%0 Journal Article
%T The Novel-Reading Panic in 18th-Century in England: An Outline of an Early Moral Media Panic
%A Vogorin£¿i£¿
%A Ana
%J -
%D 2008
%X Sa£¿etak The article explores the unfavourable reaction to the popularisation of novel-reading in 18th-century England in order to show that the outraged opposition to this leisure praxis could be understood in terms of the contemporary socio£¿logical concept ¨C ¡®moral panic¡¯ ¨C thereby revealing novel-reading as an early version of popular media culture. After outlining the cultural context of 18th-century England as well as the main characteristics of its novels, the paper discerns the anxieties, arising from the passion for fiction, and lays out the ar£¿gumentation supporting the fear of reading as was advocated by the moral heralds of the time. The analysis reveals that the oppositional reaction to novel-reading indeed encompassed all the key constitutive elements of the proper moral panic phenomenon. Maintaining a dialogue between 18th-cen£¿tury and the present, the essay concludes by drawing analogies with contem£¿porary reactions to television viewing, linking the worried response to the spread of novels with another related notion, the media panic, thus showing that what came to be seen as a feature of the modern (20th and 21st century) mass media culture has in fact a much longer history
%K moral panic
%K novels
%K female readers
%K 18th-century England
%K media panic
%U https://hrcak.srce.hr/index.php?show=clanak&id_clanak_jezik=49661