Christopher A. Reed

From Woodblocks to the Internet

These essays examine the transformation of Chinese print culture over the past two centuries during which new technologies, intellectual change, and sociopolitical upheavals expanded reading audiences, spawned new genres of print, and reshaped the relationship between publishing and the state.

From Woodblocks to the Internet: Chinese Printing, Publishing, and Literary Fields in Transition, circa 1800 to 2008

This chapter first presents an overview of this volume on Woodblocks and the Internet. The volume examines the period that extends from the decline of xylography (woodblock printing) in the nineteenth century through Chinas expanding Gutenberg revolution, and on to the rise of post-Gutenberg, postmodern digital and Internet publishing in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. A second theme is the ways in which print, media, and genre have been reconceived not only as a result of shifts in communications technology but also as a result of dramatic political change, intellectual ferment, and social upheaval. Third, and finally, it talks about Chinese publishing and print culture. The essays in this volume are arranged chronologically in four clusters, each marking a different period in the development of modern Chinese print culture. They remind us that context was/is everything, regardless of the technology employed, whether xylography, lithography, letterpress with movable type, or computers. Keywords:Chinese printing technology; circa; communications technology; Gutenberg revolution; Internet; literary fields; woodblock printing