The Spectators in the international context

The journalistic-literary genre of the “Spectators” or moral weeklies, which surfaced in England at the beginning of the 18th century, soon spread throughout Europe before becoming an important indicator of the Enlightenment discourse system.

The Spectators were aimed primarily at a broad urban readership. These writings were intended to disseminate the ideas and values of the Enlightenment in an entertaining manner. In this way, they were also instrumental in shaping the public opinion process.

The project aims to create a central collection for all European Spectator periodicals. The texts are encoded according to the standard of the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) and, in addition to the original text structure, topics, entities (persons, places and works) as well as forms of representation and narration (allegory, dream, utopia, etc.) are recorded. Currently, a total of almost 4000 Spanish, Italian, French, German, English and Portuguese texts are available. They are presented in two views: one that imitates the original and one analysis view.

Bibliography

Völkl, Yvonne (2021): Spectatoriale Geschlechterkonstruktionen. Geschlechtsspezifische Wissens- und Welterzeugung in den französisch- und spanischsprachigen Moralischen Wochenschriften. Bielefeld: Transcript [in preparation]

Ertler, Klaus-Dieter; Baudry, Samuel; Völkl, Yvonne (2018): Discourses on Economy in the Spectators / Discours sur l’économie dans les spectateurs. Hamburg: Dr. Kovač.

Fuchs, Alexandra; Ertler, Klaus-Dieter (2018): Kommunikative Inszenierung und Migration der Mikroerzählungen in der Gazzetta urbana veneta von Antonio Piazza. Hamburg: Dr. Kovač.

Hobisch, Elisabeth (2018): Les stratégies publicitaires dans les lettres des ‘spectateurs’ espagnols. In: Klaus-Dieter Ertler, Samuel Baudry and Yvonne Völkl (eds.): Discourses on Economy in the Spectators / Discours sur l’économie dans les spectateurs. Hamburg: Dr. Kovač, pp. 199-214.

Scholger, Martina (2018): “Spectators” in the International Context – A Digital Scholarly Edition. In: Klaus-Dieter Ertler, Samuel Baudry and Yvonne Völkl (eds.): Discourses on Economy in the Spectators / Discours sur l’économie dans les spectateurs. Hamburg: Dr. Kovač, pp. 229–247.

Völkl, Yvonne (2018): Qu’y a-t-il dans le commerce ? Formes du commerce dans La Gazette du Commerce et Littéraire de Montréal (1778-1779). In: Klaus-Dieter Ertler, Samuel Baudry and Yvonne Völkl (eds.): Discourses on Economy in the Spectators / Discours sur l’économie dans les spectateurs. Hamburg: Dr. Kovač, pp. 185–198.

Hobisch, Elisabeth (2017): La forma epistolar en los espectadores españoles. Características y tipología de las cartas. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

Projekt team

• Klaus-Dieter Ertler (Institute for Romance Studies, University of Graz)
• Michaela Fischer-Pernkopf (Institute for Romance Studies, University of Graz)
• Alexandra Fuchs (Institute for Romance Studies, University of Graz)
• Elisabeth Hobisch (Institute for Romance Studies, University of Graz)
• Jacqueline More (Centre for Information Modelling - Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities, University of Graz)
• Sanja Saric (Centre for Information Modelling - Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities, University of Graz)
• Martina Scholger (Centre for Information Modelling - Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities, University of Graz)
• Yvonne Völkl (Institute for Romance Studies, University of Graz)

Annotation

Magdalena Albert, Hannah Bakanitsch, Misia Sophia Doms, Lena Druml, Angela Fabris, Hans Fernández, Nina Hahne, Angelika Hallegger, Karin Heiling, Andrea Kaser, Alexandra Kolb, Julia Marx, Pia Mayer, Mario Müller, Teresa Petrovitz, Ingrid Scherk, Pascal Striedner.