Divine Art, Infernal Machine: The Reception of Printing in the West from First Impressions to the Sense of an Ending

7: Toward the Sense of an Ending(Fin de Sie`cle to the Present)

C h a p t e r 7 Toward the Sense of an Ending (Fin de Siècle to the Present) There are false dusks in literature as well as false dawns. —John Gross, The Rise and Fall of the Man of Letters The last decades of the nineteenth century saw newspaper publishers throughout Europe take advantage of diverse innovations, such as wood pulp paper and typesetting machines, that speeded up production and cheapened output. Under the aegis of parliamentary governments, the movement for a free press finally achieved success; ‘‘freedom of the press’’ was pledged in the preambles of almost all the constitutions that marked the end of the era of absolute monarchy. Throughout the Continent, educational reforms were also enacted, with the aim of achieving mass literacy.1 In many liberal narratives, these developments were viewed as bringing to a triumphant conclusion the trends that had been initiated by the invention of printing. ‘‘The combined operations of a broad electorate . . . and cheap newspaper were widely deemed to have created the perfect mechanism for the governance of society.’’2 According to W. H. Stead, ‘‘the telegraph and the printing press together had converted Great Britain into a vast agora, or assembly of the whole community, in which discussion of the affairs of State is carried on from day to day within the hearing of the whole people.’’3 Outside liberal circles, however, these same developments were viewed in a less favorable light. ‘‘The advance of literacy to near universality by 1900 was often cited as indisputable evidence of social progress. But mass literacy continued to seem threatening to many observers.’’4 ‘‘More people were read- 216 chapter 7 ing than ever before; but in the opinion of most commentators they were reading the wrong things for the wrong reasons and in the wrong way.’’5 With daily papers (and evening ones) rolling off gigantic machines, print was increasingly seen as a ‘‘mass medium.’’ As such it was viewed as an instrument wielded by powerful press lords who sought to increase circulation (and advertising revenues) by exciting emotional responses. Advertisements had once been welcomed as an innocuous way of rendering the press independent of government control.6 They would be condemned later as exemplifying the cynical manipulation of the reading public by ‘‘hidden persuaders .’’ The newspaper world appeared more and more to be the mirror of the worst aspects of the capitalist world. . . . Concentration of ownership became the order of the day . . . the editor declined in power and prestige as the business managers came into their own. The press lost the mystique of being regarded as an estate: it was now described . . . as an industry.7 Suspicions of bad faith extended to journalists. With regard to news stories, some recent critics note that ‘‘telling stories’’ may be defined as telling lies: ‘‘Journalists and those who rely on them are not our guides but our great misleaders.’’8 G. M. Young, writing in the 1930s, commented: ‘‘What failed in the late Victorian age and its . . . Edwardian epilogue was the Victorian public, once so alert, so masculine and so responsible. The English mind sank toward that easily excited, easily satisfied state of barbarism and childlike ignorance which the press ever more easily excited and satisfied.’’9 The notion that the press might contribute to barbarism and childlike ignorance presented a sharp contrast to the expectations of the earlier prophets of progress, later members of the SDUK, and optimistic Victorians. Young’s lament over the decline of a public that had once been not only alert and responsible but also masculine seems worth pausing over. The coupling of effeminacy with literacy was an old topos, going back to an era when warriors had left the reading of books to monks and old men. In his essay on pedantry, Montaigne had sounded a similar note with regard to the fate of Rome: ‘‘the pursuit of knowledge makes men’s hearts soft and effeminate more than it makes them strong and warlike. Rome was more valiant before she was learned.’’10 In the later nineteenth century, similar views were voiced by nationalists Toward the Sense of an Ending 217 and militarists. This entailed a marked change from eighteenth-century attitudes . Proponents of the Enlightenment had belittled the possibility of new barbarian invasions; any victory over the West required educated opponents who had mastered the advances in arts and sciences that...