"Reading, Sociability, and Warfare" (Book Section)
Title: "Reading, Sociability, and Warfare"
Author: Sarah E. Gardner
Editor: Kathleen Diffley
Editor: Coleman Hutchison
Abstract: This chapter explores why readers read and argues that fundamentally, they engaged the printed word to resit the dehumanizing effects of warfare. Reading became a deliberate strategy to foster sociability, best defined by Katrina O'Loughlin as "a particular 'aptitude' for living in society, a disposition toward friendliness and affability" The war had strained the bonds of affection. Separation from friends and family, the tedium of camp life, and the destructive effects of combat threatened sociability's continuance. Reading, its advocates believed, provided an antidote, for it reminded readers they were not alone.
Year: 2022
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Book Title: The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the American Civil War and Reconstruction
ISBN: 97810009159197

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