Reading – A private or communal event?

Authors

• Tuija Laine Helsingin yliopisto

Abstract

The aim of my research is to look at reading as a communal event. The research method is content analysis, and the sources are based mostly on the memoirs submitted to the “Life as a Reader” collection. I shall research the situations of reading, the attendants (the readers and listeners), and the limits of communal and private reading. The background of my study will be the history of reading. As the source material, I shall use the memoirs of 13 narrators, who describe communal reading in the profoundest and most adequate way. The forms communal reading took in the early modern period include reading societies, family worship, and events at which people gathered to listen to and read stories while practicing needlework or other handcrafts. Nowadays, there are still reading societies, and parents and grandparents still read bedtime stories to children. Although community spirit has diminished over the centuries, these basic structures have persevered.