released 10/12/2018
In her book The Social Life of Books: Reading Together in the Eighteenth-Century Home, Abigail Williams describes how the practices of reading aloud survived even as private, silent reading was becoming more common. Williams writes, “Reading aloud could mean sitting on a bench and reading cheap printed versions of folk tales to an illiterate artisan audience, or gathering the family around for a sermon on Sunday evening. It could mean sitting alone and enjoying the sound of a text. It could also, increasingly, mean standing up in a newly furnished parlour and clutching one’s breast in delivery of the sentimental apogee of a recent novel to a group of polite acquaintances.” This Friday Feature also includes excerpts from interviews with Eugene Peterson and Dana Gioia from our audio Anthology, On Books and Reading.
19 minutes
PREVIEW