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Printing and prophecy. Prognostication and media change, 1450-1550 . By Jonathan Green . (Cultures of Knowledge in the Early Modern World.) Pp. xiii+265 incl. 11 figs. Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press , 2012. $70. 978 0 472 11783 3
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Jonathan Green's Printing and prophecy provides readers with a study of prophetic publications in the first century of the print trade in German-speaking regions. Beginning with Johannes Gutenberg, Green analyses works of prophecy, astrology and prognostication from the mid-fifteenth to the mid-sixteenth century. Not simply a study of prophetic thought and beliefs, the book instead uses this literary and print genre to analyse the motives of early printers in publishing such works, considerations of printers and authors regarding the presentation of these ideas in print, as well as the significance of prognostic writings in understanding late medieval and early modern readership and society. In these purposes, the author enhances our understanding of the early print trade, early printed books themselves, the importance of prophetic publications, and of the society which consumed this prognostication.
At the outset of the book, Green asserts that the prophet is 'first and foremost, a media phenomenon' (p. 1), noting the transmission of the message to its intended audience as a consistent element of prophetic communication. He argues that this prophetic purpose fits nicely with the aims of early printers, both in claims to exclusive access to particular texts, as well is in the ability to disseminate that text to a wide audience.
With this conducive relationship established, Green then demonstrates that prognostic publication was already present at the birth of the print trade. This is apparent in the nineteenth-century...