, theseventh revolves around modern daily, which symbolizes the birth of the modern newspapersand periodicals. Before the 18th century, the ultimate impetus which accelerates the development ofEuropean writing media is the progress of European social productivity. It is the economicaldevelopment that arouses the increasing demands for writing information and enlarges thecapacity and frequency of the information. It has no doubt that almost all the great progress ofcommunication technology gives birth to some kind of new writing media. Considering therich and colorful mental living of Europe before the 18th century, there exist inevitably diverseways to meet all the cultural needs, which also require writing media to contain more and thusto increase the forms and capacity of the media. Writing media is both one kind of information transmission means and socialenvironment. It breaks the order of society in which the spoken language is regarded as themain communication medium, extends the space and time of information transmission, andpromotes the human cultural development and social advancement remarkably. Before the18th century, when it goes from ancient Greece and Rome till Middle Ages and then tomodern capitalism, writing media goes through the change from being monopolized originallyby few people to being shared by more and more people and strata in society. The extensiveuse of papyrus helps to the development of slavery economy and culture of ancient Greeceand Rome and the effective management of states. The durable parchment is good for keepingand spreading the ancient religious classics, which enhances the influence of popery andpromotes the formation of social structure of western Europe in Middle Ages. The printingbooks and booklets produced in batches become the effective tools of religion reform andweaken the authority of Roman Curia. As one of the most effective carriers of political view,public opinion, knowledge and advertisement, newspapers and periodicals pave the waycontinuously for the development of capitalism. The evolution of the European writing media before the 18th century has closerelationship with the three dimensions of time, space and profession. As far as the timedimension is concerned, from ancient times to Middle Ages then till the earlier period ofmodern times, the evolution of European writing media has never been interrupted and hastaken on some kind of spiral type. As to the space dimension, the evolution of Europeanwriting media is open and never separates from the world. With regard to the professiondimension, from spoken language media to hand-writing media to the printing-writing media,each change of European writing media has always some kind of overlapping or con...