Robert Darnton, Roger Chartier, and others have written much on
the history of reading in the Old Regime, but this is the first
broad study of reading to focus on the period after 1800. How and
why did people understand texts as they did in modern France? In
answering this question, James Allen moves easily from one
interpretive framework to another and draws on a wide range of
sources--novels, diaries, censor reports, critical reviews,
artistic images, accounts of public and private readings, and the
letters that readers sent to authors about their books. As he
analyzes reading "in the public eye," the author explores the
formation of "interpretive communities" during the years when
reading silently and alone gradually became more common than
reading aloud in a group. In the Public Eye discusses printing,
publishing, literacy, schooling, criticism, and censorship, to
study the social, cultural, economic, and political forces that
shaped French interpretive practice. Examining the art and act of
reading by different audiences, it discloses the mentalities of
literate people for whom few other historical records exist. The
book will be essential reading for those interested in modern
French history, post-structuralist literary theory and criticism,
reader-response theory and criticism, and social and intellectual
history in general.
Originally published in 1991.
The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand
technology to again make available previously out-of-print books
from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press.
These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these
important books while presenting them in durable paperback
editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly
increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the
thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since
its founding in 1905.
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