Image credit: Victor GAD
Marija Dalbello
Reading Interests
of Adults
The Cultures of
Reading - Reading as
Social Practice
Rutgers
School of Communication and Information
dalbello@rutgers.edu
Overview
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Introduction
Topics in reading history
Reading and Readers: A historical overview
Conceptual framework and studies of reading and readers
A History of Reading revisited (central questions and concerns)
And, how it all fits together (reading, literacy, genre in context)
Introduction
_______________________________________
A History of Reading - a combination of personal
narrative of reading and historical scholarship on reading
and readers
Perspectives in the history of reading
utility and purpose, materiality, general context
Topics in the history of reading
silent reading, history of punctuation, book forms,
gendered reading, media transitions and technologies
Other histories of reading
R. Chartier & G. Cavallo, A History of Reading in the West
L. Febvre & H. Martin, The Coming of the Book
D. Finkelstein & A. McCleery, An Introduction to Book History
Professional reader
consults many texts
Introduction
_______________________________________
A History of Reading - a combination of personal
narrative of reading and historical scholarship on reading
and readers
Perspectives in the history of reading
utility and purpose, materiality, general context
Topics in the history of reading
silent reading, history of punctuation, book forms,
gendered reading, media transitions and technologies
Other histories of reading
R. Chartier & G. Cavallo, A History of Reading in the West
L. Febvre & H. Martin, The Coming of the Book
D. Finkelstein & A. McCleery, An Introduction to Book History
The History of Reading: Beginnings
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History of materials to encode information
documents & documentary practices
Records of ownership, transactions of everyday life, official
records
Historical types: Sumerian seals, clay tablets, Greek vases,
Roman public inscriptions
Writing materials: parchment, papyrus rolls, codex, stone
Cultures of production, circulation, use of texts, reading
ecclesiastical - secular domains
Historical descriptions of reading
e.g., St. Ambrose (4th century CE century silent reader)
The History of Reading: The Middle Ages
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The rise of silent reading (P. Saenger)
Clergy: elite literacy, control of texts in scribal culture
Universities: pecia system, memorization
Merchant classes: the rise of popular literacy merchant
classes (12th-14th century development)
Recreational reading for pleasure / reading divine texts
distinction
Censorship
The History of Reading:
Early Modern (15th-17th century)
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Printing shapes the cultures of reading
Humanist education and secular texts, science
Censorship and control of output of the printing presses
Displacement of Latin - rise of vernacular literacy and texts
The displacement of the authority of the Church - Reformation
The History of Reading:
The Rise of the Novel (18th century)
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Expanding scale
production, consumption
Reading becomes a necessity of life
Utilitarian reading - reading for pleasure
Encyclopaedias, compendia, novels, pornography
Literacy becomes accessible to different classes of people
From intensive reading to extensive reading (Rolf Engelsing)
The History of Reading:
The Age of Reading (19th century)
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Reading in the modern sense
Mass audiences and industrial production
The (material and institutional) artifacts of the “long 19th
century”
What really happened?
see next three slides …
The Age of Reading:
19th century literacy revolution
Reading in the Conditions of the Industrial Revolution
Beginning of the century:
Demand for reading is higher than the availability of material
Technology of production addressing the needs created by the social movements
and the new needs of being informed
1820 & 1830s: quantitative and qualitative changes visible in book and
newspaper production
1830 & 1850: substantial increase in numbers of titles produced, and the
dramatic decrease in the average price of those titles annually
Combined effect of social changes and the technology of
production
creation of the mass reading public
homogenization of audiences
availability of reading material and ability to circulate it widely
proliferation of illustrated print
innovations in the nature and the feel of the printed product
The Age of Reading:
19th century literacy revolution
The Reading Nation Emerges
• Wide-spread application of steam power to newspaper (from 1814)
and book (from 1820s) production
• More extensive use of stereotyping, the extended use of woodengraving (particularly in newspapers)
• By the 1840s the machine production of paper (which had begun in
the first decade of the nineteenth century) was becoming a significant
factor
• Railway system came into existence between 1830 and 1850 (UK)
tremendous impact on the distribution of printed material and the
circumstances in which that material was read (railway novels began
appearing in the 1850s)
• New literate publics - literacy rates were also rising fast as the
urban population increased (by 1851 more people were living in towns
than in the countryside in Britain)
The Age of Reading:
19th century literacy revolution
Supplying the New Reading Public with Cheaper Texts
• Cutting the text up into weekly or monthly parts: serialization of
novels, encyclopaedias, the Bible, etc.
• Offering text in the form of penny “newspapers” (which frequently
were not newspapers at all as real newspapers were taxed until the end
of this period)
• Publishers case bindings came in the 1830s
Studies:
Robert Gilmore: Reading Becomes a Necessity of Life
A micro-study of colonial reading in rural New England supplies the
detail
Patricia Anderson: The Printed Image
Focus on illustrated print, such as the Penny Magazine and impact on
the education of the working class in England
Robert Altick: provides a general background in the U.K.
The constitution of the “common reader” associated with massdissemination of print is seen in the context of the conditions of the
market, the activities of agencies (such as the Tract Society)
The History of Reading:
The Twentieth Century and today
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New media convergence with trade publishing
Bestsellers, the paperback series
The rise and decline of reading?
The social nature of reading
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Reading as a form of behavior is operating as a complex intervention in
the ongoing social life of actual social subjects.
(J. Radway)
Interpretive communities of readers
focus on shared storytelling and social interaction
Interpretation at the core of reader response
collective fantasies to individual responses and interpretations in
the context of everyday life
Horizon of expectation
history of reading, reader in history, a reader’s history
Theoretical approaches (text-based to reader-based)
New Criticism
Reader response theory (S. Fish)
Reception theory (W. Iser)
Studies of reading
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Literacy studies (contexts of literacy practices, rise of the
vernacular, authorship)
Print culture history (reading practices affect production &
distribution of texts; reading rooted in ‘print as artefactual
object’)
Reader-response theory (reading act as process of
interpretation, reading integrated with life history)
Ethnography of reading (reading as communal activity,
practiced in shared institutions and shared interpretive
frameworks)
A History of Reading Revisited:
A conclusion
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Reading at multiple layers
Texts that can be finished in the process of reading
Texts that live in an unfinished state of multiple readings
Multiple authorities:
of the text
of the author
and of the reader
Text - image relations and the visual - narrative play
The shapes of the book
Literacy and why it relates to genre
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Literacy (physical embodiment of text + totality of social
relations within which texts reside)
Genre is tied to the study of complex nature of literacy and
reading across time and space but narrows the notion of
literacy - by localizing specific texts within historical
communities
Reading, literacy, genre are interconnected