Reading Fictions, 1660-1740

Coffeehouse Curiosities: Materiality and Musealization Strategies in The Athenian Mercury

“…Intimately linked to the print market, be it in the form of news, pamphlets, or (from a twenty-first-century perspective) more overtly fictional texts, '[c]offee-house clientele continually faced the challenge of assessing dubious stories in public'. 53 The coffeehouse as an exhibition space was therefore by no means a neutral but a biased space to begin with. Depositing the objects supposed to vouch for the veracity of the narratives they were involved with at a coffeehouse was a highly ambiguous move.…”

“…On the one hand, the coffeehouse was a public space placed under the collective scrutiny of its patrons, a location where under a host of watchful eyes something like a sceptical intersubjective consensus shaped by 'sceptical reading practices' might indeed emerge. 54 On the other hand, exhibiting objects expected to vouch for a particular account in a coffeehouse of all places might have been read as an implicit, tongue-in-cheek admission of guilt, signalling readers that the accounts backed by the respective objects were everything but reliable. Moreover, it might have been regarded as an invitation to actively participate in shaping the objects along with the discourses they were involved with, to collectively contribute to a shared (hi)story.…”

“…Kate Loveman, for example, writes that '[i]t was a reader's first responsibility to discern the truth-status of a work' 8 and proposes the existence of a 'sense, common in this period, that skilled interpretation of narratives was an exercise in detecting falsehoods and avoiding deception'. 9 Readers, according to her, were therefore aware of the danger of being surrounded by false information and trained in 'distinguish[ing] fact from fiction, judg[ing] authorial intent and determine[ing] appropriate responses'. She even speaks about an 'enjoyment to be gained in ascertaining the credibility of a narrative', 10 dealing with the question of whether a particular report was veracious or not thus included a playful dimension, an element of pre-Barthesian jouissance.…”

“…9 Readers, according to her, were therefore aware of the danger of being surrounded by false information and trained in 'distinguish[ing] fact from fiction, judg[ing] authorial intent and determine[ing] appropriate responses'. She even speaks about an 'enjoyment to be gained in ascertaining the credibility of a narrative', 10 dealing with the question of whether a particular report was veracious or not thus included a playful dimension, an element of pre-Barthesian jouissance. 11 Lending itself to be read in Barthes' terminology as a 'writerly' text, the Athenian Mercury would therefore 'make the reader no longer a consumer, but a producer of the text', 12 because it offers its audience the possibility to work with the text by providing the readership with a playground of meaning, inviting it to bring their individual preconceptions to the tablenot to mention its openly participatory nature.…”

Popery, politics, and play: visual culture in succession crisis England

“…"Lying games"in which tall-tales were told and unmaskedwere a mainstay of elite affiliations, and participating in shamsor out-shamming the shammerwas an aspect of humorous sociability. 79 That lying was morally taboo undoubtedly heightened pleasure taken from these "lying games" by spicing them with a little danger. That taboo pleasure fed back into print.…”