Theories of reading : books, bodies, and bibliomania / Karin Littau.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Littau, Karin, 1960-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Books and reading.

Reading interests.

Physical Description:

xi, 194 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, UK ; Malden, MA : Polity, 2006.

Summary:

Why do literary theorists see reading as an act of dispassionate textual analysis and interpretation, when historical evidence shows that readers have often read excessively, obsessively, and for sensory stimulation? Posing this and other questions, this is the first major work to bring insights from book history to bear on literary history and theory. In so doing, it charts a compelling and innovative history of theories of reading.

While literary theorists have greatly contributed to our understanding of the text-reader relation, they have rarely taken into account that the relation between a book and a reader is also a relation between two bodies: one made of paper and ink, the other of flesh and blood. This is why, Karin Littau argues, we need to look beyond the words on the page and pay attention to the technical innovations in the physical format of the book. Only then is it possible to understand more fully how media technology has changed our experience of reading, and why media history presents a challenge to our conceptions of what reading is.

Each chapter places the reader in specific disciplinary and historical contexts: literature, criticism, philosophy, cultural history, bibliography, film, new media. Overall, the history recounted in this book points to a split between modern literary study, which regards reading as a reducibly mental activity, and a tradition reaching back to antiquity which assumed that reading was not only about sense-making but also about sensation. Theories of Reading: Books, Bodies and Bibliomania will be essential reading for all students and scholars of literary theory and history as well as of great interest to students of the history of the book and new media.

Contents:

Introduction: Anatomy of Reading 1

Bibliomania 4

Bodies 8

1 A History of Reading 13

From reading aloud to reading silently 14

From monastic to scholastic reading 15

Reading in solitude 17

From intensive to extensive reading 19

2 The Material Conditions of Reading 23

Expressive function of print 25

Instability of the textual object 27

Histories of textual transmission 29

From manuscript to typographic culture 32

From print to hypermedia culture 33

3 The Physiology of Consumption 36

Side-effects of reading 37

Reading-fever 39

Reading addiction 42

Modernity and the assault on the senses 45

Eye-strain and eye-hunger 49

Film-fever 50

Dazzling the audience 52

Dizzy in hyperspace 53

(Dis)embodied in cyberspace 57

Passive consumers 58

4 The Reader in Fiction 62

Dangers of reading 63

The tearful reader 65

The frightened reader 69

The passionate reader 72

Pathology of reading 74

Reading games 76

The danger of a future without books 77

Multisensory media 79

5 The Role o'f Affect in Literary Criticism 83

Reading with/without pathos 84

Docere-delectare-movere 86

From reader to author to text 90

Disinterested and contemplative reading 92

Close reading 96

Reading for sense rather than sensation 98

6 The Reader in Theory 103

(Un)readability 105

A priori conditions of reading 107

Controlling readers' responses 108

Reading expectations 109

Conventions of reading 111

Interpretive communities 113

Failure of reading 116

Misreading 119

The reader as writer 120

The politics of difference 122

7 Sexual Politics of Reading 125

The resisting reader 127

Black women readers 128

Empirical audiences 131

Active consumers 134

'Low-/middle-/highbrow' reading 137

Embodied reading 142

Reading as/like a woman 148

The feminization of the reader 151

Conclusion: Materialist Readings 154.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 168-185) and index.

ISBN:

0745616585

9780745616582

0745616593

9780745616599

OCLC:

65468436