LEADER 03179nam 2200445 450 001 9910476817903321 005 20230512224413.0 035 $a(CKB)5470000000566377 035 $a(NjHacI)995470000000566377 035 $a(EXLCZ)995470000000566377 100 $a20230512d2006 uy 0 101 0 $aeng 135 $aur||||||||||| 181 $ctxt$2rdacontent 182 $cc$2rdamedia 183 $acr$2rdacarrier 200 10$aFatal News $eReading and Information Overload in Early Eighteenth-Century Literature /$fKatherine E. Ellison 205 $aFirst edition. 210 1$aNew York :$cTaylor & Francis,$d2006. 215 $a1 online resource (x, 158 pages) 225 1 $aLiterary criticism and cultural theory 300 $aIncludes index. 311 $a1-135-50258-7 327 $aInformation ad infinitum : Bunyan's lessons in careful reading in The pilgrim's progress -- Information as ambush : miscommunication and the post in Behn's The history of a nun -- Suffocation by information : collectivity and the secretary in Swift's A tale of a tub -- Infectious information : signs of collective intelligence in Defoe's A journal of the plague year. 330 $aWhat was "information" in the early eighteenth century, and what influence did the emergence of information, as potential physical and psychological threat, have on readers of the period? Recent scholarship in eighteenth-century print culture and in twenty-first-century media studies and theory offers a unique opportunity to reconsider how and why information is figuratively imagined during the eighteenth century as an abstract yet bodily entity that can flood, suffocate, and incapacitate readers. Focusing on 1678 to 1722 -- a period that experienced impressive innovations in communication -- this study reveals that the term "information" undergoes a significant transformation with social, cultural, and literary consequences. By investigating discussions of information and media that are evident in works by literary authors, the author finds that writers like John Bunyan, Aphra Behn, Jonathan Swift, and Daniel Defoe confront the idea of information overload and provide case studies in literacy reform that operate on institutional, generic, and consumer levels. For example, while in Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year information is infectious and citizens depend upon comets and phantoms to construct reader-controlled, decentralized media, in Swift's Tale of a Tub commonplace books and collections demonstrate a new type of organizational, or secretarial, impulse in society. 410 0$aLiterary criticism and cultural theory. 606 $aEnglish fiction$y18th century$xHistory and criticism 606 $aCommunication in literature 606 $aBooks and reading$zEngland$xHistory$y17th century 615 0$aEnglish fiction$xHistory and criticism. 615 0$aCommunication in literature. 615 0$aBooks and reading$xHistory 676 $a823.5 700 $aEllison$b Katherine E.$01261913 801 0$bNjHacI 801 1$bNjHacl 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910476817903321 996 $aFatal news$92946154 997 $aUNINA