Writing the Reader : Configurations of a Cultural Practice in the English Novel (linguae & litterae)

The history of the novel is also a history of shifting views of the value of novel reading. This study investigates how novels themselves participate in this development by featuring reading as a multidimensional cultural practice. English novels about obsessive reading, written in times of medial transition, serve as test cases for a model that brings together analyses of form and content. Dorothee Birke, Univ. of Freiburg, Germany, and Univ. of Aarhus, Denmark.