Temporalités ()
L’imprimerie en réseau : la construction de l’édition comme marché économique et culturel (Venise, 1469-1500)
Abstract
By applying social network analysis, we study how the printing world became an economic activity in which scholars and printers were associated. We follow the chronology and temporality of this construction, often overlooked in previous research. Thanks to data contained in the Incunabula Short Title Catalog, we see that two networks of Venetian publishers grew up between 1469 and 1500. The first allows us to observe the construction of a pool of scholars. The second permits delving further into the notions of centrality and authority in this new social and economic universe. In Venetian printing presses, scholars and printers supported each other at first. The names of important humanists lent legitimacy and prestige to the new entrepreneurs. With time, however, the names of scholars in Venetian editions being more numerous also meant that the balance of power was more to their disadvantage. The authors’ prestige became more diffuse, also due to the number of editions that mentioned two or more contemporary authors at the same time. Some authors however, managed to take advantage of this phenomenon, as the example of Antonio Mancinelli shows. These editorial networks, analyzed in diachronic perspective, give us the opportunity to study printing not only as a revolutionary invention which suddenly transformed European society, but also as a cultural industry in the making.
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