In the early 18th century, Joseph Addison, a publisher and playwright, founded the daily periodical, The Spectator. The goals of the magazine were idealistic: “to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality…to bring philosophy out of the closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables and coffeehouses” (Addison). Essentially, the goal of the publication was to bring private knowledge into the public sphere. Over the course of its publication (1711-1714) The Spectator was widely circulated through many publics: coffeehouses, clubs, theatre houses, and the domestic (private) sphere. It transcended through upper, middle, and lower residential areas to and through the English colonies and back home again (Longman 2318-2319). The wide circulation of The Spectator resulted in a phenomenal reflexivity with its readership. The magazine’s circulation, in other words, was far and wide. The magazine’s extensive reach was partly due to its mode of production and [its many modes] of circulation. Reflexive circulation is the key ingredient to its success: the ability of The Spectator to gather a community of readers from a diverse set of English (in particular London) publics. The periodical’s new, urbane ethos urged critique from its readers. London publics desired a communication network outside of the limitations of a traditional newspaper or magazine. The satirical and witty miscellanea was an opportunity for readers to become critics, writers, and informants of the culture they were in. Similar to modern social networking sites, The Spectator allowed readers to become users of the medium; perhaps even to invent the medium they used. If the two are paralleled, they encouraged readers to interact with other readers using The Spectator as a host platform:
the Spectator developed a reflexivity about its own circulation, coordinating its readers’ relations to other readers. It does not merely assert the fact of public circulation, though it does frequently allude to its own popularity; it includes feedback loops, both in the letters from readers real and imagined and in the members of the club (Warner 99).
The Spectator’s famous (and sometimes infamous) narrator, Mr. Spectator, jazzed up the magazine’s content with witty commentaries on the content, much of which was reported by and sent in from local Londoners. The publication featured stories, advertisements, advice columns, obituaries, and illustrations. It was, in a sense, an early example of multimedia publication. It was also a key marker of modernity. Since language and narrative reflect the revolutions occurring at any given time, The Spectator, in the very fashioning of its content and form, represents a new age (Warner 98-99). Mr. Spectator had the keen knack of being relatable to just about any public – the domestic, women, men, academics, writers, printers, coffeehouses; as well as counterpublics, such as the underground printers, intellectual and artistic communities. The sheer fact that the publication was relatable and cultivable to conversation made people pay attention and participate to the seemingly continuous conversation that buzzed through the town. As an aside, this reflexivity is something readers today take for granted. Gossip and chat have become less valued in society due the immense amount of it in magazines, both print and internet zines. To add to its popularity, Addison used a subjective narrator to cross the boundary between the public literary space and the private literary space. The magazine’s readership became most attractive to the private, domestic reader and this was characterized by the narrator, who Addison made perform for multiple social spaces. The domestic readership recognized their voice, so to speak, through the narrator because his concerns, inquiries, and everyday thoughts were not unlike their own. This encouraged readers to speak through Mr. Spectator; to characterize him and his stories with their own thoughts, gossip, and character quirks. Part of The Spectator’s success was its ability to reach and relate to multiple publics. Mr. Spectator became a reference point, or symbol, for modern culture at the time. His quirkiness, intellect, sensibility, and pompous self-regard helped to endear this imaginary narrator to readers, who viewed him as a parody of the English nobleman, one who is exempt from working class dog days and middle class proprieties (Black). Furthermore, Mr Spectator distinguished himself from the rising middle class only in his self-entitlement (also a sign of the gradually fading aristocracy) because his character and voice was all too familiar to his readers. It represented the time: the excitement, the movement, the change, and hopes of the coming century, one of which would see England become a world power through trade, colonization, and diaspora.
A time of social, political, and economic reform and revolution, the 18th century saw the beginning of mass culture with the industrial reproduction of print texts. Although print texts had been reproduced for centuries through a variety of technical means, Shakespeare, for instance, never read a newspaper or a periodical (Longman 2310-2311). Prior to the 18th century, information culture was contained to only selected works, many of which served the political purposes of the Church or the Nobility (sometimes both at once). After the advent of the printing press lead to the development of the newspaper, information was more easily and efficiently disseminated from a multitude of sources. As a result, literacy improved, many sources became wealthy, and a re-structuring of communication networks was needed. As well, certain historical events, primarily the Black Plague (1665) and Great Fire of London (1666), lead to a greater necessity for receiving information on everyday events as quickly and efficiently as possible. The newspaper is the forefather of the quirky miscellanea, a child of the raucous, rebel intellect of London’s rising middle class. It wasn’t enough to simply know the daily goings-on. A cultivated woman or man was expected to know how to live in London; how to be fashionable, sensible, sociable, or, simply how to converse with people they are trying to impress.
A satire in its own right, The Spectator parodied the culture that fed it. This produced the amusing and ironic situation of a very self-conscious English reading public that prided themselves in being critical, yet who were the target of Mr. Spectator’s gregarious wit. The meta-fictional elements of the The Spectator made it a marker of British modernity. It was a symbol of its time, similar to the advent of the blog as a marker of global modern, or post-modern, times. Similar to The Spectator, the blog can belong to a wide and interactive public of blogs. Bloggers comment on and share one another’s content. Blog also include a meta-fictional element: aside from the blogger’s authored content, some of the blog’s content is obtained from a diverse number of sources. This makes it a inter-text that is organized on a universal platform (much like how the miscellanea of 18th-century English culture are organized in The Spectator’s publication). Blogs, like The Spectator, are very socially porous, which means that it attracts many publics and relies on these publics to segregate themselves based on content. Such ‘free’ and ‘open’ interactive spaces market themselves as a platform of free expression, or at least a writer’s ability to express anything they choose within reason on a topic of their choice. Blogs are self-reflexive. Many are as confessional and introspective as a personal journal. Since blogs are also part of a larger network of other blogs there is a certain blurring of the public and private spaces. The very fact that blogs can become public and preview any particular content is phenomenal, if not proof of the internet’s porousness and hyper-connectivity.
So, how does all of the above [editor’s note: yes, all that messy background information!] relate to education in the Digital Age? Blogs enables students to directly interact with the public sphere. Most significantly, is the idea that blogs, like 18th-century periodicals, are breaking down some previously thick political and social boundaries by blurring the public and private. The means of production (then: the industrialization of the printing press; now: the digitizing of print, including modes of social communication) both produced a great leap forward into new era of communication. The mass production of print was a crucial factor in the publicizing of education. It also improved literacy and made reading, writing, and conversation common practices of people in both the public and private spheres. Likewise, digital media is making progress in education in ways never imagined. Digital books, digital courses, free information databases and the sharing this information effortlessly is making the logistics of learning much simpler. Like the diverse and dynamic reading public of The Spectator, the internet is creating the digital world we read. This digitial world is enabling information to be useful and attainable knowledge. A revolution in the educational institution is bound to occur.
Works Cited:
Addison, Joseph. The Spectator, 1. 10. 1710–11.http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12030/12030-h/12030-
h/SV1/Spectator1.html#section10
Black, Scott. “Social and Literary Form in The Spectator.“Eighteenth-Century Studies. 33.1 (1999) 21-42. MUSE. Web
18 July, 2012.
Damrosch, David and Kevin J.H. Dettmar. The Longman Anthology of British Literature, Fourth Edition. Pearson
Education. New York: 2010. Print.
Warner, Michael. Publics and Counterpublics. Zone Books. New York: 2002. Print.