PRINTING R-EVOLUTION 1450-1500
Fifty Years that Changed Europe - I cinquant'anni che hanno cambiato l'Europa
VENICE, MUSEO CORRER AND BIBLIOTECA NAZIONALE MARCIANA, 01/09/2018 - 07/01/2019

This exhibition will show the impact of the printing revolution on the economic and social development of early modern Europe. The displays will use digital tools and an innovative communication system to present in an accessible way tens of thousands of data on the use of books. Evidence has been gathered in years of rigorous research by a large international network coordinated by the ERC-funded Oxford project 15cBOOKTRADE.

Already by the year 1500, Europe was awash with millions of books, not only for the elites, as often claimed, but for everybody, with a vast production of schoolbooks. In those first decades printing coincided with enterprise and experimenting. Books were the product of a new collaboration between different segments of society, scholarship, technology, and business, and enabled ideas to spread widely and quickly as never before. We can now trace their dissemination by tracking the movement and use of every single volume. The Church fully understood the potential of the new invention and was actively involved in its promotion.

The printing revolution is one of the pillars of European identity because it stands for wide-spread education, the pursuit of knowledge, and the formation of a shared cultural heritage. With this
exhibition the curators shall also reflect on international collaboration (humanities and technology, university and cultural heritage institutions), the impact of ERC-funded projects on society at large,
and the role of Oxford research (bringing together numerous international scholars) in Europe and the world.

Cristina Dondi (Lincoln College, Oxford) is the Principal Investigator of the 15cBOOKTRADE Project, funded by the European Research Council, and the curator of the exhibition together with her team.

All the exhibition will be in two languages, English and Italian.

www.15cBOOKTRADE.ox.ac.uk
15cbooktrade@mod-langs.ox.c.uk

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