Yæd wrote: >Did the invention of the printing press shine some more light on previous civilizations' (Cuezi?) cultural outcome and if so, how did it affect the present culture and literature?
I'm not sure I follow you here. Unless you mean, did it expand knowledge of these civilizations? Certainly, that's a major effect of printing.
>Is there even such thing as a class of intellectuals, like Renaissance Humanists, whom the printing press might help connecting, i.e. allowing the friendly (or not?) exchange of literature, ideas, opinions etc.? Are intellectuals exchanging ideas (and languages) across national borders? Did they cherry-pick a common "excellent" language, like Renaissance Latin?
Yes, there's a culture of scientific inquiry in Eretald (and some of the nations to the south). You can get a glimpse of it from some Almeopedia articles:
Bidbo Chunio,
Äron Nošcerey,
Noe Calseoma. Also look at the later links on the
technology page.
A few centuries ago, scientific works would have been printed in Cadhinor; now it's more likely to be Verdurian, Flaidish, or Kebreni-- translations of important works come quickly. It's not uncommon for Kebreni and Flaidish scientists to use Verdurian.
As a general note, Eretald is intended to have a culture similar to Europe circa 1800-- thus, early modern rather than medieval. It's right at the point where science and technology are starting to heat up and transform society.
>When can writers in Almea hope to start living off of their "royalties" alone? Is it a slow process much like in Europe, where intellectuals still had to rely on noblemen to grant them money for their artistic achievements, and it took nearly three centuries to even conceive the idea of copyright?
Depends on what you're writing. A popular novelist or dramatist could live on royalties. There are newspapers and universities which employ writers. There are also of course writers and scholars who depend on patronage or day jobs.
>How is the popularity of books affecting the spoken languages themselves? I am thinking of Luther's Bible fixing the standard "German" over the various dialects among the laymen, while Italy lagged behind due to the Council of Trent asserting the supremacy of the Vulgate, with the result that Italian was only currently spoken by the lower classes after 1940 ca. and artistic/scientific literacy is still embarrassingly low to the present day.
Certainly it helps cement the standard languages. There is a dialect continuum from Barakhinei to Verdurian to Ismain... but books almost never appear in nonstandard form, so writing reinforces the standard languages. (Note that Eretald is still mostly rural, so these unwritten dialects are in no danger of disappearing.)
>Now that books can spread easily, how is the difference between written language and spoken language changing? And back to intellectuals, how did they choose their writing register before printing vs. how do they now? (Did/do they choose one of the dialects, or mix some/all of them together, or create their own written "dialect"...)
The standard languages are all the speech of major cities, so there's little confusion. Only a few cities like Zhesifo have much power to resist standardization.
There are fights of course over the lexicon, over spelling, and some points of grammar. Flaids don't object to Verdurian borrowings, but Kebreni do. Elena's spelling reform encountered great resistance (but that was 200 years ago and has died down). There are attempts to make Verdurian work more like Cadhinor.
>Any such thing as philosophy (ethics, aesthetics, gnosiology, theology), advanced mathematics, or basic fields of science (empiricism) growing thanks to the printing press? And the diffusion of printed canons of figurative art (cfr. Palladio) in Xurno and elsewhere, or technological manuals (agriculture, crafting, machinery and industry, war strategy)? How about theatrical works? Or even books about magic? How are the official religions reacting to this kind of information traveling at book-speed throughout the continent?
As noted above, scholars rely on printing to disseminate ideas. It's hard to have real scientific progress without printing. If I ever finish
Diary of the Prose Wars, you'll see how a modernizing society confronts the problem of new scholarship and whether it can get on board.
Many of the earliest adopters of the printing press were religious institutions. It's great for spreading scripture, sermons, inspirational works. Xurnese Revaudo wouldn't have spread so fast without silkscreen printing. There are of course religious conservatives who don't like anything new, but science on Almea hasn't advanced to the point where religions feel threatened.
>What's the story with the birth of modern punctuation, cfr. Manuzio in Venice? Did a similar concept already exist in manuscripts, and then had to be adapted to the movable type?
>Does music printing exist, cfr. Petrucci in Venice? If not, is it ever going to?
I haven't worked out details, but printing would have required standardization of punctuation, as well as weeding out a plethora of confusing manuscript abbreviations. Hand-written MSS allow a lot more individual and institutional variation.
There is surely some form of music notation. I think I said somewhere (but I can't find it now) that the Cadhinorians could record their music, so the Verdurians, unlike Europeans, can enjoy 2000-year-old music.