Writing and European Thought, 1600-1830 argues for the central importance of writing to conceptions of language, technological progress and Western civilization during the Early Modern Era. Attitudes to the written language changed radically between the late Renaissance and Romanticism, and Nicholas Hudson challenges some central assumptions of modern historical scholarship on the nature of that change. He questions the argument that European thinkers have been "logocentric," and that the rise of print and literacy produced a more visually oriented culture.