The Renaissance Book

Digital Exhibit 2021

When Johannes Gutenberg introduced his new invention, the printing press, in the 1450s, he could not have realized how much this new technology would reshape Renaissance Europe. His new method of using moveable metal type to reproduce multiple copies of printed text from a single template revolutionized the ways people in the Renaissance produced, read, and circulated books.

The digital exhibits presented here were created by students in VIC442: The Renaissance Book, in the Winter term 2021. They explore the profound influence of print technology on three major cultural and intellectual movements in the Renaissance: humanism, religious reform, and the scientific revolution.

The books considered serve as case studies in the early history of the printed book, as it both shaped and was shaped by the radically new ideas proliferating in the Renaissance.