At a time when traditional forms of reading are no longer taken for
granted, and even students of English Literature openly confess that
they do not read, we will historicize current reading practices by
tracing how and why texts were read in early modern England. One of our
guiding questions is whether our post-literary period (Collins 2010)
corresponds with a pre-literary period, i. e. the period prior to the
16th century when the concept of reading literature emerged in England.
drawing on notions of "participatory reading' (Blatt 2018) we explore
reading practices that differ from the now prevailing norm of reading
texts silently with practices linked to ‚social reading‘ (especially in
the realm of social media) reforming ideas about reading as a foremost
private activity.
Printed texts in this period fulfilled a number of functions beyond
that of a medium for ideas. They served as gifts, family relics,
symbols of social status, registers for important information such as
births, deaths or business transactions (often scribbled on the
fly-leaves), and even magical talismans. Bibles were opened at random to
divine a course of action, touched to the belly or the brow of a child
to heal illness, and placed beneath pillows to conjure dreams. (C. Scott
Dixon, Contesting the Reformation, 2012, 17, 76)
Following Dixon's notion that printed texts were used for a number of
activities, sometimes only loosely related to what we call reading, we
will explore early modern texts and traces left by early modern readers
that can tell us something about the plethora of activities in
connection with reading.
Texts to be read will be provided in this seminar but please feel free
to do some preliminary reading that will help you get a grip on the
subject.
Arcangeli, Alessandro. “Reading Time: The Act of Reading and Early Modern Time Perceptions.” Journal of Early Modern Studies 6 (2017): 17-37
Blatt, Heather. Participatory Reading in Late-Medieval England. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018.
Collins, Jim. Bring on the books for everybody: How literary culture became popular culture. Durham, London: Duke University Press, 2010.
Dixon, C. Scott. Contesting the Reformation. London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.
Hammond, Mary. Early Readers. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020.
Littau, Karin. Theories of Reading. Books, Bodies and Bibliomania. London: Polity, 2006.
Sherman, William. Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009.
- Dozent/in: Felix Sprang