Jene Fabrik der Bücher. Über Lesesucht, ein Phantasma des medialen Ursprungs und die Kinder- und Jugendliteratur der Aufklärung

Abstract

This text discusses the debate over reading addiction in the second half of the 18^th century from the perspective of media history. It first points out how this discourse was shaped by the criticism of books and fiction within the philosophy and pedagogy of the enlightenment and examines essential aspects of the debate itself. In a second step it describes the late 18^th century as a threshold of media history development that —not least in its explicit use of the theme of reading addiction—produced foundational effects that are functionally equivalent to similar other paradigm shifts in media history.

The debate over reading addiction is thus shown to be the first important discourse on the damaging effects of media on juveniles in modern times; the arguments offered here are not only comparable to later debates on media—they set the stage. A final comparison of this debate with other discourses on media foundation shows that all of them—whether in the 18^th or in the early 21^st century—follow a model that Schramm and Roberts have called the “bullet theory” of media effects. (HW; in German)