Going viral : printing disease in early modern Germany
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- This dissertation traces the cultural history of virality to the turn of the sixteenth century and uncovers the pervasive notion that ideas can be transmitted analogously to diseases. I argue that a discourse of virality, which is commonplace in the digital age, arises in this period in response to the development of new forms of print media. By looking at the works of vernacular poets and Humanist scholars as well as medical professionals, both canonical and non-canonical, and by discussing three contagious diseases with different pathological and social profiles - plague, syphilis, and the English sweating sickness - this dissertation expands our picture of early print to include sources that have generally been excluded from print's history. This dissertation also contributes to the recent scholarly tendency to view print as a technological development whose introduction also included setbacks, continuities, and criticism, rather than as a phenomenon that revolutionized early modern Europe. Writers on these three diseases raise concerns that print spreads harmful or false information, stokes fears, and cannot be controlled. As such, these writers participate in a discourse of virality, suggesting that printed information on disease may be more dangerous than the disease itself.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2019; ©2019 |
| Publication date | 2019; 2019 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Hutchinson, Christopher James |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Starkey, Kathryn |
| Thesis advisor | Starkey, Kathryn |
| Thesis advisor | Daub, Adrian |
| Thesis advisor | Findlen, Paula |
| Thesis advisor | Puff, Helmut |
| Thesis advisor | Stokes, Laura, 1974- |
| Degree committee member | Daub, Adrian |
| Degree committee member | Findlen, Paula |
| Degree committee member | Puff, Helmut |
| Degree committee member | Stokes, Laura, 1974- |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of German Studies. |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Christopher Hutchinson. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of German Studies. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2019. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2019 by Christopher James Hutchinson
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC-SA).
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