Creativity in the Early Reformation Period: Technology, Society, and the Magic of Language

This article takes its point of departure from Marshall McLuhan’s The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962) and Elizabeth L. Eisenstein’s The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (1979). The purpose, however, is not a detailed historical critique of both books, but to take issue with fundamental claim underlying both publications: the claim that media technology is the creative agent behind early modern social, political, religious, and intellectual revolutions. The article refers to Eric Voegelin, Hannah Arendt, Ernst Cassirer, and Wilhelm von Humboldt to lay the theoretical groundwork for an alternative claim: creative agency happens in the form of linguistic evocation. The final section of the article provides a brief case study on revolutionary agency, primarily at the example of the radical reformer Thomas Müntzer. It highlights the role of language in the revolutionary transformation of the early reformation period.