The Fatal News: Reading and Information Overload in Early Eighteenth-Century LiteratureWhat was "information" in the early eighteenth century, and what influence did the emergence of information, as potential physical and psychological threat, have on readers of the period? Recent scholarship in eighteenth-century print culture and in twenty-first-century media studies and theory offers a unique opportunity to reconsider how and why information is figuratively imagined during the eighteenth century as an abstract yet bodily entity that can flood, suffocate, and incapacitate readers. Focusing on 1678 to 1722 -- a period that experienced impressive innovations in communication -- this study reveals that the term "information" undergoes a significant transformation with social, cultural, and literary consequences. By investigating discussions of information and media that are evident in works by literary authors, the author finds that writers like John Bunyan, Aphra Behn, Jonathan Swift, and Daniel Defoe confront the idea of information overload and provide case studies in literacy reform that operate on institutional, generic, and consumer levels. For example, while in Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year information is infectious and citizens depend upon comets and phantoms to construct reader-controlled, decentralized media, in Swift's Tale of a Tub commonplace books and collections demonstrate a new type of organizational, or secretarial, impulse in society. |
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Fatal News: Reading and Information Overload in Early Eighteenth-century ... Katherine E. Ellison No preview available - 2006 |
The Fatal News: Reading and Information Overload in Early Eighteenth-Century ... Katherine E. Ellison No preview available - 2013 |
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allegory Aphra Behn argues authors becomes Behn Behn's History Bills of Mortality body Bunyan Cambridge Celestial City challenges Christian Christiana's journey Christopher Fox citizens claims collective intelligence comets communication systems contemporary critics crowd Daniel Defoe death Defoe Defoe's Journal describes digression disaster discourse early eighteenth eighteenth-century Eisenstein event example experience fatal fiction finds focus Geoffrey Nunberg global Henault husband imagined community information society information systems inheritance interpretation Isabella John Bunyan Jonathan Swift Katteriena Kittler language late seventeenth learning letter Lèvy literary London madness mass media McLuhan meaning media theorists metaphor modern multiplicity narrative narrator narrator's neighbors novel Nunberg oral Oroonoko overload Oxford phantom Pilgrim's Progress plague Post Office postal system print culture public sphere readers reading reports response scripture secrecy secret seventeenth century story Tale Terranova textual town transmission twenty-first-century Villenoys virtual virus words writing