Čtenářská kultura
Reading culture

An attempted definition

Summary/Abstract: This study focuses on the concept of reading culture. The authors attempt to define its content and scope, while setting it within the context of contemporary issues (such as the digital revolution). They also take account of the key fixed ideas associated with the “reader” and “reading” concepts, while paying specific attention to the opposition of the empirical reader and model reader. They also base their conception of reading culture on a critical comparison with such associated concepts as book culture, written culture, literary culture and media culture, while focusing on the concept of culture itself, particularly on why they have decided on it, as culture might even be considered — in the sense of British cultural studies — to be anything that is communicated (read), and not just produced (written). Hence culture involves the circulation, range, extent and the entire ecosystem of relations and their media. It is the sphere of meaning that is received and not just emitted. One of the features of reading culture — according to the authors — involves the not entirely straightforward search for trace /testimonies, so the authors present a table showing individual trace /testimonies classified from direct empirical proofs to quite indirect ones. The main advantage of the reading culture concept is considered by the authors to be that it integrates all the activities associated with reception (direct and mediated, clear and disputed, complete and partial), so that it presents the entire range of personal testimonies, statistical data, institutions such as school and censorship, the book market and public libraries, discourse on reading, reader iconography and so forth.

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