The Spectator

Today I'm pouring over articles published in eighteenth century peridoicals of Addison and Steele's Tatler and Spectator as well as Jonson's Idler. The periodicals mark literature's entry into the public sphere as so well argued by Habermas. Essentially, they established the foundations for literary education later in the late nineteenth century. What's particularly interesting to me is the obvious tensions between anicient and modern; critical reading and critical writing; the notion of taste and the notion of the popular. The function of the critic and the criticism's essential ties to public literary engagements become obvious at this point.