Spectators in Europe

The enlightened Spectator press of the 18th century forms an important cultural heritage of today’s Europe. It performed the democratic ideal of disseminating cultural and moral issues, techniques and practices within a non-academic audience, popularizing enlightened ideas, such as cosmopolitism, tolerance, intellectual criticism, self-reflection and social responsibility – ideas which constitute the diachronic identity of the European civil society up to the present day and form an important step towards Europeanisation. The significance of the spectatorial magazines to European cultural history is, however, not limited to the content of these magazines, but extends to broader issues of modern sociability and female readership. Through its network of journalists and contributing members of their audience, the Spectator journals of the eighteenth century can be considered a forerunner of the interactive social networks of today. The project’s participants would to restore these journals into Europe’s collective memory with digital editions and an extended information networking about the Spectator, investigating their local, regional and national and multilingual trans-European history and impact on cultural patterns.
While using different languages and pondering on national, regional and local specifics, the Spectators are – at the same time – a genuinely trans-European phenomenon, which furthered Europeanisation. They form a part and catalyst of tangibleand intangible European cultural heritage. This highly popular journalistic genre has been most essential for the development of Europe’s values and our modern European identity.