Reading Represented

Abstract

This chapter begins the exploration of the mechanics and meanings associated with learning to read and reading by tracing the many and varied ways in which reading was represented in late Ottoman and early Republican society and the ways in which it was subsequently remembered. It focuses on the modeling of reading practices because it reveals the intentions and agenda underlying the impetus to increase reading in this period. Representations of reading also point to the many tasks with which reading was freighted. Young readers were being encouraged to approach their texts for reasons of religion, morality, careerism, personal improvement or simply for entertainment or escape. Interspersing examples drawn from children’s reading material itself with accounts of learning to read and reading that appear in memoirs, this chapter sets out the many and at times contradictory modes and valences attached to reading.