{"title":"Time and the Essay","authors":"Markman Ellis","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198707868.003.0005","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Published six times a week, Addison and Steele’s The Spectator (1711–12) offered readers a daily essay, and some advertisements, on the two sides of a half-folio sheet costing one penny. This chapter explores the diurnal production and reception of The Spectator. In their daily sequence, each diurnal essay is an adventure in thought located in a fixed chronological relationship with the others but taking a new and unanticipated direction. Reading the diurnal Spectator offers unexpected juxtapositions of essays on different topics and in different modes and styles. Subsequent republications in quarto and octavo volumes changed the reading experience, especially through the provision of an index allowing readers to follow topics across discrete essays. Indexical reading exposes an ambivalence in the essay form between the everyday sally of thought—the attempt or endeavour—and the more philosophical thinking of the tract or treatise in miniature.","PeriodicalId":41054,"journal":{"name":"RENASCENCE-ESSAYS ON VALUES IN LITERATURE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2020-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"RENASCENCE-ESSAYS ON VALUES IN LITERATURE","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198707868.003.0005","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERATURE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Published six times a week, Addison and Steele’s The Spectator (1711–12) offered readers a daily essay, and some advertisements, on the two sides of a half-folio sheet costing one penny. This chapter explores the diurnal production and reception of The Spectator. In their daily sequence, each diurnal essay is an adventure in thought located in a fixed chronological relationship with the others but taking a new and unanticipated direction. Reading the diurnal Spectator offers unexpected juxtapositions of essays on different topics and in different modes and styles. Subsequent republications in quarto and octavo volumes changed the reading experience, especially through the provision of an index allowing readers to follow topics across discrete essays. Indexical reading exposes an ambivalence in the essay form between the everyday sally of thought—the attempt or endeavour—and the more philosophical thinking of the tract or treatise in miniature.