Introductions. Reading now and in history
Why I offered to teach this course. Empirical studies of reading; familiarity with Romantic period texts of many kinds; critic of cybertext theory
Reading?
Literature? -- what are you reading? Course title implies making of readers
of literature - but also:
"reading" - e.g., music, a painting; the weather, traffic situation; your mood
- i.e., constructive, requires cognitive work
-- not newspaper reports; scientific papers (Spallanzani, Ramond)? essays? Romance
novels? -- blurred boundary
-- what is "literary"? -- elitist even to mention it…
What makes literature literary? - vs. ordinary discourse. E.g.:
A. Aesthetic
Special types of language
Purposive selection of details -- become symbolic
Coherence, boundedness
Rules of genre
B. Engagement
See world through perspective of a character, intimacy with
Unavailability of fictional world, non-verifiable; yet reader has real emotions?
Relation of reader to (fictional) narrator, author
C. Challenge to reader's world view
World has moral meaning; raises questions of reader identity
Feelings placed in a critical relationship to each other (.. catharsis)
To look at readers of a short story: what is reading now?
Historical perspectives
Reading on the decline? Cf. Greenblatt on literature in the academy; Reading
at Risk survey. Shifts in attention to other media.
-- are literary values disappearing, or migrating to other media?
Comparable to earlier changes? -
18th readership for print - small, elite, coffee house culture; new journals:
Spectator, Tatler -- Addison, Steele; Grub Street
-- readers at large, mainly religious texts (Bible, sermons!)
-- oral culture otherwise, ballads, broadsheets, Newgate literature, etc.; rise
in literacy
Then! – all those pesky novels (woman writers, too!)
18th C novel (Defoe, Richardson, Fielding) prepares the ground for major shift,
so-called rise of middle class interests, moral values
-- From 1770s, emergence of "a 'sentimental' or 'empathetic' form of reading"
(absorption) -- Reinhard Wittman; reading "fever" in Germany towards end of
18th C --Robert Darnton
-- shift from reading as social act (reading aloud) to a private experience
(silent reading)
Rousseau, first mass audience for Julie (1761) -- the novel's effect
on the mind, it "silently liquifies and moulds to its will" (Thomas Green, 73);
cf. Goethe's Werther (1774)
-- French Revolution: begins breakup of class, ideological formations, turn
away from religion
Turning point? --
Late 18th C: rise of novel, especially Gothic novel. Wide appeal, but fear
of moral influence. Cf. Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey (1818) (what is
being satirized?)
-- Romantic poets: Byron: writer as hero (Childe Harold I-II, 1812);
conceptions of genius (Shakespeare revival), originality, the autonomous poet;
--
Wordsworth's rejection of common reading (worthless Gothic, sentimental plays,
etc.) - the "literary" - ? emergence of two cultures of readers, "popular" and
"high" literature
-- shift from intensive to extensive reading?
19th C. Mass reading largely becomes dependent on the novel; cheap printing
developed; circulating libraries; massive increase in journals
Shock of sensation fiction in 1860s: cf. Braddon, with Lady Audley's Secret
(1862) -- "the inventor of the fair-haired demon of modern fiction" (Mrs. Oliphant)
- sets path towards thriller and detection fiction
20th C. high literature, modernists; alongside mass readership that would never
read James, Woolf, Joyce
-- appearance of literary studies at university (earlier in USA), institutionalizes
concept of literature (Wordsworthian in England)
-- later 20th C appearance of other media: TV, movies; multimedia via computer - what happens to (literary) reading?
Questions >
1. What is literary: any commonalities across history, despite shifts in name
and readership
2. What is needed to be/become/continue a reader
3. Why read: personal insight, escapism, be informed, socialize, etc.
4. What is text-reader interaction (implied reader, reader as poacher, etc.)
Next: Reading now. Short story example - readers' responses / empirical study.
Document created September 11th 2004 / Last revision: January 10th 2012