This article uses a diachronic approach to examine how on social media platforms such as YouTube and TikTok, readers of fiction discuss and also stage strong affects connected with their reading of ‘books that made me cry’. While this trend may seem to be generated wholly by the affordances of digital media, it will be examined in what interesting ways it also connects with the eighteenth-century vogue for sentimental reading. Considering three dimensions of reading that have often been sidelined in literary studies – reading as a physical process, as a communal activity and as a performance – the article presents in-depth analyses of representations of crying readers in both reading cultures. It pays special attention to the changing norms and values connected with reading, which manifest themselves in contemporary discourses on the reader in the respective centuries, such as ‘sentimental reading’ and ‘ugly crying’.

中文翻译：

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数字阅读文化的历时视角：从感性时代到 BookTok 的哭泣读者


本文使用历时方法来研究小说读者在 YouTube 和 TikTok 等社交媒体平台上如何讨论并上演与他们阅读“让我哭泣的书”相关的强烈影响。虽然这种趋势似乎完全是由数字媒体的提供产生的，但它也将以何种有趣的方式与 18 世纪的感伤阅读时尚联系起来。考虑到阅读的三个维度在文学研究中经常被边缘化——阅读作为一种身体过程、一种公共活动和一种表演——本文对两种阅读文化中哭泣的读者的表现进行了深入分析。它特别关注与阅读相关的不断变化的规范和价值观，这些规范和价值观在各个世纪关于读者的当代话语中都有所体现，例如“感伤的阅读”和“丑陋的哭泣”。