Le lingue del Medio Oriente e la rivoluzione della stampa: la colonizzazione inavvertita

This paper is a review article of the beautiful and richly illustrated catalogue Middle Eastern Languages and the Print Revolution. A Cross-Cultural Encounter. Indeed the very idea of an “encounter” between West and East suggested by the title of the volume and by the discussions in some of its essays is criticized, since the spread of Gutenberg’s typography is best seen as a colonial (or at least acculturative) enterprise. In the present reviewer’s view, it was one of the ways chosen by Europe to domesticate, both culturally and technologically, an “orientalized” world it aimed at politically dominate.