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PRINTING PRESS AND BROADSHEET IMAGERY: REPRODUCIBILITY AND PERCEPTION DURING THE EARLY GERMAN EVANGELICAL REFORMATION (1517-1530)

Reiter, April Ann
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1308557884

Abstract Details

2011, Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, German.
The invention of the printing press and movable type has been established by sociological, art historical, and media studies scholarship as a pivotal turning point in media consumption and production across Europe, but especially in Germany in the decades following 1517. The press opened up new possibilities for dissemination of texts such as books, pamphlets, and single-leaf broadsheets. Images, either woodcut or engraved, often accompanied these texts. Recent scholarship has undertaken the task of proving the effectiveness of such texts in spreading the Reformation message, but most analyses have bypassed highlighting the wider shift in media consumption with regard to images. This study attempts to chart this broader shift in how the common folk, the target audience of the evangelical Reformation message, interacted with images. The ease of production, affordability and consequent wide dissemination of broadsheets shifted the location of viewing of sacred images. Images thus far seen only by the aristocracy or within liturgical settings were now brought into the street, the tavern, or private homes. This led to a separation from the original ritual, whereby the previous understanding of images as containing the holy made present began to be questioned, most notably visible in moments of iconoclasm. Reproducibility thereby effectuated a breakdown in understanding images as unifying signifier (image) and signified (original, unique thing the image represents). In addition, broadsheet images of this time evoked an analogous effect to Mikhail Bakhtin’s conception of the carnivalesque, where mockery, laughter, and desacralization open up room for the observer to interact and take part in the discourse of the image. Finally, relying upon the fundamental argument of Robert W. Scribner’s work "For the Sake of Simple Folk" that broadsheet images were recycled from orthodox and popular origins, it will be seen how recycled images of the peasant remade him as empowered, thereby figuring the observer as an active participant in the evangelical movement. This broader shift in the interaction with images follows the wider trajectory effectuated by the printing press on media consumption in the West of a move away from aura and orthodoxy toward rebelliousness and questioning.
Edgar Landgraf, Ph.D (Advisor)
Geoffrey Howes, Ph.D (Committee Member)
58 p.
Germanic Literature; Mass Communications; Mass Media
woodcut images; broadsheet images; Reformation; reproducibility; printing press; Gutenberg; Robert W. Scribner; Marshall McLuhan; devotional images

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Reiter, A. A. (2011). PRINTING PRESS AND BROADSHEET IMAGERY: REPRODUCIBILITY AND PERCEPTION DURING THE EARLY GERMAN EVANGELICAL REFORMATION (1517-1530) [Master's thesis, Bowling Green State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1308557884

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Reiter, April. PRINTING PRESS AND BROADSHEET IMAGERY: REPRODUCIBILITY AND PERCEPTION DURING THE EARLY GERMAN EVANGELICAL REFORMATION (1517-1530). 2011. Bowling Green State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1308557884.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Reiter, April. "PRINTING PRESS AND BROADSHEET IMAGERY: REPRODUCIBILITY AND PERCEPTION DURING THE EARLY GERMAN EVANGELICAL REFORMATION (1517-1530)." Master's thesis, Bowling Green State University, 2011. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1308557884

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

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This open access ETD is published by Bowling Green State University and OhioLINK.