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Mr. Spectator on Readers and the Conspicuous Consumption of Literature
Author(s) -
Ezell Margaret J. M.
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
literature compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.158
H-Index - 4
ISSN - 1741-4113
DOI - 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2004.00014.x
Subject(s) - reading (process) , popularity , consumption (sociology) , literature , psychology , aesthetics , social psychology , art , linguistics , philosophy
‘Mr. Spectator on Readers and the Conspicuous Consumption of Literature’ uses the Spectator essay no. 10 by Joseph Addison to investigate not only who was reading periodicals at the start of the eighteenth century, but also how Addison envisions them doing so. Addison's observations on the popularity of reading this new type of commercial literary material reveal its ties to the older model of reading found in social, manuscript literary exchanges, where readers are active participants in the dynamic of literary exchange, where readers are also writers and transmitters of texts. Addison envisions reading the daily Spectator essay as a social, group activity, one that permeates the public commercial setting of the coffee house as well as the private family tea table, not as a solitary, silent act of consumption. Ironically, however, when its format changes from the daily single sheet format to uniform bound volumes, it becomes a different type of literary text, commercially packaged for collection and the display of the owner's cultural consumption. The model of reading based on the group also changes, as the reader becomes a passive partner in the literary process, whose role is not to respond creatively and socially to a text, but whose most important response is to purchase and display the new literary artefact.