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This seminar will give you an opportunity to learn about one of the most significant periodicals in the history of English journalism. The Spectator was a paper published by Addison and Steele from 1711 to 1714. It was not a conventional newspaper. The Spectator consisted of daily essays providing a running commentary on the entire spectrum of early eighteenth-century English culture (including literature, music and art) as well as witty observations on everyday life in London.
The Spectator originated in London’s coffee houses which were places where Londoners met to read the latest newspapers and to discuss all sorts of current cultural and political issues. Only men visited these coffee houses. However, the Spectator addressed both male and female readers. It thus provided a bridge between the single-sex public sphere of the coffee house and the domestic, private sphere shared by men and women alike.
The Spectator was hugely influential, and it remained so for a long time. In fact it has never been out of print for three centuries. It was, among other things, regarded as the perfect model of a good English prose style, so it was read by foreigners learning English. Reading the Spectator was regarded as an essential preparation for any educated person from the continent travelling to England, so it continued to shape ideas about Englishness well beyond the early eighteenth century.
Texts: A reader will be made available well in advance of the semester (Copyshop Reckhammerweg 4). As always: read, think, enjoy, annotate and look things up if necessary. You may find the following introductions to eighteenth-century London useful: White, Jerry, London in the Eighteenth Century. A Great and Monstrous Thing (London 2012); Heyl, Christoph, A Passion for Privacy. Untersuchungen zur Genese der bürgerlichen Privatsphäre in London, 1660-1800 (Munich, 2004).
Requirements: regular attendance, reading the assigned texts, active participation, and a term paper in English. |
