‘Gutenberg’s galaxy’ in the light of the French ‘new wave’

Abstract

The paper deals with the comparative study of the screen and book culture. The subject-matter of the research is the text of  Fahrenheit 451 by R. Bradbury in comparison with its screen adaptations. The replacement of book culture by screen one is a serious problem of today. Both the book and the display are Human inventions strongly influencing the inventor him/herself. Printing technology gave rise to another community, in other words, readership formation. An invention of such media as photo, cinema and internet kick-started the process of displacement of books. Book culture nowadays is being replaced by screen one. That problem worried not only such philosophers as M. McLuhan but also such literary and cinema figures as writer R. Bradbury and film-maker F. Truffault. An invention of a printing press in the XV^th century in Europe made a book a mass consumption item. Nowadays, in an epoch of “worldwide network” and electronic technologies, book ceases to be such an item. Worldwide networks embroil a person into a new field — virtual reality which is fraught with some danger. The goal of this research is to unravel the process of displacement of the book culture by screen one and to understand that process. The Research task is to position the book culture within Human technological environment that includes the cinema, television and virtual reality. The scientific novelty of this research is the use of complex approach using comparative, semiotic, intertextual methods combined and complementing each other. Conclusion was made on the correlation of book and screen cultures and their place within history.