The Revolution of the Love of Reading and Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Authors

• Ilkka Mäkinen Tampereen yliopisto

Abstract

The question of the existence of a reading revolution at the end of the 18th century has intrigued book historians since Rolf Engelsing’s theory in 1970. This article presents evidence that corroborates Engelsing’s thesis. The European discourse on reading experienced a phenomenal intensification at the end of the 18th century. The frequency of phrases denoting motivation for reading in French (goût de la lecture), English (love or habit of reading) and German (Leselust) started to grow enormously in the 1780s. This is clearly visible in the data drawn from Google Books and analyzed both manually and using the Google Ngram Viewer. The views of Jean-Jacques Rousseau on the mechanism of desires and passions and on reading gave elements for the discourse on reading. The fact that the motivation for reading is not only cognitive but also affective is understood even today in the pedagogic research on the role of engagement in reading.